Stories about: EndPoints

As enterprises seek out ways to reduce IT costs, optimize resources and improve operational efficiencies, three technology trends have started to dominate: virtualization, service-oriented architecture and mobility. More promising yet is the intertwining of these unique technologies.

Red Hat Thursday said its JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform would be available later this month and introduced three new open source projects designed to infuse transaction, management and other capabilities into its middleware software lineup.

Open source tools such as Asterisk and SIP Enterprise Router are facing their biggest test yet at the University of Pennsylvania, where deployment of 15,000-seat VOIP network based on these open source IP telephony servers is rolling along.

Technopundits have predicted the arrival of "smart spaces" for years. Your car sends a message to a robot in your kitchen, so it can have your martini ready when you arrive home in the evening. A software agent on your LAN knows not to interrupt you with a phone call -- unless it's from your boss -- because you're working on a presentation for a meeting later that day.

Filling out its open source middleware stack, JBoss has unveiled its ESB (enterprise service bus) as well as revealing core technologies planned for an upcoming application server upgrade.

The open-source movement, which has long made inroads into corporations via Linux and other enterprise-level software, now has a potentially bigger target in its cross hairs: the PBXs and network routers from companies such as Cisco Systems that form the basis of networking infrastructure.

Behind the scenes in VOIP peering services is Enum, a protocol that translates telephone numbers to related IP addresses. Most VOIP peering services use Enum databases to connect telephone calls from one VOIP network to another and to keep the traffic on IP networks.

A startup built around the Mule open source integration project is set to make its corporate debut Tuesday. MuleSource is backed by US$4 million secured in a first round of venture funding it closed this past summer.

The never-ending spate of law-suits between companies like Research In Motion (RIM) and Visto could soon be over, thanks to a mobile email standard which might support an open-source alternative.

Ranch Networks, a maker of network management appliances, says its latest box can balance loads and provide failover for the open-source Asterisk IP PBX platform.

An update to the open-source Asterisk IP telephony platform was released this week, offering better legacy telephony integration as well as improved call-server clustering and voicemail support, the producers of the technology say.