RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – In the latest Bulldog roundup of life science and technology news: A key Linux developer has been suspended; Cisco appears to be edging away from VMware giving a nod over to Red Hat; Lenovo earns two “Red Dot” awards for excellence in Germany; Telit continues to expand with latest acquisition; and Metabolon launches fourth generation DiscoveryHD4.

• Key Linux developer suspended

RALEIGH – An argument between developers of some of the most basic parts of Linux turned heated this week, resulting in a prominent Red Hat employee and code contributor being banned from working on the Linux kernel, according to reports on Network World.

Kay Sievers, a well-known open-source software engineer, is a key developer of systemd, a system management framework for Linux-based operating systems. Systemd is currently used by several prominent Linux distributions, including two of the most prominent enterprise distros, Red Hat and SUSE. It was recently announced that Ubuntu would adopt systemd in future versions as well.

Sievers was banned by kernel maintainer Linus Torvalds on Wednesday for failing to address an issue that caused systemd to interact with the Linux kernel in negative ways. Specifically, the command line entry “debug” ran both the base kernel’s debugging routine and that of systemd, potentially flooding some systems.

• Cisco edges away from VMware

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – From co-operation to co-op-etition and then competition: it’s happening in front of our eyes with EMC and Cisco. The choreography involves Cisco working more and more with Red Hat and its KVM server hypervisor and less with EMC subsidiary VMware’s ESX.

Red Hat is joining in with Cisco and working with its OpFlex protocol in Netzilla’s ACI take on nearly but not quite open software-defined networking. Red Hat sees ACI involvement as a way of spreading its KVM technology and outflanking VMware.

To put it another way: we are watching the converged infrastructure supplier tectonic plates shifting in real time, with a series of mini earthquakes happening one after another. This Red Hat Cisco deal around ACI is one such quake and signals that VCE may soon be facing an end game.

• Lenovo earns two “Red Dot” awards for excellence

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Lenovo announced this week that the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon ultrabook and ThinkVision LT2934z panoramic monitor have earned the prestigious 2014 Red Dot “Best of the Best” product design award, the highest distinction from one of the largest design competitions in the world.

Lenovo also will receive product design awards for the ThinkPad 8 Tablet and Quickshot Cover, the ThinkPad Ultra Messenger carrying case and the ThinkVision LT1423p touch monitor.

These awards follow Lenovo’s achievement of being chosen as the Red Dot Design Team of the Year for 2013.

Red Dot is a prestigious annual international design competition based in Essen Germany. The awards will be presented to Lenovo at a gala event in Essen, Germany, on July 7, 2014.

• Telit expands operations with NXP acquisition

RALEIGH, N.C. – Telit Wireless Solutions said Thursday that it has concluded the acquisition of the Automotive Telematics On-board unit Platform (ATOP) business from Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors.

ATOP is an automotive-grade solution for vehicle manufacturers to implement eCall or similar functionality from a single compact and cost efficient package, delivering reduction in complexity and minimized costs in vehicle designs, customer data as well as regulatory compliance.

At the same time, the company launched Telit Automotive Solutions, a new business unit which is to focus exclusively on the Automotive OEM and Tier-one markets. The new organization will be headed up by industry veteran and long-time Telit executive, Dominikus Hierl as its CEO.

With the acquisition concluded, the company will integrate the ATOP business including sales, engineering and support staff into Telit Automotive Solutions, expanding its market reach with solutions leveraging the expanded engineering and sales expertise particularly in software-centric RFIs from Automotive and Telematics OEMs.

• Metabolon launches fourth generation DiscoveryHD4

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.- Metabolon, Inc. on Thursday launched DiscoveryHD4, the company’s fourth-generation metabolomics platform.

This new technology platform will empower the company’s metabolomics TrueVision, mVision and mView research and biomarker discovery offerings as well as its diagnostic product development pipeline, according to the company. It also will enable a more expansive and precise global biochemical coverage of metabolite markers across the entire metabolome, increasing the ability to discover novel biomarkers and research questions.

Two key innovations power the DiscoveryHD4™ platform advancements. First, accurate mass instrumentation coupled to our new software technology. And second, the addition of a hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) method to the company’s standard platform technology.

“This new technology platform advances the evolution of our metabolomics capabilities and intellectual property,” said Metabolon President and CEO Dr. John Ryals.