The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the foundations of the internet, working in the background to match the names of web sites that people type into a search box with the corresponding IP address, a long string of numbers that no one could be expected to remember.It's still possible for someone to type an IP address into a browser to reach a website, but most people want an internet address to consist of easy-to-remember words, called domain names. (For example, Network World.)To read this article in full, please click here
There are baseline security and connectivity requirements for any SD-WAN service, and then there are optional, emerging product capabilities that indicate how the market is maturing and customer requirements are expanding. AI networking support – such as for proactive remediation and incident management – is one of those optional capabilities, according to Gartner, which just released its latest analysis of the SD-WAN vendor landscape.There’s a trend toward AI capabilities that enable networking decisions to be made with little or no human intervention. These capabilities can help enterprises to streamline network design, configuration and ongoing management as well as increase agility and improve performance, according to Gartner. The research firm predicts that by 2026, generative AI technology embedded in SD-WAN offerings will be used for 20% of initial network configuration, up from near zero in 2023.To read this article in full, please click here
Intel announced plans to spin off its programmable solutions group (PSG) as a standalone business beginning January 1, with an IPO to follow in about two to three years. The group will operate as a separate unit in the company’s financials.PSG is the group that handles field-programmable gate array (FPGA) processors made by Altera, which Intel acquired for $16.7 billion in 2015. Sandra Rivera, who currently runs Intel’s data center and AI (DCAI) group, will lead PSG as CEO. The company also plans to search for a new chief financial officer for the group.To read this article in full, please click here
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is set to launch an investigation into the country’s cloud computing market, after a new report from the communications regulator uncovered a number of market features that it said could limit competition among providers.The move comes seven months after the communications regulator Ofcom first raised “significant concerns” about Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, alleging that they were harming competition in cloud infrastructure services and abusing their market positions with practices that make interoperability difficult.To read this article in full, please click here
Just weeks after Cisco killed its Hyperflex platform and turned that business over to Nutanix, the vendors rolled out their first integrated hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) package aimed at easing hybrid- and multi-cloud operations.HCI platforms combine storage, compute, networking and virtualization resources in a single system. The newly available Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix combines Cisco’s SaaS-managed compute and networking gear with Nutanix’s Cloud Platform, which includes Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure, Nutanix Cloud Manager, Nutanix Unified Storage, and Nutanix Desktop Services. The system can be centrally managed via Cisco’s cloud-based Intersight infrastructure operations platform, and it supports Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) and VMware vSphere hypervisors.To read this article in full, please click here
As National Cybersecurity Awareness Month kicks off, it's a good time to reflect on how secure the systems you manage are – whether they’re running Linux, Windows or some other OS. While Linux is considered by many to be more secure due to its open-source nature and because privileges are clearly defined, it still warrants security reviews, and this month's focus on cybersecurity awareness suggests that an annual review is more than just a good idea.The designation became official in 2004, when President George W. Bush and Congress declared October to be National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Keep in mind that in 2004, security practice often involved little more than updating antivirus software. Today, cybersecurity practices are much more intense as the threats have grown to be far more significant and far more challenging.To read this article in full, please click here
By: Bryan Lechner, Director of Policy, HPE Aruba Networking.The world is getting hotter every year. I personally know people sweating all day long in the US, Southern Europe, and Northern Asia. The air conditioning is consistently failing to cool them down. And let’s agree to the fact that no one wants to work in hot weather; even if we do, we are not 100% efficient. That may be the reason why office spaces are centrally air-conditioned, to maintain the optimum working temperature for employees, and to provide prescribed conditions for servers.But what does any of this have to do with Network Access Control (NAC)?To read this article in full, please click here
Hybrid and hyperscale data centers need cybersecurity solutions that won’t hinder an organization from doing its business. However, there are far too many data center environments that still rely on outdated traditional firewalls. Because these legacy firewalls underperform and underserve, IT teams are being pushed into making perilous trade-offs between security and performance. Since there is much at stake—and so little expert guidance available—choosing the right solutions can be extremely difficult for organizations. Below are eight key factors for IT leadership to consider when securing their modern data center infrastructure:To read this article in full, please click here
France’s competition watchdog has raided the local offices of chipmaker Nvidia while investigating anti-competitive practices in the graphics cards sector with a focus on cloud computing.While the competition watchdog did not confirm the identity of the entity being investigated or the practice in question, a report from The Wall Street Journal cited sources saying that the raids conducted targeted Nvidia.The watchdog, however, confirmed that the operation was a result of it trying to investigate the graphics cards sector as part of an expanded study to understand anti-competitive practices in the cloud computing sector. The study, according to the watchdog, was started in January 2022.To read this article in full, please click here
Content delivery network (CDN), security and web services company Cloudflare is opening its worldwide network to companies looking to build and deploy AI models with new serverless AI, database and observability features, working with several new tech partners to do so.Part one of Cloudflare’s new AI-focused initiative, announced today, is the Workers AI framework, which offers access to GPUs in Cloudflare’s network for a serverless way to run AI models. For users trying to run AI systems that are heavily latency dependent, the framework should offer the option of running workloads much closer to the network edge, reducing round-trip time. The company said that Workers AI is also designed to separate inference from training data, ensuring that consumer information is not misused.To read this article in full, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is undergoing a reorganization that includes the formation of a new hybrid cloud business unit and top-level executive shifts.Fortunately, CEO Antonio Neri is going nowhere. Neri may not have a rock star profile, but his success as a leader is undeniable.Two key executives are departing, however. Vishal Lall, general manager of HPE GreenLake and the cloud solutions group, is leaving the company. Pradeep Kumar, senior vice president and general manager of HPE services, is retiring after 27 years with the company.With Kumar’s departure, all operational activities for HPE services, supply chain and quote-to-cash will now be handled by Mark Bakker, executive vice president and general manager of global operations.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco is unwrapping a range of enhancements for its SD-WAN package that it says will help enterprise IT organizations secure, simplify and optimize their wide-area network operations and management. The upgrades include new routing management capabilities, integration with Microsoft Sentinel and Skyhigh Security systems, a new Catalyst edge device, and improved support for Catalyst cellular connectivity. Cisco’s SD-WAN package includes myriad features to tie together routers, switches or virtualized customer premises equipment (vCPE) from cloud, branch and remote sites, all managed through a single console, the Catalyst SD-WAN Manager.To read this article in full, please click here
Oracle last week announced limited availability of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI, which aims to enable business users to integrate AI into their line-of-business applications.OCI Generative AI is a managed service built on Oracle's cloud infrastructure in collaboration with Cohere, an AI platform for enterprise. The managed service and Cohere models will work in conjunction with AI Vector Search, a feature of Oracle Database 23c that provides retrieval augmented generation (RAG), an AI technique that combines pretrained LLMs and proprietary business data to deliver responses with higher accuracy. OCI Generative AI will also form the basis for generative AI capabilities embedded across Oracle’s suite of SaaS applications, including Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, Oracle NetSuite, and industry applications such as Oracle Cerner.To read this article in full, please click here
New AI toolkits, machine learning (ML) frameworks and AI-based private cloud tools are on their way to IBM Z-series mainframe users, as the company looks to preserve its share of the fast-growing AI marketplace.The company announced today that its newest offerings, meant to help organizations get to work on the latest and greatest in AI frameworks, will be available for IBM Z, LinuxOne, z/OS and Cloud Pak architectures. The first new feature, AI Toolkit for IBM Z and LinuxONE, is designed to help enable mission-critical business applications on open-source frameworks like IBM’s Z Accelerated line with TensorFlow, SnapML and more. A Python AI Toolkit for the underlying z/OS also provides an open-source Python library for AI/ML workloads, designed to conform with the company’s Security and Privacy by Design guidelines.To read this article in full, please click here
By: Nav Chander, Head of Service Provider SD-WAN/SASE Product Marketing.This is part 3 of a 3-part blog series on SD-WAN, Secure Service Edge (SSE), and multi-cloud networking (MCN), where we will highlight how these 3 technology areas are analogous to 3 different musical instruments that can be played separately but combined, are better together. The first two blogs focused on MCN and SD-WAN, and this blog focuses on SSE technology. Feel free to check out Part 1 and Part 2.To read this article in full, please click here
Security networking startup Tailscale has partnered with Mullvad to make Mullvad’s global network of VPN services available to Tailscale customers looking to maintain user privacy while browsing the internet.Tailscale provides software that creates a peer-to-peer mesh VPN, which allows for customers to create direct connections between devices. Tailscale enables encrypted point-to-point connections using the opensource WireGuard protocol, which means only devices on a private network can communicate with each other. WireGuard is an open-source project that is designed for quick reconnections, which improves reliability. WireGuard is also supported by consumer-grade VPN provider Mullvad.To read this article in full, please click here
IBM is rolling out a new DNS-based service that will let customers securely control connectivity between distributed multicloud environments.NS1 Connect is one of the first fruits from IBM’s acquisition of DNS specialist NS1 earlier this year. The service is aimed at helping organizations set up the best connection between clouds and end users to deliver applications optimized for performance, cost, security and availability.Core to the NS1 Connect package, which will be available Oct. 17, is traffic-steering technology that intelligently distributes DNS traffic across the network. DNS is often described as the Internet’s phone book, working in the background to match the names of web sites that users type into a search box with the corresponding IP address.To read this article in full, please click here
When gaming chip maker Nvidia announced a decade ago that it planned a strategic shift to data center AI, there were many questions: Could they build a full-stack, enterprise-grade offering? Was there even a market for AI?After the company’s latest earnings report, the question is whether anybody can challenge Nvidia as the preeminent AI platform provider for both enterprise and hyperscale data centers.Through clever acquisitions, internal hardware/software development, and strategic alliances, Nvidia positioned itself perfectly to take advantage of the generative AI frenzy created by the release of ChatGPT late last year. Neither industry-wide chip shortages, nor the collapse of its proposed $40 billion purchase of chip rival Arm Ltd. had any noticeable effect on Nvidia’s phenomenal growth.To read this article in full, please click here
For the last twelve years, 100% of CIOs have said that they expect to spend more on IT security, making security the only category that just keeps on absorbing investment. Every year in the last three years, over 80% of enterprises have said that their IT security still needed improvement. So, like death and taxes, is security spending growth inevitable? If we keep on the way we have, it sure seems like it. But what might change?Let’s start with what’s important to users. External threats, meaning hacking, are a problem for every CIO. Internal threats, from badly behaving employees, are a problem for three out of four. Data theft is a universal fear, and malware that interferes with applications and operations is an important problem for over 90% of CIOs. As far as approaches or targets are concerned, 100% say access security on applications and data is essential and so is regular malware scanning. If you ask CIOs to pick a single thing they think is essential for IT security, it’s access security.To read this article in full, please click here