All posts by Richard

Cancer, Medical, Oracle, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Oracle Joins Personalized Cancer Care Consortium

Worldwide Innovative Network (WIN) in personalized cancer medicine consortium announces dthat Oracle Health Sciences has become a member of the consortium. Oracle will provide access to its data management, clinical trials, genomics and analytics expertise to help WIN advance its mission of increasing the efficacy of cancer care globally through personalized therapy and early diagnostics.

The development of personalized therapies requires new collaborations between industry, healthcare and academia. This includes the ability to access and build upon the collective knowledge and data of the entire cancer community, including clinical, genomic and patient data leveraging modern information technologies.

Oracle Health Sciences has developed a portfolio of integrated, cloud-based software applications that help advance personalized medicine by enabling new collaboration models between research institutions and healthcare organizations. Specific to the work of the consortium, the Oracle Health Sciences Network accelerates translational research, healthcare analytics, and health information exchange by allowing these organizations to more efficiently share and analyze de-identified data across organizational boundaries.

“To advance personalized cancer care, collaboration among the health sciences community is absolutely essential, but achieving it, from a technology perspective, has presented challenges. Oracle is helping organizations to break down these barriers and lay a foundation for expanded collaboration and new insight. We welcome Oracle’s knowledge and innovation as it joins our ranks,” said Dr. John Mendelsohn, Chairman of WIN Consortium and past President, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

“Our overarching goals are to achieve groundbreaking personalized cancer medicine discoveries and to significantly improve the outcomes and quality of life for cancer patients,” said Professor Alexander Eggermont, General Director, Institut Gustave Roussy and Vice-Chairman of WIN Consortium. “With the dropping cost of whole genome sequencing, technology is essential to helping us analyze this rich data and achieve our goals. We welcome Oracle, one of the world’s leading innovators in this field, to our organization, and look forward to its many contributions.”

 


Amazon AWS, AWS, Benchmarking, Garantia, Memcached, NoSQL, Performance and Capacity, Redis, Redis Cloud

Garantia Testing asks “Does Amazon EBS Affect Redis Performance?”

The Redis mavins at Garantia  decided to find out whether EBS really slows down Redis when used over various AWS platforms.

Their testing and conclusions answer the question: Should AOF be the default Redis configuration?

We think so. This benchmark clearly shows that running Redis over various AWS platforms using AOF with a standard, non-raided EBS configuration doesn’t significantly affect Redis’ performance. If we take into account that Redis professionals typically tune their redis.conf files carefully before using any data persistence method, and that newbies usually don’t generate loads as large as the ones we used in this benchmark, it is safe to assume that this performance difference can be almost neglected in real-life scenarios.

Read the full post for all the details.


Amazon AWS, Amazon AWS Trusted Advisor

AWS Trusted Advisor Automates Security, Fault Tolerance, Cost Optimization Advice

Amazon’s Trusted Adviser tool, part of their paid premium support offerings, takes an automated look at a customer’s AWS environment with 10 checks covering security, fault tolerance, and cost optimization. Green, yellow, and red indicators help focus in on areas of concern (yellow) or of a critical nature (red).

This screencast tutorial gives a quick walkthrough and puts it in the context of related premium support features, like support staff interaction.


Anti-Virus, Data center, Information security, Internet security, McAfee

McAfee Launches New Data Center Security Suites

Image representing McAfee as depicted in Crunc...

McAfee today announced four new Data Center Security Suites to help secure servers and databases in the data center. The suites offer a unique combination of whitelisting, blacklisting and virtualization technologies for protecting servers and virtual desktops. These solutions provide optimal security for servers and databases in physical, virtualized and cloud-based data centers, with minimal impact on server resources which is a key demand for data centers.

“Performance and security are key concerns for servers in the physical, virtualized or cloud-based data centers,” said Jon Oltsik, Senior Principal Analyst, Information Security and Networking at Enterprise Security Group. “The new server security suites from McAfee, based on its application whitelisting, virtualization and blacklisting and AV technologies, provide an enhanced security posture while maintaining the high server performance needs of the data center.”

The suites offer customers the ability to protect their physical and virtual servers and virtual desktops with a unique combination of technologies in a single solution.

  • McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Server provides a
    complete set of blacklisting, whitelisting, and optimized
    virtualization support capabilities for basic security on servers of
    all types
  • McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Server–Hypervisor Edition
    provides a complete set of blacklisting, whitelisting, and optimized
    virtualization support capabilities for basic security on servers of
    all types and is licensed per Hypervisor
  • McAfee Data Center Security Suite for Virtual Desktop
    Infrastructure     provides comprehensive security for virtual desktop
    deployments without compromising performance or the user experience
  • McAfee Database Server Protection provides data base activity
    monitoring and vulnerability assessment in a single suite, for all
    major database servers in the data center

“McAfee is leading the industry with these new solutions for protecting servers in the data center,” said Candace Worley, senior vice president and general manager of endpoint security at McAfee. “The combination of whitelisting, blacklisting and virtualization in a single solution, offers an optimal security posture for protecting servers in the data centers. These solutions address the need in the industry to offer solutions that provide the highest level of protection with minimal impact on the resources they are deployed on and in a wide range of customized licensing options.”

 


Avaya, M&A Activity, Polycom, ShoreTel

iQ Solutions Group Acquires Fidelis Communications

iQ Solutions Group, a provider of converged communications, data center solutions, managed services and cloud based solutions announced today that it has acquired Fidelis Communications, Inc., a provider of solutions including Avaya, ShoreTel, Samsung and Polycom. The acquisition brings a strong base of Avaya clients into the iQSG portfolio, including a high concentration of healthcare, financial and retail businesses.

David Mayhew, President and CEO of Fidelis – “I am very pleased with the acquisition as I have the upmost confidence and respect for iQSG’s capabilities and their Executive Management Team, our customer base can rest assured that they will have the support of one of the most experienced IT Solutions Partners in Ohio and the Tri-State area.”

“This acquisition is particularly exciting for us because of the excellent relationships and client base that this acquisition presents to our business. iQSG looks forward to continuing to support and service Fidelis’ clients, while enhancing the quality of care extended,” commented Tom Richardson, Principal at iQSG.

“Fidelis’ passion for client care and emphasis on understanding their clients’ business requirements aligns strategically with our core values and approach. Their impressive client base includes organizations whom have invested in leading market solutions from Avaya, ShoreTel and Polycom, which align very well with our expertise. The acquisition of Fidelis allows us to continue to build upon our ability to extend premium support and service to our clients, which we refer to as ‘iQ Care,’” added Mark Nield, Principal with iQSG.


Enterprise resource planning, ERP, IFS, Mobile

IFS Launches New Smartphone Apps

IFS, the global enterprise applications company, launched seven new smartphone apps in the IFS Touch Apps series, in addition to its first app for Windows Phone and Windows 8. The new applications—which are available from Google Play Store, Apple App Store and Windows Marketplace—offer intuitive mobile functionality in areas such as human resources, customer relationship management, ad-hoc reporting, enterprise application search, vehicle management, and IFS support services.

Following on from the release of IFS Notify Me, a cloud-based smartphone app for purchase, expense and invoice approvals, IFS is now extending its offering for the mobile workforce with seven new apps. In addition, IFS is also releasing IFS Notify Me for Windows Phone and Windows 8.

The new IFS Touch Apps are:

IFS Time Tracker for project time and attendance reporting, confirmation, etc.

IFS Trip Tracker for real-time, as-you-travel expense reporting for the mobile individual.

IFS Sales Companion for sales people to manage their accounts, tasks and opportunities.

IFS Quick Reports for running and viewing ad-hoc reports on a mobile device.

IFS Quick Facts for fast keyword search of any object in IFS Applications.

IFS Flight Log for management of platform operational data in the aerospace and defense industry.

IFS Support Companion for interaction with IFS support centers.

“By focusing on the actual needs of our mobile users, we have developed an app concept that delivers enhanced user experience, ease-of-use, and security to promote high user acceptance and increased efficiency,” IFS CTO Dan Matthews said. “The functionality of the new Touch Apps has largely been determined by our customers to exactly match their needs. In this way, we continue to produce functionally rich, elegant apps that are easy to try, buy and use.”

IFS bridges the gap between the fast-moving world of smartphones and apps and the slower-moving world of ERP software via a unique use of cloud technology. Rather than having the apps talk directly to the ERP back-end, the apps talk to services running inside IFS Cloud.

The IFS Touch Apps are designed to offer great, hassle-free user experience to the mobile workforce. The apps are focused on quick-to-complete tasks and present the user with only the relevant, rather than all, information. The apps are designed to minimise typing and allow the user to exit the app at any point and continue later.


Data center, InfiniBand, Mellanox, Mellanox Technologies, Networking, Scalability, SDN

Mellanox Introduces SwitchX-2 Software Defined Networking VPI Switch

Mellanox Technologies today announced SwitchX-2, the next generation of its switch silicon optimized for Software Defined Networking (SDN). SwitchX-2 includes advanced capabilities of remote configurable routing tables, lossless and congestion free networks, efficient control planes, and SDN-optimized software interfaces. SwitchX-2 enables IT managers to program and centralize their server and storage interconnect management and dramatically reduce their operational expenses by completely virtualizing their data center network. According to IDC*, the broader SDN/OpenFlow market is expected to see rapid growth, reaching $2 billion by 2016, a significant portion of which will be network infrastructure.

SwitchX-2 is based on Mellanox’s leading Virtual Protocol Interconnect® (VPI) technology which allows for simultaneous connection to InfiniBand or Ethernet with integrated gateways to legacy data center and storage systems. Utilizing industry-first, RDMA-based 56Gb/s Ethernet and InfiniBand, SwitchX-2 is the world’s fastest, most scalable SDN switch with unmatched 4Tb/s switching capacity (50 percent higher than closest competition), the industry’s lowest power consumption, extremely low 170ns latency, hardware-based L2/L3 congestion management for highest efficiency and hardware-based data error correction for highest reliability. SwitchX-2’s advanced feature set enables the creation of larger flat SDN networks with lower cost and higher performance.

“Software Defined Networking is rapidly emerging as a key architectural element for next generation cloud, Web 2.0 and scalable data centers. As a building block for SDN-enabled network infrastructure, switches with high throughput, low latency and low power consumption are expected to be instrumental in realizing the goal of reducing operational expense while enabling data center scalability and flexibility,” said Rohit Mehra, vice president, Enterprise and Datacenter Networks, IDC. “Technologies such as Mellanox SwitchX-2, when built into next-generation data centers, will enable IT to benefit from the promise of Software Defined Networking by delivering improved throughput, latency and power, along with enhanced programmability, automation and control.”

“Mellanox’s SwitchX-2 VPI switch leads the industry with the highest throughout capacity, low latency with nearly zero jitter, as well as advanced SDN interfaces for control and management,” said David Barzilai, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “SDN technology has been a critical component of the InfiniBand scalable architecture and has been proven worldwide in data centers and clusters of tens-of-thousands of servers. Now, with SwitchX-2, Mellanox provides the most efficient SDN solution for both InfiniBand and Ethernet data centers. Mellanox’s fast, RDMA-based interconnect technology leads the competition in terms of performance, SDN technology and return-on-investment advantages it brings to IT and application managers.”


Digital wallet, MasterCard, Mobile, Mobile payment, NFC, PayPal, Research, Visa

Battle for Control of the Mobile Wallet: Sorting out Players,Technologies, Strategies

Research and Markets  has announced the addition of Javelin Strategy & Research’s new report “Battle For Control Of The Mobile Wallet: Sorting Out Players,Technologies and Strategies to Win” to their offering.

Mobile payments and purchasing at the physical point-of-sale have experienced little adoption in the U.S. marketplace despite abounding innovation in mobile and payments technologies. Control over the consumer’s preferred mobile wallet will be critical to the new business models that will develop in this ecosystem and the tremendous wealth that will accrue to the winners.

The battle for control of the wallet is in its initial stages, with many players just entering the field, jostling to grab early market leadership, and changing alliances and positions rapidly. A successful wallet will have to find a winning proposition for consumers, merchants, mobile network operators and financial institutions. This report will provide an update on how products have moved, where we can expect these products to be in the future, which primary technologies are being used at the POS (NFC, cloud, and bar code), and how wallets can maximize adoption.

Highly innovative but new vendors to the payments space, such as Google, the mobile network operators (the Isis partners in particular), Square, and Apple will need to position and partner differently than incumbent companies, such as Visa, MasterCard, card issuers, and alternative providers like PayPal. This report will also address consumer perception of different providers and why Visa and PayPal lead as preferred consumer wallet providers.

Primary Questions

– What is a digital wallet, and why is it important?

– What are the differences among NFC, cloud, and bar code mobile wallets, and what are their advantages and disadvantages?

– Who are the major competitors in the mobile wallets space, and how are they different?

– How are incumbent payments competitors transitioning into the mobile wallet space?

– Who are new entrants in payments , and what are their advantages and disadvantages?

– Which mobile wallets do consumers prefer?

– Which consumer segments should wallet providers target?