Why Microsoft is your best strategic partner for the futureAvanade CEO Adam Warby details how a $2 billion IT services company is capitalizing on new Microsoft cloud and collaboration capabilities to power digital transformation projects.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The United States isn’t as deeply unprepared for electromagnetic threats – either from space or man-made -- as it was a few years ago but a lot of work remains and awareness of the danger needs to be amped-up if the country wants to truly protect the electric grid.That was the general conclusion from a report by the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office this that looked at federal efforts to address electromagnetic risks to the electric grid.+More on Network World: Threat or menace?: Gaging electromagnetic risks to the electric grid+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Our next installment of “Geek-themed Meme of the Week” comes courtesy of the Twitter account of INE, Inc., and will be familiar to all network professionals. INE via Twitter
How familiar? https://twitter.com/SDNgeek/status/723644359099322369
If you’d like to catch up on past “Geek-Themed Memes of the Week,” you can find the archive here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For decades, the U.S. took for granted the doubling of supercomputing power every 10 years, roughly in line with Moore's Law. But once a petascale system was reached in 2008, it gradually became clear that the next leap -- a system 1,000 times more powerful -- would be difficult.Initially, some believed such a system -- an exascale computer -- was possible in 10 years, or by 2018. But problems emerged. It took too much power, and it required new approaches to applications to utilize an almost unimaginable level of parallelism involving hundreds of millions of cores. Another problem to solve was the need for resilience, or an ability to continue to working around multiple ongoing hardware failures expected in a system of this size.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tech companies dominate Glassdoor’s ranking of the highest paying companies in the U.S., snagging 20 of the top 25 spots. But no tech company ranks higher than Juniper Networks, which pays its workers a median total compensation of $157,000.The next-highest ranking tech company is Google, which landed at No. 5 on Glassdoor's list with a median total compensation of $153,750.While tech companies earned the most spots on the list, consulting firms set the high bar for compensation in Glassdoor’s report, “25 Highest Paying Companies in America for 2016." No. 1 on the list is A.T. Kearney, which pays a median total compensation of $167,534. Strategy&, at No. 2 on the list, pays a median total compensation of $160,000.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Earlier this week, I wrote a post discussing how visibility can be used to reverse the security asymmetry challenge. On Tuesday, hot security startup Illumio proved my point by announcing a cyber assessment program that uses granular visibility to identify new attack surfaces.Illumio’s Attack Surface Assessment Program (ASAP) was led by Nathaniel Gleicher, former Director of Cybersecurity Policy for the National Security Council at the White House and now the Head of Cybersecurity Strategy for Illumio. The White House obviously has the strictest of security policies, giving Gleicher the necessary level of paranoia to put together a program like this. Now, any company can benefit from his experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Universities at the forefront of big dataImage by ThinkstockBig data has exploded in a way that has left companies unable to find enough qualified candidates to hire, and schools can't churn out skilled data scientists fast enough. Up until now, boot camps have helped fill the data skills gap and plenty of colleges and universities have created master's programs in this burgeoning field. And, while it's true that boot camps are a great way to learn new skills fast and a master's degree is a great way to move your career in another direction, there has been a glaring lack of undergraduate programs for young people looking to get right into the industry after graduation.However, that is starting to change as more undergraduate programs start to pop up at reputable universities and colleges across the country. And it's no surprise, considering the Department of Labor cites a projected 25 percent growth in data jobs by the year 2018, which is exceptionally fast compared to other industries. These universities are priming the next generation of data scientists who will be tasked with handling the steadily increasing influx of data information that nearly every industry is experiencing. Here are Continue reading
Outsourcing, cloud services and financial pressure are constant realities for IT leaders. Shared data centers and cloud service providers are often a good choice. If the organization’s IT demands are difficult to predict or highly variable, building additional data centers make little sense.Despite the cloud trend, managing internal data centers effectively remains an important IT responsibility. Cost optimization, vendor management and creative ways to add value are all in play for data center managers in 2016.Meeting increased demands for data center services
Industry surveys suggest that data centers are under increasing pressure to deliver results. Consider the following findings from AFCOM’s 2015 State of the Data Center Survey. Gathering information from over 250 leaders, the findings provide a useful snapshot of opportunities and priorities for data center management.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a story I wrote for Computerworld in January, which was a review of Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4, I mentioned Windows Server's new support for Hyper-V containers that had been added to its support for Docker-style containers (present within the beta product since the previous beta milestone release).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Cloud computing startup Mesosphere has decided to open source its platform for managing data center resources, with the backing of over 60 tech companies, including Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Cisco Systems.Derived from its Datacenter Operating System, a service that Mesosphere set out to build as an operating system for all servers in a data center as if they were a single pool of resources, the open source DC/OS offers capabilities for container operations at scale and single-click, app-store-like installation of over 20 complex distributed systems, including HDFS, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka and Apache Cassandra, the company said in a statement Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Optical discs like Blu-ray are losing favor, but Sony and Panasonic don't seem to care. The companies have cranked up the storage capacity on optical media to a stunning 3.3TB.That's a big advance in Sony's optical storage, which is based on technology used in Blu-ray. The 3.3TB disc is targeted at studios, filmmakers, and broadcasters that store large volumes of video, and at large companies that store infrequently modified data.For example, video streaming companies could hold a large library of films in storage arrays with many optical drives. Instead of using PCs, servers in data centers could then pull out movies from the drives and serve them to users via the cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Altify MaxKey features: Altify Max is the first "augmented intelligence" platform that combines human and machine intelligence. Altify Max includes more than 30 years of sales knowledge built-in and combines the deep muscle memory of a million sales engagements, knowledge of the world’s best sales methodologies and insights from each individual business to create instant, real-time recommendations about how to progress each opportunity. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A while ago in another post I asked Is it time to give up on WordPress sites? and I got some interesting comments; here’s two that nail the issue and the growing sentiment:
Marco Naseef: “extremely modular = extremely vulnerable”David Franks: “… I run a hundred or so Wordpress sites and I'm on the verge of throwing in the towel. / All the big hosts like Bluehost and Hostgator have their shared host platforms controlled by hackers and riddled with malware like dark leach. It's very dispiriting. / I think the days of Wordpress are numbered”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I’ve seen a number of great technologies come and go. Some are fun for a while, as they are the first to market, such as game systems, entertainment devices and lifestyle products. But without staying ahead of the competition, they soon become irrelevant. Others simply don’t solve a big enough problem to warrant spending money to become an early adopter, such as Google Glass, Amazon’s Fire mobile phone or HD DVD.
How do you know when the time is right to invest in new technology? For personal technology, if you’re like me, you’ll forever be an early adopter and likely always be first in line for the next iPhone or Android device—even if the existing one works perfectly fine. But if you’re committing thousands and thousands of dollars of your company’s limited IT resources, how do you know what you’re buying today will be still be the best technology five years from now—or even next year?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Internal Revenue Service said today with the approaching tax filing April 18th deadline scammers are becoming even more desperate that ever to steal your money and identity.The IRS said there has been a 400% surge in phishing and malware incidents in this tax season alone and that scam artists are more frequently masquerade as being from the IRS, a tax company and sometimes even a state revenue department.+More on Network World: IRS warns of nasty W-2 phishing scheme+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Software-defined WAN promises a simplified, cost-effective way to manage multiple types of broadband Internet connections. While most enterprises today are only in the very early stages of piloting or implementing SD-WAN, Gartner predicts that by the end of 2019, 30% of enterprises will have deployed SD-WAN technology in their branches, up from less than 1% today. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Drew Como credits his enterprise backup and recovery technology of choice – Veeam Availability Suite -- with helping his company to recover from a disastrous third-party software upgrade.“Once, we had a software vendor who assured us that an upgrade would be quick and easy, so we went ahead with it. In fact, it destroyed a key database,” says Como, who is senior manager of global datacenter platform services at Take-Two Interactive Software. “Everyone panicked, but I said, ‘Hey, I think Veeam’s got this.’ I crossed my fingers, did a restore, and in 15 minutes the entire database was back online.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IT favoritesWhen we asked IT pros about their favorite enterprise tech products, their picks included all kinds of hardware, software and cloud services. The common thread? Gear that saves time or money, increases IT agility or tightens security. Read on to find out what these 29 IT pros have to say, in their own words, about their tech favorites.SEE ALSO: 5 must-have network tools | Go-to storage and disaster recovery productsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In what will probably be a long series of parries, the International Trade Commission this week granted a full review of certain patents in the now 15-month old patent suit between Cisco and Arista Networks.Specifically the ITC granted full review of the three patents that Arista is allegedly infringing under the initial determination issued by the presiding judge on Feb 2. In February, the ITC made an initial determination that Arista infringed on three Cisco patents in its switches -- patents associated with a central database for managing configuration data (SysDB) and private VLANs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two Italian architects have designed a data center that challenges how the structures are built. Instead of constructing a flat, sprawling complex, they are proposing a data center that reaches skyscraper heights.At this stage, the data center designed by Marco Merletti, who works in Paris, and Valeria Mercuri, who is in Rome, is just an idea. But it's gotten recognition. The pair, who are both 28, recently received third place honors in the annual Skyscraper Competition held by architecture and design journal eVolo.From a visual perspective, the circular, futuristic-looking "Data Tower," as Merletti and Mercuri call it, almost seems like something out of Star Trek. But it incorporates sustainable technology for efficiently cooling hundreds of thousands of servers, while increasing reliance on automation. Its ideas are grounded in existing technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here