Play 'Angry Birds' with a real slingshot (video)

Keith Shaw writes the Cool Tools column for Network World, and is the Multimedia Content Editor for IDG Enterprise, responsible for editorial video and audio content creation. Follow him on Twitter @shawkeith.

The value of an enterprise data warehouse

Increasingly companies are recognizing the value of an enterprise data warehouse. A true EDW provides a single 360-degree view of the business and a powerful platform for a wide spectrum of business intelligence tasks ranging from predictive analysis to nearly real-time strategic and tactical decision support throughout the organization. Ensuring the EDW will get the desired performance and will scale out as your data grows you need to get three fundamental things correct, the hardware configuration, the physical data model and the data loading process. By correctly designing these three corner stones you will be able to create an EDW that can seamlessly scale without constant tuning or tweaking of the system.By using the Oracle Exadata Database Machine as your data warehouse platform you have a balanced, high performance hardware configuration. This paper focuses on the other two corner stones, data modeling and data loading, providing a set of best practices and examples for deploying a data warehouse on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine.

The new HP X5000 G2 Network Storage Systems is ideal for midsize companies. The solution is a two-node Network Attached Storage cluster with shared storage built on HP BladeSystem research. In this datasheet, you will find a in-depth look into the HP X5000 G2 Network Storage Systems including key features and benefits that set this unit apart from the rest of those in the market.

The new HP X5000 G2 Network Storage Systems powered

The new HP X5000 G2 Network Storage Systems powered by Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Enterprise edition are Network Attached Storage, with two-node integrated into a converged 3U chassis, that are designed for a better file serving experience. In this quickspecs flyer, you will explore a view of the key features and benefits that set this unit apart from the rest of those in the market.