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Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, says "the cloud" is a phenomenon that is bigger than the advent of the PC. I think he's almost got it right. Cloud is bigger than the PC Revolution, but it's big in part because it incorporates and extends the PC revolution to Internet server clusters. The cloud owes more to the PC than Eric acknowledges.

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Sun disclosed Tuesday in regulatory filings that it plans to cut 3,000 jobs from its workforce, as it awaits the go-ahead on its takeover by Oracle. It's cut 7,600 workers in three rounds of layoffs over three years, according to SEC filings. Will this mark the end of the downsizing?

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Whether your company's data center is a couple of servers stashed in a closet or a gleaming, state-of-the-art climate-controlled facility, you're still facing the same set of challenges: how to keep the IT lights on while controlling costs, take advantage of new technologies to stay competitive, and position your company for an economic recovery in the midst of the toughest times for IT that many of us can remember.

On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, help is on the way.

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Marc Benioff set aside his duties as master of ceremonies at the death of software Tuesday and announced on-demand applications and on-premises applications could work together. His venue was a Yerba Buena Center theater in San Francisco next to Oracle OpenWorld. He still took a swipe at enterprise software, but his talk was titled, "The Best of Both Worlds."

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In the Sept. 11 story, "Oracle Fights IBM Poaching With Ad," I wrote that Sun used to lead the Unix server market, now IBM does, with HP second. That was once true but the reality is more complicated. HP has slipped to number three, and Sun is number two; therein lies a tale.

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Scott McNealy received a standing ovation at JavaOne in what was possibly his last appearance before the mammoth Java user group--last, that is, before Sun disappears inside Oracle once the $7.4 billion acquisition is complete. So why, if McNealy was such a celebrated leader, is his company being swallowed up?

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The IEEE-ISTO (International Standards and Technology Organization) held its first conference on product certification and conformance at their IEEE headquarters in New Jersey. The goal of the IEEE Conformity Assessment Program (ICAP) is to provide support to other IEEE standards groups, test labs, and industry groups in developing conformance tests. It’s a first step on a long road for the ICAP.

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Over the last two years, Intel commissioned a study on how companies were delivering virtualization to end users. It's one of the few indicators of where this confused segment is headed. Several approaches are still on the table, but the fastest growing one is where the virtual machine resides on the end user's PC.

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Every IT person has dreams about the technologies they really want for their business. In current economic conditions, however, you may need to downsize your expectations.

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I dialed in recently to an online technology discussion sponsored by Wikibon.org, a community of technology professionals. Speaking was Rich Avila, director of server and network operations at California State, who said saving power wasn't a fuzzy, feel good goal for him. It was a necessity.

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What was interesting about Cisco's entry into blade servers Mar. 16 was the key role that it expects virtualization to play. It trumpeted its convergence of storage and networking data on the blade. But what about its assumption that the blade will be virtualized?

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If IBM acquires Sun, and that prospect becomes increasingly likely with each day that passes without a denial, here's one thing it should consider doing: it should keep Sun intact and operate it as an independent business unit, much like EMC did with VMware.

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Did you know that power issues come in separate flavors, and that you need different kinds of UPS systems to deal with different kinds of power problems?

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It's a funny story, but it has a serious point: Hackers in Illinois and Texas fiddled with electronic street signs to warn motorists about upcoming zombies and raptors. "The latest breach came during Tuesday morning's rush hour near Collinsville, Ill., east of St. Louis. That's where hackers changed a sign along southbound Interstate 255 to read, 'DAILY LANE CLOSURES DUE TO ZOMBIES,'" according to an article by the Associated Press.

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India's plans for a $20 notebook have "too good to be true" written all over them. And no, at that price, I don't think it's feasible -- not even with Linux at the core. In fact, I don't think it's just infeasible. I think it's a bad idea, period.

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The iPod Touch was a hugely popular gift for Christmas last week. If you got an iPod Touch or iPhone, read on for pointers to our favorite free and cheap iPod Touch apps. And if you didn't get an iPhone or Touch, we have some alternatives for you.

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bMighty.com's latest virtual event -- a "deep dive on IT infrastructure for growing companies" -- is a wrap, but now you can check out the whole thing any time you want.

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The first annual bMighty.com Innovation Awards recognize a dozen products released this year that hold special appeal for growing businesses -- and for everyone else, too.

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Apple released a QuickTime update that allows standard-definition iTunes movies to play over new MacBooks' DisplayPort to older displays, according to reports on Apple blogs. However, high-def movies are still blocked, which is unfair to owners of MacBooks and other systems by other vendors that use the same technology.

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Perception does NOT equal reality. Many technologies simply can't live up to their hype, while others languish in unwarranted obscurity. bMighty.com pumps up the hidden gems and takes the blowhards down a peg.

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These days, everyone's talking about saving money on technology, but where do you start? To help, bMighty.com has put together a slide show with a dozen practical ways to shave a few bucks off your IT budget without impacting productivity.

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At first glance, the iPhone has all the ingredients needed to support turn-by-turn directions. It runs GPS. It runs Google Maps. It has audio output and a speaker. So why doesn't the iPhone give you real-time turn-by-turn directions? The answer, I think, is that turn-by-turn directions are more complicated to deliver than they seem to be. Much as I want my iPhone to tell me where to turn when I'm driving, I'm not optimistic that we'll see that capability anytime soon.

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Customer satisfaction is the foundation of Apple's recent success. Many companies treat their customers like cattle, but that's not how Apple rolls. Apple's customers love their products. And that's why Friday's fiasco at stores selling the iPhone 3G is a real crisis.

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Battery life is the iPhone 3G's Achilles' heel. The original iPhone's battery life was marginal -- able to get through a full day of moderate usage, but only barely. The iPhone 3G's battery is worse, because of the energy-sucking needs of the 3G chipset.

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I was messaging with some friends about my grueling iPhone 3G buying experience, and I said it could have been pleasant if I'd just brought a few magazines and a camp chair. My friend the Black Eagle suggested a more complete shopping list.

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I used to wonder what kind of person stood in line for the better part of the day to buy a product when it first became available. Now I don't have to wonder -- I am one. I spent most of Friday on line at the Apple Store in Fashion Valley Mall in San Diego. What kind of person does something like that? A really tired, bad-tempered person with aching feet.

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To whet your appetite for the second coming of the Jesusphone, check out videos from The New York Times's David Pogue, who provides a cheesetastic and informative review of the iPhone 3G; online video tutorial service MonkeySee, showing you how to import your SIM card, contacts, and other information from another phone; and a meaty overview and how-to of iPhone 3G features and capabilities from Apple itself.

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Early reviews on the iPhone 3G are trickling in, and it looks sweet. It's a little bit faster and a little bit better than the first-generation iPhone. But it's not a breakthrough device. If you already have an iPhone in your pocket, you'll want to think hard about whether to shell out to upgrade.

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Large enterprises with plentiful IT staffers can usually count on having at least one expert in each critical area. Small and midsize firms often aren't so lucky, and have to scramble to make do with a patchwork of skills and expertise. To help out, bMighty.com has just launched a brand-new Server How-To Center packed with tips, tricks, and hints for everyone from beginners to experts.

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I bought an iPhone in the first few hours they were available, and I expect to do it again when the iPhone 3G ships next month. But what's the plan for current iPhone owners to upgrade to the iPhone 3G? Will we get a discount? Will we have to renew our service plan from AT&T? What can do we do with our current iPhones? Apple isn't talking about that just yet.

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CrunchGear has photos of what it purports to be the next-generation iPhone, which Apple is announcing Monday. It's thinner than the current model, comes in both red and black, and it has a front-mounted camera for video iChat.

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Ken Abendshien is CIO of Midwest Health Systems Data Center, a tech support organization that provides outsourced data center services to 27 small county hospitals and long-term care facilities in Kansas, and two in Nebraska. Some of those sites are really tiny -- treating one or two patients a day. And with those hospitals having even tinier IT budgets, Abendshien needs to stretch his resources very carefully.

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Eseye is a 3-month-old startup we met up with at Startup Camp in London last month. It essentially provides embedded device makers with the ability to link those devices back to the enterprise network using a mobile network. The beauty of this is it makes those devices infinitely smarter: You can send or receive data from them, making them a form of Web appliance.

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Apple plans big changes to its MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks, with new versions that use more powerful, recent Intel processors, eco-friendly materials, and that borrow design elements from the new, thin MacBook Air and aluminum iMacs.

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If your company is looking for ways to squeeze more out of IT these days (and who isn't), server virtualization is one of the moves some organizations are making to find savings. Just ask Kent Kushar, CIO at wine maker E&J Gallo.

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When Cisco and Juniper first said they were opening their router OSes, I thought that they'd be about as open as the iPhone. With Cisco's launch of IOS XE, I realize I was wrong: The iPhone is much more open.

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I was going to post this blog about why Apple is the most hated company on the Internet first thing yesterday. But my Mac crashed and ate the post, so I spent most of the day re-doing my work. I think that might be a sign.

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Cisco frowns on resellers of used network hardware because it doesn't get a cut of aftermarket sales. Network Hardware Resale (NHR), a prominent reseller, is going a step further by offering an alternative to Cisco's SMARTnet maintenance service -- a key revenue source for the networking giant.

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Everex, the Taiwanese PC maker that sells a $199 Linux PC through Wal-Mart, is showing a $399 ultra-mobile PC, the CloudBook, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The tiny notebook is intended to compete with the Asus Eee PC.

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Join us in Second Life or on the Web for a live talk with Intel's Stephen Fischer, senior principal engineer, Intel Corp. Fischer will talk about Intel's desktop processor strategy and technology, including the brand-new Penryn processor.

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LAS VEGAS -- At CES, scouting for new products, 0ne of the names you definitely don’t expect to hear is Amiga. Surely that's ancient history, a footnote in the family tree of the PC. Yeah but don't say that around Bill McEwen. He's president of Amiga and he's announcing a new write-once-run-anywhere development platform, AmigaAnywhere 2. And even better -- or more bizarre – he says he's got new Amiga hardware coming, too.

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My keyboard is pretty nasty. It just accumulates dirt. About a year ago, I made a new rule for myself: No eating at my desk. That helped a little, but my keyboard still looks like a fraternity house after homecoming weekend. So I was excited to see this news on the Internet: Most keyboards are dishwasher safe.

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When you get CEO Hector Ruiz to fly into India to open up a new engineering facility, you know AMD is getting serious about 45nm quad-core chips.

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The industry's most anxiously awaited quad-core processor has been curiously missing in action. Because it brings the scrappy chipmaker's hot new 10h architecture to the desktop, and because it's the scrappy chipmaker's first desktop quad, the chip was shaping up as something of an Intel killer when it was first discussed a few months ago.

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Maybe Apple is coming out with a tablet PC, but it seems unlikely. It's not a product that makes sense. Tablet computers have been available for Windows a couple of years now; they're not selling like gangbusters and there's no reason to assume that a Mac version will do better, no matter how much magic pixie dust Steve Jobs shovels onto the product.

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One of the perennial rumors of the Apple community is coming around again. This time, it's a CNET blog reporting that Apple is developing a tablet PC Really. Not kidding this time.

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Google's announcement of the new, "Android" smartphone platform had less substance than a fashion show at a nudist colony. It's a non-existent smartphone, codeless software, and an alliance of major mobile phone players that leaves out most of the major phone vendors.

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Apple plans on Friday to release version 1.1.2 of its iPhone software, timed to coincide with the European release of the phone, according to reports on Apple blogs. The new software adds support for foreign languages, and a leading European wireless broadband vendor. And -- oh yeah -- the new release breaks third-party apps on the iPhone. Again.

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Steve Jobs got a suggestion the other day from an old friend and business partner -- a guy named Steve Wozniak. Unlock the iPhone, Woz said: "I am really for the unlockers, the rebels trying to make it free. I'd really like it to be open to new applications."

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When I heard last week that Gmail is getting IMAP support, I was excited. My life was going to get a little easier. And how hard could it be to set up? Change a couple of settings in Apple Mail and I'd be good to go, right?

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