Stephen Lawson
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Apple asks court to throw out lawsuit over storage on iPhones, iPads
Apple has asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of misleading customers about the amount of storage available in mobile devices that come with iOS 8.Apple filed a motion for dismissal Wednesday at the district court in San Jose, California, saying the plaintiffs failed to back up their arguments. It wants the case dismissed with prejudice, which would prevent the plaintiffs from suing Apple again for the same thing. Judge Edward Davila will now have to rule on the motion.In the suit, filed last December, Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara charged that Apple misled consumers about how much of the storage on iPhones and iPads was taken up by the OS. For example, they said a 16GB iPhone 6 really had just 13GB of capacity available.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Apple asks court to throw out lawsuit over storage on iPhones, iPads
Apple has asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of misleading customers about the amount of storage available in mobile devices that come with iOS 8.Apple filed a motion for dismissal Wednesday at the district court in San Jose, California, saying the plaintiffs failed to back up their arguments. It wants the case dismissed with prejudice, which would prevent the plaintiffs from suing Apple again for the same thing. Judge Edward Davila will now have to rule on the motion.In the suit, filed last December, Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara charged that Apple misled consumers about how much of the storage on iPhones and iPads was taken up by the OS. For example, they said a 16GB iPhone 6 really had just 13GB of capacity available.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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IoT could help give your local area its own power grid
The Internet of Things is mostly about achieving greater scale, but in the case of an upcoming demonstration project, it will show how electrical grids can work at a smaller scale.The testbed announced Thursday by the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) will bring together software and other components for microgrids, which link together local, alternative sources of power and energy storage. Those sources, including rooftop solar panels and wind turbines, can keep providing power even if the main grid goes down.Most power grids were built for producing energy in one place and distributing it to users over a wide area. They’re not all equipped to manage or take advantage of small power sources out at the edge of the grid. The IIC, which is trying to get big industries and tech vendors on the same page about the Internet of Things, formed the testbed to promote work on IoT components for microgrids.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Hutchison to buy U.K. carrier O2 for up to US$15 billion
Hutchison Whampoa has agreed to acquire U.K. mobile operator O2 for a price that could top US$15 billion, giving a company that already owns one major carrier an even bigger share of the British market.The deal, which has been in the works at least since January, continues a trend of consolidation among European service providers. Hutchison already owns Three, one of the U.K.’s biggest carriers. Together, Three and O2 would form the country’s number one mobile operator by subscribers, according to news reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Hutchison to buy U.K. carrier O2 for up to US$15 billion
Hutchison Whampoa has agreed to acquire U.K. mobile operator O2 for a price that could top US$15 billion, giving a company that already owns one major carrier an even bigger share of the British market.The deal, which has been in the works at least since January, continues a trend of consolidation among European service providers. Hutchison already owns Three, one of the U.K.’s biggest carriers. Together, Three and O2 would form the country’s number one mobile operator by subscribers, according to news reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Hutchison to buy U.K. carrier O2 for up to US$15 billion
Hutchison Whampoa has agreed to acquire U.K. mobile operator O2 for a price that could top US$15 billion, giving a company that already owns one major carrier an even bigger share of the British market.The deal, which has been in the works at least since January, continues a trend of consolidation among European service providers. Hutchison already owns Three, one of the U.K.’s biggest carriers. Together, Three and O2 would form the country’s number one mobile operator by subscribers, according to news reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Startup Rubrik goes all-in-one with backup appliance
All-in-one boxes are hot in data centers, and the concept is starting to expand into backup and recovery.A Silicon Valley startup called Rubrik will start shipping a system later this year that combines software for backup, recovery and deduplication with commodity hardware for storage capacity and networking. Rubrik will sell the appliance in standard configurations so customers can just add more boxes as their needs grow.It’s an alternative to the way backup and recovery systems are typically built today, with specialized backup software from one vendor combined with deduplication from another provider and installed on storage hardware from yet another company, said Rubrik co-founder and CEO Bipul Sinha. Like makers of so-called hyperconverged computing, storage and networking platforms, Rubrik can make life easier for IT shops, Sinha said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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EMC pools enterprise smarts to create data ‘lakes’
EMC is drawing on its “federation” of companies to help customers build data lakes using EMC storage, VMware virtualization and Pivotal big-data smarts.The Federation Business Data Lake will ingest and analyze data from diverse sources to give enterprises new insights that can help them make better decisions, EMC says. It can tie together existing EMC assets with new software to run the data lake, and the whole package can be built and started up in as little as seven days, according to the company.EMC’s aim is to help enterprises of all sizes make better use of information they collect, including both structured and unstructured data. Building the data lakes may also show how EMC can make the diverse businesses it owns add up to more than the sum of their parts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Bare-metal switches poised to take off in data centers
Bare-metal switches that can be programmed like Linux servers aren’t just for big Web companies anymore. They may show up in a lot more average enterprises in the next few years.Cloud-based service providers like Facebook and Google have been building data-center networks out of generic hardware and homegrown software for years. Now vendors including HP and Dell are beginning to sell switches much like they do bare-metal servers. They may pre-load an operating system and provide ongoing support, but that OS is open and their customers will have much more freedom with this new kind of gear than they do with traditional switches from vendors like Cisco Systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Bare-metal switches poised to take off in data centers
Bare-metal switches that can be programmed like Linux servers aren’t just for big Web companies anymore. They may show up in a lot more average enterprises in the next few years.Cloud-based service providers like Facebook and Google have been building data-center networks out of generic hardware and homegrown software for years. Now vendors including HP and Dell are beginning to sell switches much like they do bare-metal servers. They may pre-load an operating system and provide ongoing support, but that OS is open and their customers will have much more freedom with this new kind of gear than they do with traditional switches from vendors like Cisco Systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Google Cloud and a Chromebook might be your next contact center
The next time you call customer service, you may get an answer from a Chromebook.The Chromebook won’t answer your questions, but the human who does may be talking through Google’s connected laptop with a headset. And they may be doing so from home.The days of vast in-house contact centers may be numbered now that pure software and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) can handle the same tasks dedicated systems used to do. One of the longtime vendors of call centers, Avaya, has started turning to cloud computing for some large enterprise deployments.Now, with an eye on smaller customers, the company is hosting its contact-center software on Google Cloud and letting companies send out Chromebooks to agents who will talk and text with customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Google Cloud and a Chromebook might be your next contact center
The next time you call customer service, you may get an answer from a Chromebook.The Chromebook won’t answer your questions, but the human who does may be talking through Google’s connected laptop with a headset. And they may be doing so from home.The days of vast in-house contact centers may be numbered now that pure software and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) can handle the same tasks dedicated systems used to do. One of the longtime vendors of call centers, Avaya, has started turning to cloud computing for some large enterprise deployments.Now, with an eye on smaller customers, the company is hosting its contact-center software on Google Cloud and letting companies send out Chromebooks to agents who will talk and text with customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Networking’s open at last. Now what?
Networking hardware and spontaneous applause don’t often go together, but Facebook’s Omar Baldonado set off a round of cheering this week when he told engineers there’s finally an open-source hardware design that they can use to build switches.It was a goal the Open Compute Project had been working toward since mid-2013, and though the breakthrough happened late last year, Baldonado’s speech at the organization’s summit in San Jose, California, was a occasion for line-rate, no-packets-barred celebration.OCP had done the same thing for networking that it did for computing: Make hardware designs openly available, so vendors can build lots of different boxes easily and cheaply, and promote open software development to give IT teams a choice of what to deploy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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MacBook makes a case for wireless docking — but too soon
The new MacBook is supposed to usher in a wire-free future for laptops, but Apple left out technologies that could have saved road warriors a few ungainly wires.“The only intelligent vision for the future of the notebook is one without wires, where you don’t have to plug up cables to connect to things,” Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller said as he introduced the MacBook on Monday.But while he crowed about the IEEE 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 built into the laptop, Schiller never mentioned that Apple passed on emerging technologies to make a USB connection over the air or wirelessly link peripherals at 7Gbps (bits per second).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Facebook’s Open Compute Project starts to crack networking
The Open Compute Project says it has broken tight bonds between hardware and software that have kept networking closed for decades—and it took less than two years.Switches and routers traditionally have been “black boxes” with hardware and software from the same vendor and no way for others with new ideas to modify them. Networking is like Unix servers 15 years ago, with proprietary hardware and OSes ruling the day, said Omar Baldonado, Facebook’s manager of infrastructure software engineering. An OCP effort that began in May 2013 has now opened that world up a little bit, he told the OCP Summit in San Jose on Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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5G, net neutrality may be headed for a showdown
Net neutrality and 5G may be on a collision course as the mobile industry tries to prepare for a wide range of mobile applications with differing needs.The net neutrality rules passed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission last week have raised some eyebrows at Mobile World Congress this week. The full text of the rules isn’t public yet, but mobile movers and shakers are having their say. The latest questions involve 5G, the next-generation standard that everyone here is trying to plan for.The most common thing they think 5G will have to do is to serve a lot of different purposes. Regulators’ attempts to ban “fast lanes” and other special treatment might make that impossible, people who’ve been thinking about 5G said Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Can a Barcelona romance bring Wi-Fi and cells together?
In the romantic city of Barcelona, cellular and Wi-Fi are getting set up on a lot of dates this week.It’s a classic story: They’ve been neighbors for years and don’t always get along, but a lot of friends think they’re the perfect couple. There’s more matchmaking than ever at this year’s Mobile World Congress.The two types of networks are complementary, because often Wi-Fi is strong where cellular is weak, and vice versa. Most people use their cellphones outdoors and try to get on Wi-Fi when they’re indoors. But due to growing demand for mobile services, the line between the two is starting to blur. Vendors and carriers at this year’s show are demonstrating new technologies that bring them together.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Net neutrality will put U.S. behind Europe, Cisco’s Chambers says
U.S. net neutrality rules will help Europe take the lead in broadband, Cisco CEO John Chambers says.The regulations approved last week by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will slow down broadband deployment, Chambers said at Mobile World Congress on Tuesday. Instead of focusing on net neutrality, the government should aim for more available broadband, he said.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD Follow all the stories from Mobile World Congress +"Sometimes, if you're not careful, your regulatory goals can slow down your end goals," Chambers said. He praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel, saying she's kept Germany focused on fast Internet access for every citizen. The U.S. led in the Internet era until about 2010 but in a few years will be behind the major European countries, India and China, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Salesforce, SAP to get a shot of IoT data
The Internet of Things is really an Internet of data about things, and combining that information with other kinds of knowledge could add to its impact.At Mobile World Congress this week, data is starting to come together in new ways. One of the most powerful combinations may emerge from partnerships between IoT veteran Jasper Technologies and two software giants: Salesforce.com and SAP.Jasper sells a SaaS platform that companies use to monitor and control products or equipment in the field. It’s designed to handle all the functions involved in making money from a device or just using it within an enterprise, including setup, ongoing service and data collection. Jasper sells its SaaS through mobile operators, and the platform can be deployed through multiple carriers to give customers global reach.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Salesforce, SAP to get a shot of IoT data
The Internet of Things is really an Internet of data about things, and combining that information with other kinds of knowledge could add to its impact. At Mobile World Congress this week, data is starting to come together in new ways. One of the most powerful combinations may emerge from partnerships between IoT veteran Jasper Technologies and two software giants: Salesforce.com and SAP. Jasper sells a SaaS platform that companies use to monitor and control products or equipment in the field. It’s designed to handle all the functions involved in making money from a device or just using it within an enterprise, including setup, ongoing service and data collection. Jasper sells its SaaS through mobile operators, and the platform can be deployed through multiple carriers to give customers global reach.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here