HP is taking legal action against Oracle for allegedly breaching its 2010 partnership agreement of porting HP’s core software products with the latest versions of Itanium. In March, Oracle announced it would not be developing any new versions for products designed for the Itanium processor. Itanium has the ability to power the so-called Business Critical Systems hardware for extremely demanding enterprise applications. However, Oracle said the chip line is about to die.

The companies’ lawyer met in the Santa Clara County Superior Court with Judge James Kleinberg presiding to discuss their side of the event. Others in the courtroom included Ann Livermore, HP board member and former enterprise business chief, and Oracle’s co-President Safra Catz. Catz and Livermore were the two key negotiators for the agreement. Livermore was to testify later in the day. Kleinberg is set to rule if the companies had a legally binding contract.

Jeff Thomas, HP’s lawyer, focused on the so-called Hurd Agreement wording, where the companies reiterated their partnership after Oracle hired Mark Hurd, former CEO for HP. HP also sued Hurd for breaking the confidentiality agreement.

Thomas and the lead lawyer for Oracle focused on one paragraph of the agreement, which read Oracle would continue to provide its product suite on the HP platform in a way that’s consistent with the existing partnership before Hurd’s hiring.

C# PROGRAMMING –MAIN DESIGN GOALS

C# is a popular programming language these days, and it was designed from inception to provide a simple, clean, general purpose programming language for those intending to work within the confines of Microsoft’s .NET framework.  Since then, it has been approved as one of the standard languages by both ECMA and ISO, making C# programming an essential tool in every programmers’ kit.

Different languages have different uses and specialties, and C# was designed for programmers to be able to use it to create different components for use in software that would be deployed and distributed en masse, to live use environments.  This means that designers had to really put an emphasis on making the actual source code extremely compatible and portable.  Those already familiar with C or C++ should definitely notice this emphasis.

Another particular point of emphasis during design was focus on internationalization of the language; it was intended from inception to be available all over the world, and to see all sorts of different implementations based on variance in regional programming technique.  The resultant use should help the language develop sophistication as it is refined throughout different versions.

There has been and continues to be a plethora of observational studies by different researchers in the publishing industry focused on how e-books have affected hard-copy book sales. Evidence from these studies has indicated that there is a significant and monumental shift away from hard-copy books to e-books.[1]These findings precipitate fears that hard-copy books might become more expensive in the near future as they begin to be less available.  This scenario could escalate to the point where only collectors of hard-copy books are willing to pay the high price for ownership.

The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, made a statement in July 2010 that sales of digital books had significantly outstripped U.S. sales of hard-copy. He claimed that Amazon had sold 143 digital books for its e-reader, the Kindle, for every 100 hard-back books over the past three months. The pace of this change was unprecedented;  Amazon said that in the four weeks of June 2010, the rate of sales had reached 180 e-books for every 100 hard-backs sold. Bezos said sales of the Kindle and e-books had reached a "tipping point", with five authors including Steig Larsson, the writer of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and Stephenie Meyer, who penned the Twilight series, each selling more than 500,000 digital books.[2] Earlier in July 2010, Hachette said that James Patterson had sold 1.1m e-books to date.

According to a report made by Publishers Weekly, for the first quarter of 2011, e-book sales were up 159.8%; netting sales of $233.1 million. Although adult hard-cover and mass market paperback hard-copies had continued to sell, posting gains in March, all the print segments had declined for the first quarter with the nine mass market houses that report sales. Their findings revealed a 23.4% sales decline, and that children’s paper-back publishers had also declined by 24.1%.[3] E-book sales easily out-distanced mass market paperback sales in the first quarter of 2011 with mass market sales of hard-copy books falling to $123.3 million compared to e-books’ $233.1 million in sales.

According to .net sales report by the March Association of American Publishers (AAP) which collected data and statistics from 1,189 publishers, the adult e-Book sales were $282.3 million in comparison to adult hard-cover book sales which counted $229.6 million during the first quarter of 2012. During the same period in 2011, eBooks revenues were $220.4 million.[4] These reports indicate a disconcerting diminishing demand for hard-copy books.

The line between IT consulting and management consulting is quite often blurred, with overlaps between the two fields habitually happening. Worse still, most people do not understand who an IT consultant really is, or what he/she does. There are those who think the job entails fixing computers, others – selling computers and associated accessories. This is misleading though.

In a nutshell, IT consultants are professionals who aid businesses in deciding what computer tools and technologies are best placed to grow and sustain a profitable business. They work hand in hand with clients to help integrate IT systems into the latter’s business. They show clients how to use technology more efficiently, and in so doing, the client is able to get a higher return on their technology investments, and ultimately, increase the bottom-line.

IT consultants, or IT advisories, could work independently or for a consulting firm, with their clientele spread across all sorts of businesses and industries. Companies hire or contract the consulting firm to come in and analyze their IT systems and structure.

The job itself is not short of challenges, however, and the path to becoming a successful IT consultant is fraught with its fair share of ups and downs. But hey, which job isn’t? Experience is the best teacher they say, and only after you’ve worked as a consultant for a number of years will you finally gain invaluable understanding of what is expected of you. Learning from the experiences of those who’ve been in this business for long is a good starting point for those who decide to venture into the world of IT consultancy.