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Monthly Archives: December 2015
Tech News Recap for the Week of 12/21/2015
Given how busy the holiday season can be, here’s a quick Tech News Recap of articles you may have missed from this week!
Tech News Recap
A newly discovered hack has the United States fearing foreign infiltration. Microsoft acquired Metanautix and messaging app, Talko. Servers used in US bomb threats were seized by German police. WhatsApp was blocked in Brazil, Christmas lights could be slowing down your Wi-Fi connection, Nutanix filed for an IPO, and more top news and articles you may have missed from last week!
- Newly discovered hack has U.S. fearing foreign infiltration
- Microsoft acquires Metanautix to offer enhanced big data solutions
- Facebook scandal or can bug bounties replace traditional web security?
- Servers of email host used in US school bomb threats seized by German police
- Microsoft Buys Talko Messaging App from Ray Ozzie
- Why Christmas Lights Could Be Slowing Your Wi-Fi Connection
- Chobani CIO Creates a Recipe for Business Success
- Pitfalls of Microsoft O365 Migrations Part 1: Mailbox Size, Spam Filtering, & Address Change
- Storage Tech Company Nutanix Files For IPO
- After WhatsApp’s Blackout In Brazil, Who Should Hold The Data Keys?
- Better cybersecurity might have saved the Death Star
- From Hello Kitty to Little League Baseball, Companies Are Leaking Kids’ Data All Over The Web
- Report: Google to team up with Ford to build self-driving cars
- Turn your smartphone into three interesting, unusual and useful tools
- Holiday travel? Robots will make it easier
- Why Hacking Is An Integral Part of The Future Of The Internet
- How Amazon Delivers Packages in Less Than an Hour
- Big banks battle startups with new apps and services
- A ‘street battle’ is brewing between Amazon and Microsoft
- Just what do CIOs do all day, anyway?
- Microsoft’s ‘Hello Cloud Challenge’ gives students chance to win $1,000 over Christmas vacation
[Whitepaper: 10 Things You Need to Know About Docker]
By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist
IoT-Cloud Service Centric Use Cases | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #BigData
IoT is the next development of how the Internet is applied to the world. TAM for M2M/IoT is estimated at $19 trillion. The IoT device count is in the billions but will not traverse the service providers’ networks. Service providers and vendors are struggling to understand how to map the TAM dollars to real use cases, optimal technology approaches, and profitable business models.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Dennis Ward, IoT analyst, strategist at DWE, focused on the SP transformations that will occur. In Phase I SP infrastructure virtualization. In Phase II SPs will focus on monetization. The key is IoT Cloud-based Service Centric Use cases.
M2M Interaction with @IoTBot | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #BigData
“We specialize is business process automation and our focus today is the Internet of Things and we are promoting a platform called Connect2me,” stated Yasser Khan, Founder of Plasma, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held November 3-5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
IBM Takes Control of Some AT&T Services
IBM has taken control of AT&T’s managed application and managed hosting services unit, as it plans align AT&T’s assets with its IBM Cloud Portfolio. The aim is to aid customers in network and cloud integration with IT environments. This deal benefits IBM by providing the company with access to equipment and area in the AT&T data centers that support the applications and managed hosting operations that IBM has taken control of.
Philip Guido, IBM general manager of Global Technology Services for North America, has commented, “Today’s announcement represents an expansion of our strategic relationship with AT&T and continuing collaboration to deliver new innovative solutions. Working with AT&T, we will deliver a robust set of IBM Cloud and managed services that can continuously evolve to meet clients’ business objectives.”
This is a huge change for AT&T, which has handled its managed applications and hosting services until this IBM takeover. AT&T will still provide services such as security and mobility. AT&T employees that serve in the sectors adopted by IBM will continue their current jobs at IBM. Financial details were not disclosed by IBM.
Jon Summers, senior vice president of AT&T Mobile and Business Solutions, has stated, “AT&T and IBM have worked together for nearly 20 years. This is a natural expansion of our relationship, and it demonstrates our continued commitment to serve customers based on our respective strengths and capabilities.”
IBM and AT&T have had other relations pertaining to cloud solutions; the two companies announced in October their intent to provide a scalable, mobile cloud solution that protects corporate data and applications.
The post IBM Takes Control of Some AT&T Services appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
A Cloud Gateway at Netflix | @CloudExpo #Cloud #WebPerf #Microservices
An edge gateway is an essential piece of infrastructure for large scale cloud-based services.
In his session at 17th Cloud Expo, Mikey Cohen, Manager, Edge Gateway at Netflix, detailed the purpose, benefits and use cases for an edge gateway to provide security, traffic management and cloud cross region resiliency. He discussed how a gateway can be used to enhance continuous deployment and help testing of new service versions and get service insights and more. Philosophical and architectural approaches to what belongs in a gateway vs what should be in services were also discussed.
Real examples of how gateway services are used in front of nearly all of Netflix’s consumer facing traffic showed how gateway infrastructure is used in real highly available, massive scale services.
Pivotal buys UK-based CloudCredo to acquire Cloud Foundry skills
London-based Cloud Foundry services provider CloudCredo has been bought by San Francisco-based software vendor Pivotal, a VMware spin off company. The acquisition includes CloudCredo subsidiary stayUp, which specialises in log analysis.
The logic of the acquisition is that it will make it easier for enterprises to use the new Pivotal Cloud Foundry, according to Pivotal CEO Rob Mee.
CloudCredo will continue to operate from London and service its existing customers, but its new brief includes expanding Pivotal Cloud Foundry’s growth across the world. CloudCredo’s expertise will be applied to help enterprise customers understand how to use the Pivotal Cloud Foundry Cloud Native platform more quickly and fine tune their techniques for creating the appropriate software.
Cloud Foundry skills are at a premium, as there is a scant supply of IT experts in Europe with the necessary skills for providing open source platforms as a service (PaaS) according to analyst James Governor, founder of research company RedMonk. “The pool of Cloud Foundry systems talent in Europe is limited and service companies with a proven track record is even rarer,” he said.
CloudCredo has extensive knowledge of running Cloud Foundry for some of the world’s largest brands, according to Pivotal CEO Mee. “With this expertise, we can better help our customers adopt Pivotal’s Cloud Native platform more quickly,“ he said.
Joining Pivotal means that, overnight, CloudCredo can operate at a global scale, said its CEO Colin Humphreys.
IoT comes to the CES: opening up the home to the sharing economy
One of the most intriguing corners of this year’s CES is the dedicated SuperSession on ‘IoT Business Strategies: Partnerships for the Sharing Economy’. After all, while almost anyone in Las Vegas this January will be able to tell you that IoT will (surely) have a huge part to play in the future of consumer tech, very few people will be able to tell you exactly how…
The main current consumer thrust in IoT, for example, remains home automation, and specifically security. Yet there is often little really inspiring about this proposed application of IoT. In part, this is because it arguably fails to offer us anything really new. A secure home is a secure home is a secure home, however this is achieved, and if home automation currently offers greater control and security, it does so at significantly more expense.
Much more interesting is the USP of home automation innovator August. Co-Founder & CEO Jason Johnson, who’ll be appearing at the SuperSession panel in Vegas next month, took the time to tell us precisely what distinguishes August’s approach to home automation from all the other contending companies.
“We definitely make products that fall under the security category,” he says. “But we have a kind of unique philosophy. We’ve looked at the front door, and asked, if you can give control over that part of the home in a new way, what could that do for consumers?”
August concluded that the answer to this question lay was in combination of home automation with the booming sharing economy in particular and ecommerce in general – both of which an automated front door could make much more seamless and better integrated into users’ lives.
“Traditionally the lock on our doors has been designed to keep people out. We have a philosophy that, if we can make a really good access system, a different kind of lock and security for the front door, it could be used not just to keep people out but to let them in – a kind of different paradigm to what a lock is. Our vision is, if we do that really well, then when I get home from work tonight, my dog will have been walked, my groceries delivered, my UPS packages delivered, my house cleaned – maybe there’s fresh flowers on my dining room table, my dry cleaning has been delivered and it’s hanging in my closet, my dirty clothes have been taken away.”
The ideal behind August is that, for all of those service providers requiring access to the home to deliver (a requirement presently resulting in a chaos of keys, calls and clashing schedules), instant, temporary access could be delivered the second the arrangement is made. Johnson offers an example from personal experience.
“I have a vacation rental home up in Napa, this little tiny shack,” he says. “I made it available on Airbnb and right away I had to deal with the keys. So, first, we had to hide a key somewhere on the property. Later, of course, I started issuing keys from within the August app. And you can do that. You go to the app, you type in the person’s name, their phone number, the days, the hours they have access and I issue the keys from the app and they show up and can get access to the house.”
However, the experience became that much more seamless (and therefore satisfying) following a software integration between the two services. “Now, literally as I’m talking to you, someone could be doing an Airbnb booking for my place: and the August app will automatically provision a temporary key to that guest. I’ve done nothing.”
The opportunity for such a provision to facilitate e-commerce per se is striking.
“One of the things that cause us most to think twice about ordering something online is the challenge of, ‘how am I going to physically get that?’ At our office, we have a lot of employees that get packages delivered here, and they stack up and then they got to haul the packages home on the bus or they ride a bicycle and have to haul the packages home on their bikes. So people think twice about ordering things online! Nobody wants to come home and have that little sticker on the wall saying missed delivery.”
You could be forgiven for thinking that, indeed, home automation and the internet of services look made for one another. Indeed, technologies often seem to complement one another. It is presumably this manner of symbiosis that will allow IoT to flourish in the years to come, to offer consumers new experiences. Objects will not merely be connected and that’s it – rather, through that connectivity, new combinations and opportunities come to light.
There will be few more explicit examples of this approach on display at this year’s CES than at the ‘IoT Business Strategies’ SuperSession. Attendance is certainly a key part in August’s plans for 2016.
“The idea of a smart lock and a smart video doorbell is still a new concept. The challenge for us in 2016 – and starting at CES – is to move into the mainstream. How do you get, not just early tech adopters, but mainstream consumers to embrace these technologies and put them in our homes? That’s what we need to do over the course of 2016.”
Oracle gets tax breaks to build cloud campus in Texas
Oracle has unveiled plans for a technology campus in Austin, Texas in a bid to expand its workforce by 50% in three years. It’s looking for millennials who want to work and live on site and sell cloud computing systems, by creating a combined office and housing complex.
Oracle is also to close its Oregon offices and incorporate the facilities in the new Texas complex. No details were given over staff re-location.
The move is part of a state initiative, including tax breaks and low regulation, as Texas positions itself as a home for innovation and technology. “I will continue to pursue policies that invite the expansion and relocation of tech companies to Texas,” said Texas State Governor Greg Abbott.
The site will include cheap accommodation as Oracle competes for talent in a region with a high concentration of technology start-ups. Its recruitment drive will be aimed at graduates and technical professionals at early stages in their career with the majority of new jobs being created in Oracle’s cloud sales organisation, Oracle Direct.
Oracle is to work with local firms in building the campus, the plans for which include the consolidation of Oracle’s facilities in Oregon. In the first phase it will build a 560,000 square foot complex on the waterfront of Austin’s Lady Bird Lake. It is also building a housing complex next door, with 295 apartments, for employee housing.
Austin’s technology community is teeming with creative and innovative thinkers and the town is a natural choice for investment and growth, claimed Oracle Direct’s Senior VP Scott Armour. “Our campus will inspire, support and attract top talent, with a special focus on the needs of millennials,” said Armour.
Austin’s biggest problems are affordability and mobility, according to Austin’s Mayor Steve Adler. “I look forward to working with Oracle to tackle our biggest challenges,” he said.
Enterprise PaaS – Agile Architecture for Continuous Innovation | @CloudExpo #Cloud
The use of containers can be seen within a general context of implementing an ‘Enterprise PaaS’. Container technologies are now a component part of many PaaS suites.
Enterprise PaaS refers to the internal application of the Platform as a Service model, with the goal of boosting software productivity through standardized developer tools and common components.