Experience datacenter availability
Excel That Scales offers greater resiliency and reliability over desktop-based solutions.
GigaSpaces IMDG instances are replicated such that every partition has one or more backups,
and these backups do not reside on the same physical server as the primary partition. If a
system fails, the processing logic can be transparently routed to an identical instance on
the backup partition without experiencing an interruption in service. Furthermore, the
GigaSpaces technology provides a self-healing environment. When the primary partition fails,
the backup becomes the primary partition, and another identical partition instance is
automatically spawned, thus helping to ensure that a backup is always available.
Excel That Scales is unique in that it co-locates logic and data in the same process. Excel
decouples the computational logic from the presentation layer and GigaSpaces completes
the solution by recoupling the logic with the associated data and executing them in the
same process.
Paul Merrell on 15 May 08""The response has been amazing -- since we launched in January, the velocity of sales for Office 2008 is nearly three times what we saw after the launch of Office 2004," said Craig Eisler, general manager of the Mac BU at Microsoft. ... As part of its announcements Tuesday, the Mac BU also said it intends to bring VBA-language support back to the next version of Office for Mac, but offered no timeframe for the update." According to the article, sales for MS Office 2008 for the Mac have tripled what MS Office 2004 accomplished. There's a bit of a wookie hidden in the claim because new Mac sales have far more than tripled since the comparable period following the release of Office 2004. So even though Microsoft Office gross sales on the Mac have increased from the period compared, there is a strong appearance that Microsoft is losing market share on the Mac, something I would be concerned about were I Steve Ballmer, not something to celebrate. Also note that the lack of VBA support in Office 2008 plus a few other Microsoft moves dealt Office for the Mac out of the Micrsooft cloud. Why Redmond might suddenly have a change of heart and deal Apple into the MS Cloud afer all is something not explained. But it is somewhat plausible that Microsoft feels the need to change its mind on VBA because it is losing market share on the Mac. My assessment? The VBA announcement is vaporware until proved otherwise, designed to slow the adoption of competing office software on the Mac, which makes the rapidly expanding OS X stack, e.g., now able to run Linux apps, a bigger threat to Windows. Microsoft is obviously losing Office market share on the Mac platform and OS X is eating Windows market share. Time for vaporware.
