OStatic

Open source business intelligence (BI) company Jaspersoft and application performance monitoring software vendor Hyperic announced today a deepening of their ongoing relationship. JasperServer Professional Edition will be embedded in the new Hyperic Operations IQ to give IT teams an in-depth look at metrics and service levels.

Before dismissing the news as just another corporate partnership, consider that these kinds of match-ups are the very thing software vendors are likely to begin offering as companies get more serious about monitoring the bottom line.

We talk a lot at OStatic about open source solutions in the classroom. In fact, just yesterday Kristin pointed to a recent article from the BBC discussing the strengths of open source software and the complexities associated with deploying it in an educational environment.

According to the BBC, Good teachers will always be looking to move forward but they are so busy that they are often conservative.

Datamation's Matt Hartley has a completely different take on why open source can't get a foothold in American classrooms, and he claims it's largely because teachers and school IT professionals are misinformation junkies.

Free music service Last.fm announced today that it's now available for handheld devices that use the Android platform. Like the Web-based version, users can stream radio stations, track listening habits, and get personal music recommendations. Last.fm users can also get artist information, view their personal music files, and access event and tour information.

The seventh annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) is scheduled to get underway early next month, along with a few co-hosted mini-conferences that address issues surroundingwomen in open source (WIOS) and FOSS health care solutions.

I caught up with one of the event's organizers, Gareth Greenaway, to find get the inside scoop on what's new, what's different, and what they've learned from past events.

The Open Source Alliance (OSA) published its Annual Predictions Survey this week. It serves up the opinions of business leaders about Obama's impact on IT, where they think the technology market is headed, and why it's a bad idea to put projects on hold until the economy turns around.

The survey asked the CEOs of several companies around the world to look ahead at various issues near and dear to the hearts of the people within the tech sector and open source community. Respondents were asked to predict one software winner and loser in the year ahead, and also think about what kinds of business models are likely to emerge in the coming months.

Black Duck Software released a list of the top 10 projects launched in 2008 that have the most promising future in the open source community. The company also says if you're trying to decide which FOSS horse to back in the next year or so, you should put your money on mobile apps.

Black Duck playfully calls the projects the Open Source Rookies of the Year for 2008 and says that of the more than 17,000 new projects released last year, 10 specific ones stand out from the crowd.

Red Hat has rolled out the newest update of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL 5.3. In addition to virtualization and power-saving enhancements, this update is also shipping the first productized implementation of OpenJDK for Red Hat.

Heeding the call to March South Together, FOSS enthusiasts from all over the world descended on Hobart, Australia this week to take part in Linux.conf.au. Although the conference proper doesn't officially get underway until Wednesday, there were plenty of speakers to check out during the mini-conf.

French security company M2M Solution has developed a security gateway device called Homebox to monitor your home, office, vehicle, and even your pets while you're out. M2M and Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) designed the system from the ground up in only nine months using Linux-based tools and open source codecs.

Panels, presentations, and Birds of a Feather meetings are certainly the highlight of next month's Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE), but that's not the only thing happening during the event. The Demonstrating Open Source Health Care Solutions (DOHCS) conference will be co-located with SCALE and both will get underway on Friday, February 20, 2009.