IBM reported a 12 percent drop in revenue for the last quarter despite a big boost from its new z13 mainframe, which went on sale last month.Revenue for the quarter ended March 31 was $19.6 billion, with profit down 5 percent to $2.4 billion, IBM announced Monday.Two-thirds of the company’s business comes from overseas, and the strong U.S. dollar weighed on its results. Without the currency impact, and adjusting for businesses that IBM recently sold off, revenue would have been flat from a year ago, CFO Martin Schroeter said on IBM’s earnings call.Like its rival Hewlett-Packard, IBM has been watching its business shrink for several quarters as customers spend less on expensive hardware and IT services and devote more to cloud computing and mobile.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
VMware may have pioneered enterprise virtualization, but until Monday it had been relatively quiet when it comes to Docker containers, the popular lightweight form of application virtualization.Now it’s addressing the market for Docker with two open source software packages that will allow its customers to more easily deploy containers in their existing VMware infrastructure.The company has released a Linux distribution, called Project Photon, which was designed to run within a VMware virtual machine hypervisor and contains only the barest essentials that an operating system would need for running containers. The company has also released access management software, called Project Lightwave, that gives system administrators a way to control the access to their containers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
VMware Monday announced its first operating system, and it’s designed to run containers inside the company’s virtualization management software. In announcing the Linux OS, named Project Photon, VMware is attempting to convince users who are curious about using containers that they can do so while still using the company’s software. + MORE FROM NETWORK WORLD: Will containers kill the virtual machine? + VMware As container technology has gained popularity in recent months there’s been a debate in the cloud computing and virtualization market about whether it is best to run containers on bare metal, meaning without a hypervisor, or in virtual machines. If containers run on bare metal, it could remove the need for VMware’s virtualization software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The writing’s on the wall about the short supply of IPv4 addresses, and IPv6 has been around since 1999. Then why does the new protocol still make up just a fraction of the Internet?Though IPv6 is finished technology that works, rolling it out may be either a simple process or a complicated and risky one, depending on what role you play on the Internet. And the rewards for doing so aren’t always obvious. For one thing, making your site or service available via IPv6 only helps the relatively small number of users who are already set up with the protocol, creating a nagging chicken-and-egg problem.The new protocol, which is expected to provide more addresses than users will ever need, has made deep inroads at some big Internet companies and service providers, especially mobile operators. Yet it still drives less than 10 percent of the world’s traffic. This is despite evidence that migrating to IPv6 can simplify networks and even speed up the Web experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The writing’s on the wall about the short supply of IPv4 addresses, and IPv6 has been around since 1999. Then why does the new protocol still make up just a fraction of the Internet?Though IPv6 is finished technology that works, rolling it out may be either a simple process or a complicated and risky one, depending on what role you play on the Internet. And the rewards for doing so aren’t always obvious. For one thing, making your site or service available via IPv6 only helps the relatively small number of users who are already set up with the protocol, creating a nagging chicken-and-egg problem.+ Also on Network World: iPhone 7 rumor rollup +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Is Nokia on the way back to the phone market?When it sold off its device business to Microsoft, Nokia seemed to be saying goodbye to the mobile phone market it once helped define. But now sources tell re/code that projects in development at the small Nokia Technologies division indicate it’s plotting to return when it’s no longer under contract restrictions that prevent it from directly selling or licensing phones under its brand.DOJ said to be leaning against Comcast-Time Warner dealAttorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice are looking unfavorably on the proposed merger of two U.S. cable and Internet giants, Bloomberg reported. Lawyers in the antitrust division may this week recommend blocking Comcast’s bid to buy Time Warner for $45.2 billion.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.Acronis Backup ServicePricing: By cloud storage:· 5,000 GB -> $8,500· 1,000 GB -> $2,400· 500GB -> $1,300· 250GB -> $750Key features: Acronis Backup Service solves your business data protection challenges with a complete and easy-to-manage service that backs up any data from any source and recovers to any destination or system. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Researchers behind the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) want to gather computer scientists engineers and physicists to define the challenge of “encoding imperfect physical qubits into a logical qubit that protects against gate errors and damaging environmental influences.”A quantum bit or qubit or quantum bit in the quantum computing realm usesqubitsinstead of the usual bits representing 1s or 0s. Ultimately quantum computing efforts should result in super-fast, super secure computers the experts say. [For a good article on why quantum computing can be so damn confusing and why its development is critical, go here.]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I have a certain sadness as I write this. Data center computational densities have incurred a setback.There was a time when it looked as though ARM might give power-hungry Intel designs a run for their money in the world of high-density computing. It's the sort of density that cloud providers need: rack after rack, crammed to the gills, chilled, high-speed buses. But power costs a lot of money, alternate energy initiatives aside.AMD had bought SeaMicro, whose high-density chassis full of power-sipping ARM CPUs form large arrays of calculative strength, without the hefty bill from the power company for oceans of coulombs. HP had initially announced Project Moonshot, the cartridge-based high-density server with ARM, or FPGA cartridges to slowly sip power, but ultimately delivered its chassis with Intel Atom. ARM blades are still available, and FPGAs are said to be shipping.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook has tripled its detection and elimination of “fake” likes, which can artificially inflate a brand’s prominence on the site and deceive users, the company said on Friday.Facebook began improving its processes for eliminating fake likes this past October. They’re a real problem for the site, because they can trick a page owner or business into thinking they’re more popular on Facebook than they really are, fooling regular users along the way.Fraudulent likes originate from click farms, fake accounts and malware, and are sold to page owners who want to boost their exposure on Facebook. But in reality they don’t do much to win them actual customers, fans or increased sales.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google needs a tax break like Bill Gates needs food stamps, yet that isn’t stopping the search giant from asking for $19.8 million in “economic development incentives” from Iowa to build a $1-billion expansion of its growing data center facility in Council Bluffs.And, well, why not ask? The company has already been given $16.8 million in tax breaks to build out the various stages of the existing Council Bluffs facility, which opened in 2007.According to this Omaha World-Herald report, the latest tax break is expected to be approved by the Iowa Economic Development Authority and the Council Bluffs City Council with little or no opposition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Los Angeles Unified School District is seeking a multimillion dollar refund from Apple over a failed project to provide 650,000 students with iPads they could use at home.LA Unified approached Apple in 2013 about using its tablets as part of an ambitious project to provide every student, teacher and administrator in the U.S.'s second-largest school district with an iPad.The initiative, then known as the Common Core Technology Project, would cost around US$1.3 billion, the school district said at the time, with half that figure going to Apple and the remainder being used to build out wireless networks at the schools.Apple hired Pearson Education as a subcontractor to develop software for the iPads, but according to a letter the school district sent to Apple this week, a "vast majority" of the student have been unable to use the software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AMD has pulled out of the market for high-density servers, reversing a strategy it embarked on three years ago with its acquisition of SeaMicro.AMD delivered the news Thursday as it announced financial results for the quarter. Its revenue slumped 26 percent from this time last year to $1.03 billion, and its net loss increased to $180 million, the company said.AMD paid $334 million to buy SeaMicro, which had developed a new type of high-density server aimed at large-scale cloud and Internet service providers.The purchase was made under former CEO Rory Read, and has now been reversed by Lisa Su, who took over the CEO job last October.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
AMD has pulled out of the market for high-density servers, reversing a strategy it embarked on three years ago with its acquisition of SeaMicro.AMD delivered the news Thursday as it announced financial results for the quarter. Its revenue slumped 26 percent from this time last year to $1.03 billion, and its net loss increased to $180 million, the company said.AMD paid $334 million to buy SeaMicro, which developed a new type of high-density server aimed at large-scale cloud and Internet service providers. The purchase was made under former CEO Rory Read, and has now been reversed by Lisa Su, who took over the CEO job last October.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you’re strapping on the latest smart watch or ogling an iPhone, you probably aren’t thinking of Moore’s Law, which for 50 years has been used as a blueprint to make computers smaller, cheaper and faster.Without Moore’s Law it’s quite possible that new types of computers like Microsoft’s HoloLens, a holographic wearable with which users can interact with floating images, would not have been developed. For decades, Moore’s Law has been a guiding star for the development of modern electronics, though in recent years its relevance has been subject to debate.Moore’s Law isn’t a scientific theory, but a set of observations and predictions made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in an article [click here to download] first published in Electronics Magazine on April 19, 1965, which were subsequently modified. His core prediction states that the density of transistors, or the number of transistors on a given die area, would double every two years, which leads to double the performance. Loosely translated, that means in 18 to 24 months you could buy a computer that is significantly faster than what you have today with the same amount of money.To read this article in full or to Continue reading
Size is power in the mobile networks business, but it’s only one of the reasons Nokia is acquiring Alcatel-Lucent.Nokia estimates the company that will emerge from the planned buyout will be the second-largest vendor of carrier infrastructure by revenue, a bit smaller than Ericsson and slightly larger than Huawei Technologies. In a price-competitive industry where technology is constantly evolving, that matters, analysts say. But size alone isn’t reason enough to justify the €15.6 billion (US$16.5 billion) deal.As consumers watch more videos and use more apps on mobile devices, vendors are developing new technologies on multiple fronts to make sure networks can keep up with the demand. Putting up more conventional cells doesn’t cut it anymore, so they’re turning to exotic approaches like millimeter-wave beams and LTE networks that can use the same frequencies as Wi-Fi. Vendors are already jockeying for influence over 5G, the next generation of wireless specifications expected by 2020.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Retail chain Forever 21 has denied making illegal copies of Adobe’s software, as the Photoshop maker alleged in a lawsuit, and shot back that Adobe tries to bully customers who are accused of piracy into paying exorbitant license fees.Adobe sued Forever 21 in January, in a copyright lawsuit filed along with software makers Corel and Autodesk. All three companies claim that Forever 21 “wilfully, maliciously and intentionally” used their software without proper licenses.The retailer skirted copy protection technologies to illegally install software on its computers, they said. And it continued the behavior after it was alerted by Adobe to its infringement, according to the lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Northern California. The companies want a jury trial to determine financial damages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
India’s outsourcing industry needs to hire and retain staff in big numbers to keep business humming, so for the 10th anniversary of its initial public offering, Tata Consultancy Services announced a one-time “special reward” for its employees.As a result, Tata took a dip in profits in the first quarter to give out a large bonus.TCS said all its employees worldwide, who have completed at least one year of service, would be eligible for the special bonus, with each employee paid one week’s salary for every year of service in the company.At the end of the quarter TCS had 319,656 employees. The bonus will cost the company about US$423 million.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
LEAF Commercial Capital used to wrestle with tape backups for disaster recovery. Now the equipment leasing and finance company is using a software-based service from Evolve IP for disaster recovery.Rusty Lorenzon, director of IT Infrastructure at Philadelphia-based LEAF, says Evolve IP’s disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) has allowed the company to reduce its recovery-time objectives from 48 hours or more to four hours or less. At the same time, LEAF has reduced its disaster recovery operational expenses.“We adopted Evolve IP as an update to our traditional disaster recovery strategy, which had our team using tape backups and interfacing with various DR suppliers,” Lorenzon says. “Evolve IP DRaaS ZT is a flexible solution with an intuitive interface that is easy to configure and use. It’s built for the VMWare hypervisor and is completely SAN agnostic, which allows us to avoid SAN vendor lock-in.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Content is core to the work of Densho, an organization whose mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were held in internment camps during World War II.In the past, Densho needed a complex storage environment to house its 30TB of production data, says Geoff Froh, deputy director and CIO at the nonprofit organization based in Seattle.“The two-tier infrastructure was composed of high-performance SAN hardware and high-capacity consumer-grade NAS appliances. The SAN was expensive, difficult to manage and not scalable. The NAS gear was unreliable and lacked the IOPS to handle our workload,” Froh recalls.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here