Software and Cuban cigars
Gartner estimates 60 countries are involved in some stage of offshore IT development. The consulting firm divides them into the market leaders, such as India, Argentina and Russia; active participants, which include nations such as Vietnam, Egypt and Chile; and countries that are just taking preliminary steps to develop offshoring capabilities. Among the new countries are Algeria, Bahrain, Kenya, Madagascar, Malta, Moldova, Saudi Arabia and Uganda. It’s a fluid list — countries removed for a lack of progress include El Salvador, South Korea, Panama, Peru, Taiwan and Puerto Rico. A survivor on the list of potential participants is Cuba. Cuba, said Gartner, is “an interesting prospect” because of its educational programs in math and computer science.
HP acquireS WEB DEV firm Tabblo
Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) has reached an agreement to acquire privately-owned Tabblo Inc., a U.S. developer of Web-based software. The acquisition is subject to unspecified closing conditions. No financial details were disclosed. Tabblo’s technology allows users to arrange and print text, graphics and photos from the Web. Targeting a growing market for simple, efficient Internet-based printing systems, HP plans to make its Web printing technology available for companies to integrate in their Web sites.
IBM aim for JBoss
IBM and Covalent Technologies have each contributed technology to the open-source Apache Geronimo community to help users migrate from the JBoss application server to IBM’s Apache-based application server. IBM announced its plans to enter the open-source application server arena in May when it acquired Gluecode Software Inc. IBM’s open-source WebSphere Application Community Edition — based on Apache Geronimo — was built from technology acquired with Gluecode. The new migration tool, which is made up of plug-ins for the Eclipse integrated development environment, can convert applications built for JBoss to Apache-based systems such as those of IBM by generating appropriate configuration files, said IBM.
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