A recent argument with folks whose intelligence I hold in high regard (like Tom, Brandon, Wei, Anil, etc.) got me thinking about the following question: What does it mean, as a vendor, to say that you support the Internet of Things (IOT) from an analytics perspective? I think the heart of that question really boils down to this: What are the differences between big data (which is analyzing large amounts of mostly human-generated data to support longer-duration use cases such as predictive maintenance, capacity planning, customer 360 and revenue protection) and IOT (which is aggregating and compressing massive amounts of low latency / low duration / high volume machine-generated data coming from a wide variety of sensors to support real-time use cases such as operational optimization, real-time ad bidding, fraud detection, and security breach detection)?
Cloudera and Hortonworks announce $5.2bn merger
4 Oct, 2018
Cloudera and Hortonworks, two of the largest providers of open source enterprise Hadoop products, have announced a merger of equals deal that’s said to place their joint value at $5.2 billion.
The deal is an all-stock merger, with Cloudera stockholders taking ownership of approximately 60% of the combined company, with Hortonworks stockholders taking the remaining 40%. The combined companies will boast more than 2,500 customers, around $720 million in revenue, and over $500 million in debt-free cash.
The Big Data companies, once heavy rivals, have built their businesses on providing simpler, packaged IT services for companies wanting to exploit the data processing power of the Hadoop platform but are unable to build systems from scratch.
Where Hortonworks has largely relied on charging for support services as a purely open source provider, Cloudera based much of its business on subscription services. The deal will likely see many Hortonworks customers transition over to a subscription fee, providing an early spike in revenue for the joint company.
The deal places the companies in a far better position to take on newer cloud solutions by providing a platform that covers multiple cloud types, as well as on-premise and Edge. It also gives the two companies a far better chance at maintaining profitability in the heavily crowded Big Data space.
«This compelling merger will create value for our respective stockholders and allow customers, partners, employees and the open source community to benefit from the enhanced offerings, larger scale and improved cost competitiveness inherent in this combination,» said Rob Bearden, chief executive officer of Hortonworks.
«Together, we are well positioned to continue growing and competing in the streaming and IoT, data management, data warehousing, machine learning/AI and hybrid cloud markets. Importantly, we will be able to offer a broader set of offerings that will enable our customers to capitalize on the value of their data.»
Cloudera CEO Tom Reilly will serve as CEO of the combined firm, while Hortonworks’ COO and CFO Scott Davidson will stay on as COO.
Current Hortonworks CEO Rob Bearden will join the board of directors, with current Cloudera board member Marty Cole moving up to chairman.
Shares in the firms spiked post the news, with Cloudera stock surging 26% in after-hours trading, and Hortonworks rising by 27%.
Wi-Fi Alliance replaces ‘802.11’ naming scheme with version numbers
4 Oct, 2018
Wi-Fi Alliance has simplified the names for Wi-Fi standards by dropping its complex code scheme, such as ‘802.11’.
Instead, the alliance has introduced single digit classifications, starting with ‘Wi-Fi 6’ which is the new designation for products and networks that support Wi-Fi based on 802.11ax technology.
The alliance hopes that Wi-Fi 6 will provide users with an easy-to-understand designation for both the Wi-Fi technology supported by their device and used in a connection the device makes with Wi-Fi networks.
«For nearly two decades, Wi-Fi users have had to sort through technical naming conventions to determine if their devices support the latest Wi-Fi,» said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of Wi-Fi Alliance.
«Wi-Fi Alliance is excited to introduce Wi-Fi 6 and present a new naming scheme to help industry and Wi-Fi users easily understand the Wi-Fi generation supported by their device or connection.»
The new naming system will identify Wi-Fi generations in a numerical sequence that corresponds to major advancements in Wi-Fi. The generation names can be used by product vendors to identify the latest Wi-Fi technology a device supports, by operating system vendors to identify the Wi-Fi connection between a device and a network and by service providers to identify capabilities of a Wi-Fi network to their customers.
Wi-Fi Alliance said this new terminology may also be used to differentiate previous generations, such as 802.11n or 802.11ac. The numerical sequence includes Wi-Fi 6 and also Wi-Fi 5 to identify devices that support 802.11ac technology and Wi-Fi 4 to identify devices that support 802.11n technology.
The change has already been welcomed by the tech industry, including Lissa Hollinger, VP of marketing for Hewlett Packard’s Aruba: «We applaud this effort by Wi-Fi Alliance to simplify the terminology used to differentiate between the different generations of technologies as it will help users more quickly and easily discern the technology their particular device or network supports.»
Google buys AI chatbot startup Onward
4 Oct, 2018
Google has acquired chatbot startup Onward in what’s likely an attempt to improve its own customer service tools or expand the number of products available as part of its business suite of applications.
The technology uses natural language processing to analyse the content of customer messages to support teams, alongside other information such as where they are located, whether they’re logged in to any services, and how they have used the service in the past. This data then allows the chatbot to tailor its replies, offering a much better customer experience.
The company has also created its own visual bot builder, which allows customers to build their own responses based on the answers customers give to questions.
The tool integrates with a whole host of other services, such as Zendesk, Help Scout, Salesforce, Hubspot, Shopify, Spree, and Solidus to manage customer conversations, integrate leads with a CRM and track orders, offering a complete platform for managing customer experience.
Onward’s Agent Q virtual assistant can be used as an extension of this, providing product recommendations, bringing together review and pricing information from across the web to offer super-accurate, real-time data for customers.
It follows Google’s decision earlier in the year to funnel cash into AI startups hoping to exploit the Google Assistant platform.
«We started Onward with the mission of allowing computers to participate in natural, human conversations,» Onward wrote in the announcement on its website. «With Google, we’ll be able to expand the reach of the technologies that power Onward. These core technologies are what got us excited in the first place, and we are excited to bring them to Google.»
Onward’s co-founders Rémi Cossart and Pramod Thammaiah will both join Google, as will some of its team, although it’s not clear which departments they will join.
How to Run Games and Other Apps from the Microsoft Store on a Mac
All Mac® users know about the Mac App Store®, and most have probably used it to get an app or two. If you’re also a Parallels Desktop® for Mac user, there’s another store you should check out: the Microsoft Store. The Microsoft Store is accessible from Windows 8 or 10—but in all practical terms, this […]
The post How to Run Games and Other Apps from the Microsoft Store on a Mac appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Palo Alto Networks to buy security startup RedLock for $173m
4 Oct, 2018
Palo Alto has bought cloud threat defence company RedLock in a deal said to be worth $173 million.
The purchase will allow Palo Alto Networks to add to its cyber security portfolio, including cloud security analytics, advanced threat detection, continuous security, and compliance monitoring. Palo Alto said new products integrating the new technology will launch on the market next year, helping security teams respond to threats in real time.
The deal will allow Palo Alto customers to automate their responses to cyber risks instead of manually having to assess the potential impact of a hack. At the moment, the company provides API-based security services such as its VM-Series firewall, Aperture, Evident, and GlobalProtect cloud service, in use by more than 6,000 customers worldwide.
“We are thrilled to add RedLock’s technology to our cloud security offerings,» Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks said. «The addition of their technologies allows us to offer the most comprehensive security for multi-cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure, and significantly strengthens our cloud strategy going forward.”
“We are excited to join Palo Alto Networks to bring together the strength of our cloud analytics and their industry-leading compliance technologies to help security teams protect their organizations,» Varun Badhwar, co-founder and CEO of RedLock added.
The deal will close during Palo Alto Networks fiscal first quarter, as long as the proposed deal meets the company’s expectations. RedLock co-founders, Varun Badhwar and Gaurav Kumar, will join Palo Alto Networks, although neither company has revealed whether any of its other staff will move over to the Networking business.
In February this year, RedLock security specialists highlighted flaws in Tesla’s cloud network by breaching its systems and stealing resources needed to mine for cryptocurrencies.
Jonathan Hoppe Opening Keynote: How to Become a DX Hero | @TotalUptime #Cloud #DX #CIO #DigitalTransformation
Data center, on-premise, public-cloud, private-cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud, IoT, AI, edge, SaaS, PaaS… it’s an availability, security, performance and integration nightmare even for the best of the best IT experts.
Organizations realize the tremendous benefits of everything the digital transformation has to offer. Cloud adoption rates are increasing significantly, and IT budgets are morphing to follow suit. But distributing applications and infrastructure around increases risk, introduces complexity and challenges availability at every turn.
Doug Murray Joins @CloudEXPO New York Faculty | @BigSwitch #Cloud #DevOps #Serverless #DataCenter #Monitoring
Doug was appointed CEO of Big Switch in 2013 to lead the company on its mission to provide modern cloud and data center networking solutions capable of disrupting the stronghold by legacy vendors. Under his guidance, Big Switch has experienced 30+% average QoQ growth for the last 16 quarters; more than quadrupled headcount; successfully shifted to a software-only and subscription-based recurring revenue model; solidified key partnerships with Accton/Edgecore, Dell EMC, HPE, Nutanix, RedHat and VMware; developed Open Network Linux, an open source NOS foundational component designed in partnership with Facebook and Google; and he played an integral role in raising two-thirds of the company’s $120MM of funding. Prior to Big Switch, Doug was SVP & GM of Juniper Networks $1BN business across Asia-Pacific, Japan and Greater China, and he began his time at Juniper as SVP & GM of its Security business unit. Previously, Doug held executive positions at Extreme Networks, Sun Microsystems and AT&T. In board roles, he helped guide early stage companies to success including Altor Networks (acquired by Juniper in 2010) and FireEye (IPO in 2013). Under his leadership, Big Switch became the first software-only vendor to be included in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Center Networking (2017); was named a Glassdoor Best Place to Work (2018); and along with Kyle, Doug was named Finalist, EY Entrepreneur of the Year Northern California (2017). Doug holds a BA in History from Colgate University, an MBA from Johns Hopkins University and has completed Executive Education in Leadership at Columbia University.
Dropbox unveils upgraded search engine Nautilus with machine learning capabilities
For a company which stores hundreds of billions of files, search is vital for Dropbox, both for its customers and internal-facing. As a result, the storage provider has overhauled its search with machine learning capabilities.
The new platform, called Nautilus, had four goals on its launch; delivering top class performance, scalability and reliability, providing intellient document ranking and retrieval, flexibility for customising document-indexing and query-processing pipelines, and wrap it all up in a reliable, secure package.
The architecture is based at a high level on indexing and serving. Indexing, naturally, is a key factor of any search, collecting, parsing, and storing data for retrieval. The serving function uses the index to return results from user queries. This is by no means uncommon, but with the sheer scale involved, more needs to be done. Dropbox generates 'offline' builds of the search index every few days on average, and puts together 'index mutations' that can be applied to both the live index and a persistent document store in almost real-time – to approximately a few seconds.
Where the machine learning element comes in is through search ranking. Compared with Dropbox's retrieval engine, which returns a large set of matching documents 'without worrying too much about how relevant each document is to the user', as the company puts it, ranking aims to predict items the user wants at that moment.
"The ranking engine is powered by a ML model that outputs a score for each document based on a variety of signals," wrote Diwaker Gupta, engineering manager at Dropbox, in a blog post. "Some signals measure the relevance of the document to the query, while others measure the relevance of the document to the user at the current moment in time."
As can be expected with ML, the system can learn as it goes along, while the company is at pains to note that no personally identifiable information – rather, anonymised 'click' data – is used.
"The main advantage of using an ML-based solution for ranking is that we can use a large number of signals, as well as deal with new signals automatically," added Gupta. "For example, you could imagine manually defining an 'importance' for each type of signal we have available to us. This might be doable if you only have a handful of signals, but as you add tens or hundreds or even thousands, this becomes impossible to do in an optimal way.
"This is exactly where ML shines: it can autoamtically learn the right set of 'importance weights' to use for ranking documents, such that the most relevant ones are shown to the user," said Gupta. "For example, by experimentation, we determined that freshness-related signals contribute significantly to more relevant results."
A further blog noted an interesting aspect in Dropbox's traffic – in that it is dominated by writes rather than reads. In other words, files are updated far more frequently than they are searched for. As a result, the company uses an 'exploded' posting list format. "The exploded representation has the main benefit of handling index mutations particularly efficiently," the company wrote.
This is an interesting development when considering other infrastructure overhauls the company has undertaken. Under Dropbox's S-1 filing released when the company went to IPO earlier this year, 'infrastructure optimisation' was mentioned – in particular, spending two and a half years moving away from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to its own solution, known as 'Magic Pocket.'
Nautilus replaces Firefly, which was Dropbox's search tool for the previous three years.
Announcing @Hostway to Exhibit at @CloudEXPO New York | #Cloud #CIO #Serverless #DataCenter #Storage
Public clouds dominate IT conversations but the next phase of cloud evolutions are «multi» hybrid cloud environments. The winners in the cloud services industry will be those organizations that understand how to leverage these technologies as complete service solutions for specific customer verticals. In turn, both business and IT actors throughout the enterprise will need to increase their engagement with multi-cloud deployments today while planning a technology strategy that will constitute a significant part of their IT budgets in the very near future. As IoT solutions are growing rapidly, as well as security challenges growing exponentially, without a doubt, the cloud world is about to change for the better. Again.