From Application Virtualization to Xen, a round-up of the virtualization themes & topics being discussed in NYC June 23-24, 2008 by the world-class speaker faculty at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held by SYS-CON Events in The Roosevelt Hotel, in midtown Manhattan.

One of the beauties of Linux from a business point of view is that it doesn't require the 'latest and greatest' hardware to run properly. This means you can increase the return on investments (ROI) for legacy hardware. As I'll show in this article, as in the case with virtualization, the 'latest and greatest' software is not required either.

Putnam Investments, a money management firm in the U.S. with nearly $200 billion of assets under management for nearly 11 million shareholders and for institutional clients, announced the selection of Tangosol, Inc., to provide data grid solutions in support of Putnam?s initiatives.

SugarCRM Inc. announced the introduction of Sugar Network, a comprehensive set of training, Microsoft extensions and support for SugarCRM users. Sugar Network includes online training, SugarCRM Plug-Ins for Microsoft Outlook and Word, and SugarCRM customer support. The product is available for sale with the release of Sugar Suite 4.2.

Microsoft Corp. disclosed the road map and first set of features of its upcoming release of Microsoft Speech Server 2007. Beginning in May, beta testers will have the opportunity to preview and provide feedback on Speech Server 2007, which is planned for release in late 2006. Speech Server 2007 is Microsoft's next-generation speech and telephony platform to help contact centers and businesses meet the challenge of reducing costs while improving automated customer service over the telephone.

Novell today announced that Webster Bank, a subsidiary of Webster Financial Corporation, selected Novell SecureLogin and Novell ZENworks to streamline user access and automate desktop management. Fast growing and having recently expanded from Connecticut into Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York, the bank needed to integrate multiple IT environments, simplify user access, create consistency across an expanding enterprise, and ensure regulatory compliance. Working with Novell, Webster Bank increased security, built a foundation for rapid growth, and saved significant time and money after reducing the number of passwords by 75 percent and desktop administration time by 40 percent.

HP announced a simplified approach for school districts planning to deploy one-to-one teaching and learning programs using computer technology.

Arkeia Software announced its Disaster Recovery for Windows solution. Customers can now add an extra level of data protection to their heterogeneous infrastructure by deploying the new easy-to-use disaster recovery solution in conjunction with Arkeia's award winning tape and disk backup.

In May 2005, Sun Microsystems announced that they had entered into an agreement to acquire remote access vendor, Tarantella (www.tarantella.com), in a $25 million cash agreement. Tarantella is the producer of secure remote access software that enables network access to hosts running an assortment of operating systems. Sun lays claim to the tagline 'The Network is the Computer.' Taking these two things into consideration, Tarantella would seem to be an excellent way for Sun to further their vision of hosted clients easily distributed over the network.

Costa Mesa, CA, based Emulex Corp., announced that future version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 will support the networking company's drivers for its host bus adapter (HBA) boards.

Despite the rise of e-mail and the Internet as alternative ways of communicating data, fax continues to be important for business communications. Fax server systems such as network fax or LAN fax products provide small, medium-size, and enterprise businesses with a solution that automates the delivery and receipt of fax documents in electronic format, and provides direct integration with e-mail or other office productivity tools.

Could this really be 'the most exciting development in telephony since the advent of the PBX'? Read on and decide for yourself!

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network protocol that sends network configuration information to computers (and other devices) on a network. It allows a system administrator to manage an IP address range from a central location and to maintain network parameters for all systems from that same central point.

Wyse Technology today broadened its Linux-based thin-client portfolio with the introduction of two new thin clients, the Wyse Winterm 5125XE and the Winterm 5455XL.

From its first incarnation as a shared packet network that ran at about 3M bps (bits per second), Ethernet grew into a popular 10M bps technology, gave each user their own dedicated bandwidth with switches, helped spawn IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs and eventually found its way into carrier data networks. Along the way it supplanted a long list of rival technologies for LANs. (1,800 words)

In the Browser Wars' latest scrap, MSN 'optimized' Opera browsers by sending instructions to shift text 30 pixels to the left. Opera responded by releasing a humorous 'Bork version' of its Windows browser, but Microsoft's track record in dealing with competitors isn't so funny -- and neither are the possible repercussions. (1,600 words)

OpenOffice.org is more sophisticated and powerful than I realized. It can be made to work with various database-management systems, and it can do the mailmerge functions required by many SOHO types. Ease-of-use issues need attention.

Thanks in no small part to a helpful how-to piece by John McCreesh, Joe Barr shows us how to get ODBC, MySQL and OpenOffice to treat each other with respect. And don't forget to tune in next week, when Joe tells all regarding his attempts to use MySQL from within OpenOffice (1,500 words)

Looking for a software solution to help him access his home desktop remotely, Joe Barr finds even more than he'd hoped for in TightVNC. (1,470 words)

IRC is that information dirt road for hackers, right? Well, yes and no. It's a whole lot more. Here are the basics to getting started with IRC. (1,550 words)

If your household or business is similar to mine, then you have one dial-up connection to be shared among several machines in your home or business. Of course, the main reason for this is cost. The other advantages are: purchasing only one printer for the use of many, purchasing only one scanner for the use of many, purchasing only one program(s) for the use of many. A disadvantage of this scenario is that shared bandwidth will slow your connection considerably depending on how many shares you are running. I run three. One is the 'main' computer used for dial-up and as the 'gateway' for the other two computers I run to connect, using my main computer as the gateway for the connection. All I need for this is a 4-Port Hub and a NIC card in all three machines. If you have more or less than what I have, you'll need the HUB and NIC cards accordingly. Yes, you can do this using serial cables to connect computers, but this is cumbersome and slower than using NIC cards and TCP/IP as the networking protocol.

Our hero heads East, and has a parting shot for PacBell's DSL service. He discovers Web hosting deals today offer good value, and free him from DSL and server worries. (1,070 words)

PureSecure is much more polished, more complete, and more fully featured than its free software counterpart ACID. It's not free for commercial use, however. (1,200 words)

All it takes is time and free software to set up a powerful intrusion detection system for your Unix system. Follow along as Joe Barr installs ACID on his system and discovers a big security hole. (1,450 words)

Slipping a Linux desktop into a Windows-dominated corporate environment can be easier than you think. In Part 2 of this series, we describe a simple method for Linux users to browse a Windows network. (2,484 words)

Adding features to a Linux Network for Peanuts is a piece of cake, but we want to make sure we aren't using stale ingredients! Don't let anyone tell you Debian is outdated. Debian isn't old, it's refreshed with Apt. (1,900 words)

Caldera's Volution Messaging Server 1.0 shows promise, but fails to deliver compatibility with Microsoft's Outlook 2002 calendar. A shame, as Volution is easy to install and appears easy to administer. (2,000 words)

In the next several installments of the Penguin Brief, Nick will share the tricks he learned in setting up a new Website for VarLinux.org, a nonprofit portal, after he got through to his ISP. (1,200 words)

Using SSH exclusively to log in is like spending a lifetime opening beer with your Swiss Army knife. Read on to find out how to securely log in without typing your password each time, to make SSH secure other packages, and to learn the little tricks that smooth the way. (2,200 words)

How to access the various Windows filesystems from Linux, and how to access ext2fs from Windows. Find tips on mounting partitions and using Samba, and take a look into the future of Linux-Windows cross-file access. (1,700 words)