Matt Kapko, Author at NetworkingNexus.net

Matt Kapko

Author Archives: Matt Kapko

Trump Campaign Revives Nationalized 5G Network Plan

The plan calls for the government to take wireless spectrum from the Defense Department and use a...

How Facebook plans to bring Messenger to business

NEW ORLEANS -- As the head of product for Facebook Messenger, Stan Chudnovsky is responsible for one of the most popular consumer products in the world. And yet, despite Messenger’s 1.2 billion monthly active users, he’s convinced that the app can continue its growth and add more functions if users and business embrace the app as a channel for business-to-consumer communications.More than 60 million businesses have a presence on Facebook and at least 20 million are active on Messenger today, but Facebook continues to develop APIs, bots and other means to expedite connections between people and business, Chudnovsky said this week at the Collision conference. “We need to make it obvious that you can make a connection between people and businesses,” he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Could Amazon become an enterprise collaboration contender?

Microsoft has for decades owned the intersection of collaboration, productivity and communication. However, as these services shifted to the cloud, it opened pathways for greater competition and flexibility in how organizations deployed applications for their workforce. Through G Suite, Google has stretched its resources and refined its family of apps for enterprise. The market is far from locked up, however, and analysts see at least some room for new players to emerge to challenge Google and Microsoft.Could Amazon be the dark horse of enterprise collaboration? The company has a dominating position in cloud-based infrastructure, but its moves in the application market, albeit reserved, have yet to deliver similar impact. But what if it decides to focus on the collaboration market?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

G Suite vs. Office 365 cloud collaboration battle heats up

CIOs and IT managers are increasingly adopting Microsoft’s Office 365 and Google’s G Suite for collaboration, productivity and messaging. These cloud-based productivity suites are expanding, gaining new feature sets and new apps for enterprise users. Earlier this month, both Google and Microsoft introduced chat-based collaboration apps to reposition for competition in this fast evolving and hotly contested space.Microsoft's Teams, which has been in beta since November, was released for general availability for Office 365 customers. And Google introduced a rebuilt Hangouts, which has been split into two apps — Hangouts Chat for chat-based communications and Hangouts Meet for audio and video conferencing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Apple dropped iPad’s price to lowest yet

Apple this week is releasing its most affordable iPad to date. The refreshed 9.7-inch iPad, which packs a Retina screen and Apple’s A9 chip in a device that effectively replaces the iPad Air 2, is priced at $329 with 32GB of storage.The $70 price drop makes the entry-level iPad more competitive, particularly among schools that can now snag the tablet for under $300 at educational pricing. Businesses that are motivated by price and don’t require more advanced features in the iPad Pro will also be giving the iPad another look as a result of these changes, according to Avi Greengart, research director at GlobalData.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google gobbles up more big-name cloud customers

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google came late to the enterprise party in the cloud, but the company is making up for lost time. Developers and the enterprises, which Google will need to attract more business away from Amazon and Microsoft, are taking notice -- as was evidenced here by big crowds and a standing-room only audience at the company’s Google Cloud Next conference.At the kickoff keynote Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google Cloud, announced several new customers, including eBay, HSBC, Colgate-Palmolive and Verizon Communications.Google defines cloud in transformational termsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Is Google pushing Apple out of U.S. classrooms?

Google continues to gain share in the education market at Apple’s expense. Chrome OS powers almost six out of 10 computing devices shipped to K-12 schools in the United States last year, according to a new report from research firm Futuresource Consulting.[ Related: How Google overtook Apple in education ]A growing number of inexpensive Chromebooks are making their way into U.S. classrooms while iOS -- and to a lesser extent MacOS -- devices are losing considerable share. Google’s Chrome OS comprised 58 percent of the 12.6 million units shipped to primary and secondary schools in the United States last year, up from 50 percent in 2015 and 38 percent in 2014, according to the report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why is Apple hyping augmented reality?

Augmented reality has a powerful ally, and apparently ardent supporter, in Apple CEO Tim Cook. The leader of the most valuable publicly traded company in the world reiterated his optimistic outlook for the future of augmented reality (AR) and highlighted the technology’s capability to layer improvements in the physical world.“I’m excited about augmented reality because unlike virtual reality, which closes the world out, AR allows individuals to be present in the world but allows an improvement on what’s happening presently,” he told The Independent in a recent interview. “Most people don’t want to lock themselves out from the world for a long period of time and today you can’t do that because you get sick from it. With AR you can, not be engrossed in something, but have it be a part of your world, of your conversation. That has resonance.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why tech companies are uniting to fight Trump’s immigration ban

In less than a month since being sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump has struck an emotional chord with tech companies, generating an unparalleled unifying force of opposition. The Trump administration’s executive order banning all people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from the entering the United States has created a rift between political and business interests, and one that many technology leaders consider a threat to their very existence.A group of 127 technology companies last week filed an official friend-of-the-court brief in the lawsuits opposing the administration’s executive order in Minnesota and Washington. Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Snap and Twitter are all on board, but there are some conspicuous absences. Enterprise leaders IBM and Oracle haven’t joined the effort and all of the major telecom and cable providers have held out thus far as well. Amazon was asked not to join the filing because it’s a witness in the original lawsuit, according to Mashable.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How IBM plans to expand MobileFirst for iOS program

Apple and IBM’s program for iOS mobile app development in the enterprise is broadening its reach this year as more businesses pursue apps that can transform how their employees work, according to IBM. “We are engaged with more than 1,000 clients across the world,” says Mahmoud Naghshineh, IBM’s general manager in charge of the MobileFirst for iOS partnership with Apple.IBM also plans to integrate Watson analytics and cognitive differentiation to its growing portfolio of iOS apps in 2017, according to Naghshineh. Once a new app is deployed and it becomes valuable for the business, the next step is to make it smarter, he says.Hundreds of businesses have deployed apps to date and more are in development or at least in the sales cycle that leads to design and testing of new apps, according to Naghshineh. Changing the way people work, which was the original goal of Apple and IBM’s partnership, is also resulting in rapid digital transformation for many businesses, he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google upgrades G Suite with tools for IT pros

Google today bolstered its G Suite of productivity apps with new controls and tools for IT professionals. G Suite administrators now have more access to control security key enforcement, data control with data loss prevention (DLP) for Google Drive and Gmail, and additional insights by connecting Gmail to BigQuery, Google’s enterprise data warehouse designed to enable SQL queries, according to Google.All of the changes, which are live today, are designed to elevate G Suite for the enterprise, especially among companies that need more confidence in the controls they can maintain over corporate data, according to Google.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google upgrades G Suite with tools for IT pros

Are tech companies responsible for negative outcomes?

America’s largest tech companies face a growing backlash over the potentially negative impacts of their strategic decisions and innovations. For example, companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and product roadmaps that will replace millions of jobs during the coming years. Experts in marketing, technology and social awareness say it’s time for technology providers to assume greater responsibility for the personal pain that comes along with the collective gain.Emerging technology is at almost perpetual odds with the status quo, but U.S. society is coming to realize that dynamic can lead to job losses, unfair treatment of social services and a stain on civic engagement. The power and influence that some tech companies command is being reevaluated in light of the myriad ways people are being disenfranchised in some way by their actions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Amazon is the current king of the virtual assistants

Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant was impossible to miss at CES 2017. The surprise hit service that powers Amazon's smart home hub, Echo, is being embedded into a growing arsenal of connected products, inside and outside the home. In many ways, Alexa is the feature of the moment for consumer electronics such as refrigerators, vacuums, DVR boxes, robots, TVs, washers and dryers, cars, and an important product category in which Amazon has thus far failed spectacularly: smartphones. Amazon was center stage during the annual tech gathering in the desert, as dozens of companies announced plans to integrate Alexa into their upcoming products. Ford, LG, Whirlpool, GE, Lenovo, Samsung, Hyundai and Huawei are a few of the big names that joined the race to bring Alexa to the masses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Facebook and Google dominate list of most popular apps (again)

Facebook and Google closed out 2016 with a near duopoly in popular mobile applications. Both companies' mobile apps expanded their dominance of the 10 most popular mobile apps in the United States by significant margins, according to research from Nielsen. The media measurement firm calculated the average unique audiences for apps between January 2016 and October 2016 and provided year-over-year percentage changes for the 12-month period that ended in October. A Facebook and Google world ... Facebook makes the two most popular mobile apps in the United States, Facebook and Facebook Messenger, as well as Instagram, the second-fastest growing app and the No. 8 most popular app, according to Nielsen. Facebook's average unique audience on mobile during the period grew 14 percent year-over-year to 146 million users. Facebook Messenger's audience grew 28 percent from the previous year to 129.7 million users. And Instagram jumped 36 percent from 2015 to 74.7 million users, Nielsen says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

2016’s biggest social media stories

Social media had a big 2016. The medium and all of the leading social companies reached new heights of influence … but not without consequence. These are the stories that shaped the conversations and intrigue around social media during the past year.Social media and the 2016 presidential election The American public is still grappling with all the ways social media shaped the 2016 presidential campaign. However, CIO.com uncovered how social media brings out the darker side of digital introverts and often amplifies slanted views or political biases. During the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election it became quite clear that social could not be more powerful or dangerous.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s collaboration strategy seems messy

The enterprise collaboration market is increasingly crowded with apps and services that target distinct needs for messaging and communication. With its growing suite of apps that target the market from many different angles, Microsoft represents the challenge of modern collaboration.Collaborative work-related activities increased significantly during the last five years, and apps such as Microsoft's Yammer, Skype for Business and the recently launched Teams are quickly becoming a bigger part of the way people work, according to Bryan Goode, Microsoft's general manager of Office 365. As the average age of today's worker trends younger and more employees work remotely, businesses flock to cloud-based collaboration tools, Goode says. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft and LinkedIn aim for ‘logical’ integrations

Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn has officially closed, and the CEOs at both companies are sharing some of the early plans for integration across product lines.The largest deal in Microsoft’s 41-year history will combine the “world’s leading professional cloud and the world’s leading professional network,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a blog post. Both companies share a common mission to “help professionals transform how they work, realize new career opportunities and connect in new ways,” he added.During the coming months, LinkedIn and Microsoft say they will be integrating products, especially in areas where Microsoft’s scale can be an asset. Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner spotlighted eight areas the companies are going to pursue immediately:● LinkedIn identity and network in Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite● LinkedIn notifications within the Windows action center● Enabling members drafting resumes in Word to update their profiles, and discover and apply to jobs on LinkedIn● Extending the reach of Sponsored Content across Microsoft properties● Enterprise LinkedIn Lookup powered by Active Directory and Office 365● LinkedIn Learning available across the Office 365 and Windows ecosystem● Developing a business news desk across our content Continue reading

How Apple and Google approach enterprise apps

Apple and Google both try to woo enterprise customers with unique strategies for business app development that mirror their respective visions. And as might be expected, each company elevates its strengths in enterprise and downplays points of weakness, according to IT leaders who spoke to CIO.com.Google cultivates a large group of partners to help organizations integrate Google apps with business processes, and it recently released a self-service tool, called App Maker, that's designed to speed up development. Meanwhile, Apple forged partnerships with a select group of enterprise heavyweights to build key business features into the core of iOS. It also made deals with other companies that work directly with customers to guide their businesses through the transition to mobile. Both approaches bring different enterprise appeals.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

« Previous 1 … 18 19 20 21 22 Next »