Google doesn't talk about its server operations very often; most of what we know boils down to one word: ''big.'' The company lifted the lid ever-so-slightly yesterday (no April Fool), and gave the world a peek inside a data center that's normally locked up tighter than Fort Knox. The results (and the company's focus) ...

At a press conference in New York this morning, two industrial powerhouses announced an agreement to join forces in a focus on healthcare. Neither GE nor Intel is a newcomer to the healthcare market, and they are hardly the first companies to get excited about healthcare now that the prospect for both systemic reform and ...

The 2009 release of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) is now available for purchase by Software Assurance customers at the Microsoft Volume Licensing Site. You'll have to login using your Passport account, go to the Products Download Section, under Software Assurance select ''Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for ...

Polycom has licensed the right to distribute Microsoft RoundTable, originally launched by the software giant in October 2007. As of April 13, 2009, Microsoft will no longer be selling RoundTable, and instead the product will be available as the Polycom CX5000 Unified Conference Station. Microsoft will continue to support all ...

In recent months, most of the news about Google focused on the cutbacks it has made to both staff and experimental projects. On Monday, however, the search giant announced a major expansion, a venture capital fund with full Google branding: Google Ventures. In contrast to some of the efforts of Google.org, these ...

The clock is ticking down towards Conficker.C's reported April 1 launch date, but an 11th-hour discovery by Team White Hat may substantially improve an IT shop's chance of catching the bug early and stomping on it. The full technical details on the Conficker scanner are being witheld for roughly 24 hours (we'll link the ...

One of the pleasures of reading the The Server Room is taking part in various threads on the theme of ''lessons learned.'' So when we hit upon the idea of distilling the collective wisdom of the Ars forums into an article on virtualization for a broader audience, the first thing we thought of was, ''let's ask everyone to ...

The global economic downturn has compelled a growing number of companies to search for ways to reduce IT costs. Uptake of open source software is climbing in this environment, which means more opportunities for the companies that have built their businesses around the open source Linux platform. Red Hat, one of the most ...

IT news might be bad in almost every corner of the industry, but one industry segment seems better fit to ride out the recession than most. Sales of security appliances to various business sectors in Western Europe grew revenue a total of 14.4 percent in 2008 as compared to 2007, but that growth slacked off a bit in the ...

If you've got even a passing interest in the subject, you're undoubtedly aware that true progress in general-purpose x86 multicore programming has been slow and uncertain. Intel and AMD may have made the technology affordable—a quad-core system could easily have cost thousands of dollars just five years ago, ...