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Optimize with a SATA RAID Storage Solution
Range of capacities as low as $1250 per TB. Ideal if you currently rely on servers/disks/JBODs
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This kind of extreme integration and bundling is another big theme. The products on our list just do more than products used to do. Windows Azure, for instance, isn't just an IaaS cloud, but includes hooks to other Microsoft products ranging from Visual Studio to Bing and Windows Phone. OpenRemote integrates disparate hardware platforms to create an ecosystem for managing a building. These solutions deliver more options, more features, and more comprehensive applications.
Open source meets big data
A number of the software packages listed here are largely open source. There's no doubt that some open source packages aren't easy to use, and some have documentation so bad that reading the
code is the only real option, but that's not true for the ones we've chosen. They're well-documented, relatively easy to start
up, and ready for serious play.
The openness is a big part of this fun because the open source code invites the kind of interactive experimentation that makes engineers and programmers happy. The tools are not just solutions, but opportunities for imaginative customization. They're like Lego sets or Lincoln Logs but built with bits.
The openness also makes everything a bit more social. Hadoop, Lucene, and Cassandra are the centers of a hive of collective fun and creative recoding. The source code is just the beginning because many are wrapping their own code around the core libraries.
Lucene, for instance, is a great indexing tool, but more and more people are turning to the stacks of code that are wrapped around it. They handle all of the housekeeping like sharding the database across multiple nodes or unpacking the XML. Lucene is just the center of an expanding world. When we celebrate Lucene, we're including everything orbiting around it too.
These open source projects are often at the core of another big theme: big data. The enterprise world is investing heavily in big toys to handle the flood of endless numbers, telemetry, and information. The management of every technology-based company is obsessed with making some sense from the huge collection of log files gathering virtual dust. The increasingly sophisticated tools for combing through big data are the answer.
Pretty as an iPad
Finally, we ended up choosing a few things that were, to extend this theme, easy on the end-user. Even by some of the standards
that Apple set in the past, the iPad Mini is pretty cool. It fits nicely in the hand -- smaller is better -- yet remains as functional, usable, and complete as the
full-size iPad. Nothing comes as close to bundling a pure, clean, beautifully portable mechanism for absorbing information.
When it meshes with functionality, the power of beauty affects software too. There are thousands of Linux distros, but Ubuntu rightfully attracts the most attention. While there has been much to love about Ubuntu in the past, the new packaging -- the smooth and modern Unity UI -- pushes it over the top.
Will these trends continue in the New Year? No one can be certain about the surprises that will come out of the blue, but the same trends that shaped this list will continue to be important in 2013. They will continue to shape the working world.