Stephen Lawson
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Stephen Lawson
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IoT gear will need better security to win a Z-Wave badge
Tighter security will soon be mandatory for IoT devices that use the popular Z-Wave wireless protocol.Starting next April, the Z-Wave Alliance will require all products to include its S2 (Security 2) framework before they can be certified as Z-Wave compliant. S2 is designed to prevent hackers from breaking into IoT devices that are on Z-Wave networks.Home IoT has recently proved to be a dangerous vector for internet-based attacks, such as the one that corralled thousands of IP cameras and other devices into the so-called Mirai botnet that disrupted internet service last month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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GE Digital is taking Predix out to the edge of IoT
Along with freedom and cost savings, cloud computing brings complexity. Dividing up data and processes between private data centers and the cloud can be complicated.It’s even more true with the internet of things, which usually includes specialized remote devices and layers of gateways. On Tuesday at its Minds + Machines conference, GE Digital introduced a system for enterprises to spread out IoT tasks to be more effective.The new set of capabilities, called Predix Edge System, turns the company’s cloud-based Predix IoT platform into a distributed operating system. With it, organizations can place each of their IoT applications wherever it will run most effectively, including in sensors, controllers, gateways or the cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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GE is on an IoT buying spree
It turns out GE Digital’s acquisition of ServiceMax on Monday and its Meridium buy in September weren't the company's only recent moves to expand its industrial IoT expertise.Two deals for small startups, completed recently and announced on Tuesday, add interesting technologies that should help the company develop new capabilities and help enterprises meet challenges in industrial IoT. Both were announced at GE Digital’s Minds + Machines conference in San Francisco and didn’t come with publicly announced price tags.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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GE buys ServiceMax for $915M to boost its IoT power
General Electric’s US$915 million acquisition of field service management company ServiceMax on Monday should help enterprises combine what GE does for industrial products and assets with more tools for those who work on them.GE Digital, the division that’s buying ServiceMax, sells software and services for connecting industrial assets and products in the field, then collecting and analyzing data about them. ServiceMax has a cloud-based platform for tasks like scheduling maintenance calls and making sure the right technician is on each job with the right part.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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That private network on the Wi-Fi band? Won’t happen
Satellite service provider Globalstar has dropped its controversial plan to launch a wireless network in the U.S. in part of an unlicensed band that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth use.The plan had alarmed supporters of those technologies who feared the network would interfere with them and effectively privatize unlicensed spectrum. Globalstar’s TLPS (Terrestrial Low-Power Service) proposal was one of several ideas introduced in recent years to mix licensed and unlicensed uses of spectrum. While some have been ruled out, others, such as LTE-Unlicensed, are moving forward.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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InfiniBand will reach 200-gigabit speed next year
InfiniBand is set to hit 200Gbps (bits per second) in products that were announced Thursday, potentially accelerating machine-learning platforms as well as HPC (high-performance computing) systems.The massive computing performance of new servers equipped with GPUs calls for high network speeds, and these systems are quickly being deployed to handle machine-learning tasks, Dell’Oro Group analyst Sameh Boujelbene said.So-called HDR InfiniBand, which will be generally available next year in three sets of products from Mellanox Technologies, will double the top speed of InfiniBand. It will also have twice the top speed of Ethernet.But the high-performance crowd that’s likely to adopt this new interconnect is a small one, Boujelbene said. Look for the top 10 percent of InfiniBand users, who already use 100Gbps InfiniBand, to jump on the new stuff, she said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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InfiniBand will reach 200-gigabit speed next year
InfiniBand is set to hit 200Gbps (bits per second) in products that were announced Thursday, potentially accelerating machine-learning platforms as well as HPC (high-performance computing) systems.The massive computing performance of new servers equipped with GPUs calls for high network speeds, and these systems are quickly being deployed to handle machine-learning tasks, Dell’Oro Group analyst Sameh Boujelbene said.So-called HDR InfiniBand, which will be generally available next year in three sets of products from Mellanox Technologies, will double the top speed of InfiniBand. It will also have twice the top speed of Ethernet.But the high-performance crowd that’s likely to adopt this new interconnect is a small one, Boujelbene said. Look for the top 10 percent of InfiniBand users, who already use 100Gbps InfiniBand, to jump on the new stuff, she said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Facebook and AT&T herald a new day of open networking
Modular and open-source are now the watchwords for network infrastructure, whether you’re delivering internet connections or VR cat videos.On Tuesday at the Structure 2016 conference in San Francisco, Facebook announced its most powerful modular data-center switch yet, and AT&T gave an update on its huge migration from dedicated servers to a software-based architecture.Once the same kind of hardware can do different things in a network, everyone gets more freedom to accomplish what needs to get done.That’s true for Facebook, which built on its own switch innovations and software stack in the new Backpack switch, and for AT&T, which says enterprises can now order and turn on services in 90 seconds instead of 90 days. Agility is also the key selling point for cloud companies like Google, which hopes its customers can ignore hardware altogether in a few years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Facebook and AT&T herald a new day of open networking
Modular and open-source are now the watchwords for network infrastructure, whether you’re delivering internet connections or VR cat videos.On Tuesday at the Structure 2016 conference in San Francisco, Facebook announced its most powerful modular data-center switch yet, and AT&T gave an update on its huge migration from dedicated servers to a software-based architecture.Once the same kind of hardware can do different things in a network, everyone gets more freedom to accomplish what needs to get done.That’s true for Facebook, which built on its own switch innovations and software stack in the new Backpack switch, and for AT&T, which says enterprises can now order and turn on services in 90 seconds instead of 90 days. Agility is also the key selling point for cloud companies like Google, which hopes its customers can ignore hardware altogether in a few years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Carriers are going virtual to give enterprises more freedom
Starting carrier services like routing and security is getting faster and easier thanks to a new way of deploying them that doesn’t require specialized equipment at customer’s sites.The new approach, called virtualized business services, lets various carrier services run on standard infrastructure at either customer sites or service-provider facilities. Because the services are virtual, companies can order and change them quickly, and they won’t get locked into whatever capabilities come with a particular device.On Monday, Orange Business Services launched its virtualized network services program, called Easy Go Network. It joins AT&T, Verizon and other operators that are selling or developing such programs. Easy Go Network is available as a month-to-month subscription and its launch follows a year-long customer trial. Orange Business Services claims more than 3,000 multinational organizations as customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Carriers are going virtual to give enterprises more freedom
Starting carrier services like routing and security is getting faster and easier thanks to a new way of deploying them that doesn’t require specialized equipment at customer’s sites.The new approach, called virtualized business services, lets various carrier services run on standard infrastructure at either customer sites or service-provider facilities. Because the services are virtual, companies can order and change them quickly, and they won’t get locked into whatever capabilities come with a particular device.On Monday, Orange Business Services launched its virtualized network services program, called Easy Go Network. It joins AT&T, Verizon and other operators that are selling or developing such programs. Easy Go Network is available as a month-to-month subscription and its launch follows a year-long customer trial. Orange Business Services claims more than 3,000 multinational organizations as customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Carriers are going virtual to give enterprises more freedom
Starting carrier services like routing and security is getting faster and easier thanks to a new way of deploying them that doesn’t require specialized equipment at customer’s sites.The new approach, called virtualized business services, lets various carrier services run on standard infrastructure at either customer sites or service-provider facilities. Because the services are virtual, companies can order and change them quickly, and they won’t get locked into whatever capabilities come with a particular device.On Monday, Orange Business Services launched its virtualized network services program, called Easy Go Network. It joins AT&T, Verizon and other operators that are selling or developing such programs. Easy Go Network is available as a month-to-month subscription and its launch follows a year-long customer trial. Orange Business Services claims more than 3,000 multinational organizations as customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cloud-based network analysis drills down to users and apps
Cloud computing is throwing more variables into network performance, but it’s also helping to make network management smarter. Nyansa, a startup that launched earlier this year with a cloud-based service to pinpoint the sources of enterprise network problems, is now adding the ability to analyze how individual applications are performing. The company's original Voyance service uses a software crawler to capture data about how traffic is flowing over the network and how each piece of infrastructure – such as a router or a Wi-Fi access point -- affects that performance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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5 ways enterprise networkers can – and can’t – be like webscale stars
Everybody wants to be a winner. One way to get there is to follow the leaders.In networking these days, big cloud companies like Google and Facebook are at the top of their game. They run giant data centers, continually launch and modify large-scale applications, and don’t seem to be bound to big system vendors. Many ordinary enterprises would love what the internet heavyweights have: standardized networks that can support any application without administrators having to configure a lot of proprietary hardware.Conveniently, some of those cutting-edge companies offer parts of their technology to others through open-source specifications. But there are limits to how well a company in the insurance or machine-tool business can emulate world-changing tech giants. It turns out no one can just become Google, at least not overnight.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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5 ways enterprise networkers can – and can’t – be like webscale stars
Everybody wants to be a winner. One way to get there is to follow the leaders.In networking these days, big cloud companies like Google and Facebook are at the top of their game. They run giant data centers, continually launch and modify large-scale applications, and don’t seem to be bound to big system vendors. Many ordinary enterprises would love what the internet heavyweights have: standardized networks that can support any application without administrators having to configure a lot of proprietary hardware.Conveniently, some of those cutting-edge companies offer parts of their technology to others through open-source specifications. But there are limits to how well a company in the insurance or machine-tool business can emulate world-changing tech giants. It turns out no one can just become Google, at least not overnight.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco positions Spark at the heart of enterprise work
The closely watched launch on Wednesday of Microsoft's Teams, a rival to chat platforms Slack and HipChat, shows how important this kind of collaboration is for any company that wants to dominate workday life. Cisco Systems is no exception.On Tuesday at Cisco’s conference for channel partners, the company laid out an ambitious goal for its Spark chat platform and announced two moves to make it more attractive to enterprises.Spark is now the centerpiece of Cisco’s collaboration portfolio, which spans voice calling, videoconferencing, document sharing, and other capabilities. Like Slack or Microsoft Teams, the messaging platform is designed to be the virtual home base for teams of employees, from which they branch out into other collaboration tools and productivity applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Thread Group aims its IoT mesh network at enterprises
The still-fragmented internet of things is slowly converging on protocols that may someday work in both homes and enterprises.The latest move to standardize how IoT devices talk to each other is a push by the Thread Group into industrial and commercial systems. Its Thread protocol, with roots in Alphabet’s Nest division, defines a low-power wireless mesh network. The organization hopes Thread will bring systems with proprietary network technologies into the Internet Protocol world, letting companies leverage their existing IP skills and technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Thread Group aims its IoT mesh network at enterprises
The still-fragmented internet of things is slowly converging on protocols that may someday work in both homes and enterprises.The latest move to standardize how IoT devices talk to each other is a push by the Thread Group into industrial and commercial systems. Its Thread protocol, with roots in Alphabet’s Nest division, defines a low-power wireless mesh network. The organization hopes Thread will bring systems with proprietary network technologies into the Internet Protocol world, letting companies leverage their existing IP skills and technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco says it’ll make IoT safe because it owns the network
Cisco Systems is making a play for the fundamental process of putting IoT devices online, promising greater ease of use and security as enterprises prepare to deploy potentially millions of connected objects.Thanks to a dominant position in Internet Protocol networks, Cisco can do what no other company can: Change networks that were not designed for IoT in order to pave the way for a proliferation of devices, said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of the IoT & Applications Group.“The internet as we know it today, and the network that you operate, will not work for the internet of things,” Trollope said in a keynote presentation at the Cisco Partner Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday. “We can solve that problem because we own the network.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cisco says it’ll make IoT safe because it owns the network
Cisco Systems is making a play for the fundamental process of putting IoT devices online, promising greater ease of use and security as enterprises prepare to deploy potentially millions of connected objects.Thanks to a dominant position in Internet Protocol networks, Cisco can do what no other company can: Change networks that were not designed for IoT in order to pave the way for a proliferation of devices, said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of the IoT & Applications Group.“The internet as we know it today, and the network that you operate, will not work for the internet of things,” Trollope said in a keynote presentation at the Cisco Partner Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday. “We can solve that problem because we own the network.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here