When Microsoft introduced the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) the common refrain was that you could use it to run Linux's beloved Bash tool but full Linux desktops were out.Turns out that wasn’t exactly true.It didn’t take long for people to note you could run an X server for windowed Linux applications. From there, it was only a short hop to running the Linux desktop on Windows without using a virtual machine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook's staff of 13,000 employees are now Microsoft Office 365 users, the social networking giant announced Tuesday.
"Do you want to know why we chose Office 365? It's because of Microsoft," Facebook CIO Tim Campos said in a video. "Microsoft got cool again."
This is a big customer win for Microsoft because tech companies are often the core domain of Google's productivity suite. The news comes as Google has been pushing harder to try and pick up enterprise customers from Microsoft with offers aimed at getting them way from long-term contracts with the company.
Office 365 met the company's needs for an office suite that is cross-platform, mobile, and secure, Campos said during a presentation at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security researchers have discovered a new malware threat that goes to great lengths to remain undetected while targeting energy companies.The malware program, which researchers from security firm SentinelOne have dubbed Furtim’s Parent, is a so-called dropper -- a program designed to download and install additional malware components and tools. The researchers believe it was released in May and was created by state-sponsored attackers.The goal of droppers is to prepare the field for the installation of other malware components that can perform specialized tasks. Their priority is to remain undetected, gain privileged access, and disable existing protections. These are all tasks that Furtim’s Parent does well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft officially ended support for Windows Server 2003 a year ago, and there was a major push to get people off the aging operating system and onto something new all through 2014 and 2015. But the zombie OS lives on mostly because people feel no urgency to get rid of it.Spiceworks, the helpdesk and monitoring provider, released a survey focused on virtualization but with a few OS tidbits as well.Virtualization use
According to Spiceworks' 2016 State of IT report, more than 76 percent of organizations today use virtualization, and another 9 percent expect to adopt it in the coming years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft says its Surface devices generate revenue of US$1 billion every quarter, and hopes to raise that number by putting the devices on more corporate desktops.The company is partnering with IBM, one of the world's largest software makers, to write applications specifically for Surface devices. The goal is to tailor Surface devices to meet the needs of financial, consumer goods and retail organizations.The deal is significant for Microsoft, which wants to make Surface devices more attractive to enterprises. IDC expects enterprise PC upgrades to pick up in the second half of this year, and Surface devices with tailored software could appeal to companies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chef and Puppet are often held up as the two big names in the first generation of IT automation. About the same time that virtualization was growing to dominance, these two companies, and the open source initiatives they're involved with, sprung up to allow IT operators to automate their server setup and deployment.The rationale for these players was obvious: Since servers were no longer physical items that needed to be set up in person every time, it made sense that organizations could develop "recipes" for their servers, thus eliminating repetitive setup tasks and speeding up the deployment of servers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Salesforce.com is stepping up its efforts to woo security-conscious businesses by adding "bring your own key" encryption to its Salesforce Shield cloud services.Introduced a year ago, Shield offers encryption, auditing and event-monitoring functions to help companies build cloud apps that meet compliance or governance requirements. Encryption is based on keys generated by Salesforce using a combination of an organization-specific "tenant secret" and a Salesforce-maintained master one. Originally, secrets and keys in Shield were generated and managed through Salesforce's built-in key-management infrastructure, accessed through a point-and-click interface.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Today is Amazon's biggest event of the year – Prime Day. As you read this, over 100,000 products have been dramatically discounted for today only. Laptops, cell phones, gadgets, gear, and everything in-between has been slashed up to 40% or more. You need to be a Prime member to access the deals, but a free trial of Prime - Sign up here - gets you access just the same. Jump over to Amazon and explore the seemingly endless list of products on sale right now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After months of uncertainty, businesses will once again have a simple, legal way to export the personal information of European Union citizens to the U.S. for processing from Aug. 1.Privacy Shield, the replacement for the defunct Safe Harbor Agreement, ensures an adequate level of protection for personal data transferred from the EU to self-certified organisations in the U.S., the European Commission ruled Tuesday morning. It plans to notify the governments of the EU's 28 member states of its adequacy decision later in the day, at which point Privacy Shield will enter effect, although it will still be a few more weeks before companies can register their compliance with it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft’s HoloLens has been available to developers for some time, but what's less well known is that its augmented reality headset also comes in an 'enterprise edition.'CEO Satya Nadella talked up the HoloLens at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner conference in Toronto Monday, along with an app that Japan Airlines is using to train its engineers."We now have HoloLens available both as a developer edition as well as an enterprise edition," Nadella said.The reference to an enterprise edition caused some confusion initially, as Microsoft watchers speculated that the company had two versions of the product -- one for large businesses and another aimed at individual developers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Seagate Technology will cut about 6,500 jobs worldwide, or 14 percent of its workforce, with most of the cuts in manufacturing jobs, it said Monday.The data storage maker had said in June that it was aiming to cut 1,600 employees, or 3 percent of its global workforce, by the end of the September quarter to trim costs, but the new announcement suggests that the company feels the need to reduce costs further as its hard disk drives battle in a slowing PC market amid the emergence of flash storage in devices.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD 2016 tech industry graveyard +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Windows 10: What users wantIf you’re still running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, you probably have a good idea of what’s “wrong” with Windows 10—some of which may be the reason you haven't upgraded yet. But time’s running out on that free upgrade offer. Microsoft has said it’s willing to make changes to the OS based on user feedback, but how do you know it’s fixing that one key feature that bothers you?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, on Monday criticized the replacement of U.S. IT workers with foreign labor but stopped short of offering a plan to fix it.
In a videotaped interview with Vox published Monday, Clinton appears empathetic and sympathetic to IT workers who have trained their foreign replacements as a condition of severance. She mentioned IT layoffs at Disney, specifically.
"The many stories of people training their replacements from some foreign country are heartbreaking, and it is obviously a cost-cutting measure to be able to pay people less than what you would pay an American worker," said Clinton in the interview.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Product migrations are often the stuff of nightmares. But for Richard Cross, CIO of U.K.-based multinational engineering company Atkins, the decision to migrate 18,000 users from their familiar desktop productivity applications to Office 365 in the cloud wasn’t a difficult one to make.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
On the internet superhighwayImage by Henrik SchnabelOur vehicles contain critical personal information such as our personal contacts, registration and insurance details, financial information and even the address to our home – making entry, theft and further damage even more of a possibility. Our vehicles are truly an extension of one’s connected self and the technology associated with them offers substantial benefits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Pay your respectsTech vendors only have so many resources, and as a result they continually have to make tough choices about which products stay and go. BlackBerry, Dell, Google, Microsoft and others have all made such decisions this year, so here’s your chance to pay respects to those products and services that aren’t going to make it past 2016…To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At Cisco Live today the company is rolling out a set of new services and cloud-based security features that better integrate existing Cisco gear with products it acquired through acquisition.
These products essentially grow the features of some existing gear and expand security coverage to devices not connected to the corporate network.
+More on Network World: Cisco will need to tackle these high-tech issues in 2016+
The Cisco mantra is that there are too many point security products for businesses to effectively manage and that generate too much unanalyzed data to be used effectively. The company contends that adding one more security product can add just a small percentage of new capabilities but a vast amount of complexity and work to integrate the new product.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In our recent beginner’s guide to virtual reality, we showcased various Google Cardboard VR headsets and apps to try out on a limited budget. A lot of those apps were either gaming-based apps or ones that gave you an experience, like a virtual roller coaster ride or a view of 360-degree photos of a particular location (like New York City).If you’re not interested in those types of experiences, you might say, “Is that it?” and miss out on the next steps with VR, which could expand the use of the technology in your own life or as part of your business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft will end its free Windows 10 upgrade program on July 29, possibly giving an unexpected boost to PC shipments in the second half this year, according to IDC.Buyers may opt to buy a new Windows 10 PCs instead of upgrading existing PCs with a paid version of the OS. Many businesses are evaluating Windows 10 and could also upgrade.Windows 10 hasn't helped boost PC shipments so far. Instead of buying new PCs, people have been taking advantage of the free program and upgrading PCs from older Windows versions.The PC market is still in a slump, and that didn't change in the second quarter. But shipments were better than expected, and that sets the stage for a mini-recovery in the second half.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Research firm IDC is out with its latest semi-annual tracking of IaaS public cloud vendors and while the top provider in this market – Amazon Web Services – will not surprise you, numbers two and three just might.
IDC estimates that IBM’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud revenues are larger than those of Microsoft in this still-emerging market.
+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Gartner says cloud will be “default” software deployment option by 2020 | Top 5 Storage vendors shows massive shift to cloud +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here