When Patrick Benson joined Ovation Brands back in September 2013, he was given a tall order: modernize an array of legacy IT systems that could no longer keep up with the restaurant-chain conglomerate’s business processes.“I was strapped to a rocket and shot out of a cannon,” said Benson, the company’s CIO. “My job was to figure out what tools were needed.”Originally founded in 1983 under the name Old Country Buffet, Ovation had grown considerably over the years to comprise more than 300 restaurants in 35 states, operating under brands including Tahoe Joe’s Famous Steakhouse and Ryan’s.“We were conducting business in a much different way that was better and faster than our systems could keep up with,” Benson explained.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lenovo may have publicly buried bloatware, but it’s anything but dead. After the company’s Superfish scandal, we shopped Best Buy and found it alive and well on major vendors’ PC offerings. A little research should save you from the worst of it, though. Here’s what we learned. Bloatware is as bloatware does
We call it bloatware, but PC executives make clear that they install software on PCs to benefit consumers and pad tiny profit margins. The vast majority is harmless (if obnoxious), and some, such as a year’s subscription to Microsoft’s Office 365, arguably increase a PC’s value without increasing the price.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A heaping helping of PiImage by Brad ChacosThe Raspberry Pi’s very existence can be chalked up to creativity. Ebon Upton and the Raspberry Pi Foundation created the $35 mini-PC to inspire students to learn computer science and enable tinkerers to dream up wild projects without breaking the bank.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon.com has acquired 2lemetry, a startup that has developed a platform for the integration of connected devices across enterprises, as it expands on its Internet of Things strategy.“We can confirm that Amazon has acquired 2lemetry, and we look forward to continuing to support 2lemetry customers,” a spokeswoman for Amazon wrote in an email Friday.2lemetry said on its website that its existing service had not changed and it would offer the same customer support after the acquisition by Amazon. It would retain its existing name and branding, it added.The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.Founded in 2011, the company describes its core technology as an IoT version of Enterprise Application Integration middleware solutions, “providing device connectivity at scale, cross-communication, data brokering and storage.” It also offers companies the ability to manage and analyze the captured data through predictive computational models and a configurable rules engine, according to its website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
PC shipments are forecast to drop by 4.9 percent this year, more than the 3.3 percent fall earlier predicted, IDC said Thursday.Earlier in the day, Intel, the key chipmaker for the PC business, said its first quarter revenue would be around US$12.8 billion, down from the about $13.7 billion it had earlier expected, citing weaker than anticipated demand for business desktop PCs and lower than expected inventory levels in the PC supply chain.About 293 million PCs are expected to be shipped this year, according to IDC. The PC market dropped in value by 0.8 percent to $201 billion in 2014, and is expected to drop by another 6.9 percent in 2015, IDC said. Smaller declines in subsequent years are expected to take the total market to $175 billion by 2019.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We're seeing a surge in successful experiments with alternative, atom-thin materials that are going to speed up and reduce the size of computer chips. Black phosphorus is the latest super-material that promises efficiency in electronics. This one promises speed gains too.Adding the substance, commonly found in match heads and tracer bullets, to optical circuits made out of silicon increases data speeds, according to a University of Minnesota research team, and reported by Dexter Johnson in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' IEEE Spectrum publication.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the not so distant past, VMware held a long and commanding lead in the server virtualization space, offering core features that were simply unmatched by the competition. In the past few years, however, competition in virtualization has been fierce, the competitors have drawn near, and VMware has been left with fewer ways to distinguish itself.The competition may have grown over the years, and VMware may not enjoy quite as large a lead as it once did -- but it still enjoys a lead. With useful improvements to a number of key features, as well as the bundling of functions such as backup and recovery that were previously available separately, vSphere 6 is a worthy addition to the vSphere line. That said, some of the major advances in this version, such as long-distance vMotion, will matter most to larger vSphere shops.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Raspberry Pi has inspired many board computers, and Qualcomm is now offering one of its own with a range of features never before seen in the low-price end of the market.The DragonBoard 410c is an uncased computer a little larger than a credit card, with all the important components on one board. With Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, location tracking and 64-bit Snapdragon chips, it offers many capabilities not yet available in other low-cost boards.Qualcomm is best-known for its smartphone and tablet chips, but the board could be used to make robots, drones and wearables. The chip maker’s high-end developer boards have been used to develop self-learning robots.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
VMware’s VMware Horizon desktop virtualization software suite will soon deliver virtual Linux desktops over a network, in addition to the Microsoft Windows desktops it has long provided for remote workers.The company has launched an early access program for customers to test a version of Horizon 6 that can package server-based Red Hat and Ubuntu Linux desktops so they can be accessed from remote computers and mobile devices.Although Windows remains the dominant platform for enterprise desktops, at least a small percentage of organizations use Linux instead, according to market reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel lowered its revenue outlook for the first quarter and now expects to bring in about US$12.8 billion, down from its previous forecast of about $13.7 billion.Intel attributed the nearly $1 billion [b] downward revision to sluggish sales of business desktop PCs and lowered inventory levels across the PC supply chain. In particular, the “refresh rate” at which small and medium-size businesses are replacing Windows XP computers with newer ones has been slower than expected. Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP last April.Intel also cited “challenging” macroeconomic and currency conditions, particularly in Europe, for the revised outlook. Intel will update other financial expectations on April 14 when it reports first quarter earnings, but for now those prior expectations should be disregarded since they “have been withdrawn,” the company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Juniper Networks this week rolled out new data center switches to help customers address opportunities and challenges presented by cloud computing.The new switches are yet another line of data center spine switches that have virtually no integration with Juniper’s three-and-a-half year old QFabric portfolio.Juniper says there will be 7.6 billion Internet users with 50 billion connected devices by 2020, continually accessing data around the globe. This necessitates higher levels of network performance, automation and scale for both enterprises and service providers to address growing demands on their IT infrastructure.+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Juniper unveils new fabric switch, architecture +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is investing US$200 million in photo-messaging app Snapchat, following a string of prior investments in U.S. tech companies.The companies did not publicly comment on the deal. But a person familiar with the matter confirmed the investment on Thursday.The e-commerce firm has been funding both U.S. and Chinese tech companies, as a way to grow the company’s global ecosystem, the source said.Previous deals made in the U.S. include investing in messaging app Tango, online retail site ShopRunner, and ride-sharing service Lyft.The activity has sparked speculation that the Chinese e-commerce company is preparing to buy its way into the U.S. market. Last week, Alibaba announced it was opening its first data center in Silicon Valley to target the U.S. cloud computing sector.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google’s Chromebooks are popular in educational institutions, but the company is now looking at digital signage as the next big market for Chrome OS computers.The company has partnered with Aopen to develop a rugged Chromebox mini-desktop and two Chromebase all-in-ones designed to dynamically display information and advertisements.Google has been targeting the commercial market for a while. Chrome desktops are being tuned for videoconferencing and for use in classrooms. However, Google’s Chromeboxes haven’t found much adoption as desktops, and Chromebases have largely failed as all-in-ones. They could get a new lease of life in the digital signage market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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
Few would dispute marketing automation’s potential to benefit corporate marketing efforts, but with all the many and varied tools out there, keeping campaigns coordinated and cohesive can be difficult.With such challenges in mind, Act-On Software on Wednesday launched Act-On Anywhere, an application that makes the engagement data, assets and functionality of the company’s SaaS platform available from anywhere within the browser.An explosion of stand-alone tools has created a marketing climate in which fragmentation is a major problem, said Act-On, which targets SMBs with its platform. In fact, a full 83 percent of marketers cite fragmented systems as one of their most troublesome challenges, according to a study the company recently conducted with Gleanster Research.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google has opened its first shop-within-a-shop in London, yet another retail experiment by the company, which already has counters in third-party stores.The London shop is located inside the Currys PC World store on Tottenham Court Road, and it features Google’s Nexus devices, Chromebooks and other products. Currys PC World is the biggest consumer electronics retailer in the UK.Google’s shop is not a full blown retail outlet like Apple’s huge and sophisticated stores, but more of a modest test balloon for the search giant. It builds on dedicated areas Google has already in big electronics stores.Although not very big, the shop is prominently located by the entrance of the Currys store, so it’s impossible to miss. Shoppers can test and buy Google’s Android phones and tablets as well as Android Wear smartwatches and Chromebook laptops from partners such as LG Electronics, Motorola Mobility, HP and Asus.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you’ve visited an Apple store at your local mall the chances are good that you’ve visited a crowded Apple store at your local mall.And, not surprisingly, those crowds don’t necessarily get right back into their cars after buying their iWhatevers. They do more shopping. In fact, an Apple store alone can boost overall mall sales by 10%, says one research firm, and Apple is using that clout to its advantage.From a Wall Street Journal report:
In the past, malls typically operated according to a straightforward bargain. Department stores that anchored the ends of the malls either owned their own stores or paid almost nothing aside from fees to maintain common spaces in exchange for drawing much of the traffic, while specialty retailers in the smaller spaces between the anchors typically paid the bulk of a mall’s rent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lots of networking activity at this week’s Open Compute Project Summit as vendors develop specifications designed to further abstract the dependencies of hardware and software.Dell submitted to OCP a Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) designed to enable a common language between vendor network operating systems and switch silicon. The submission is currently under review and Dell expects acceptance.SAI is an API to express switch abstractions. With it, third-party developers can build applications to help customers tailor their network equipment to meet certain infrastructure requirements, Dell says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A network switch that Facebook designed for its own data centers will soon be on sale from Taiwanese manufacturer Accton Technologies, the latest sign of progress from the community hardware effort known as the Open Compute Project.Facebook set up the OCP about four years ago as a way for data center operators to collaborate on new hardware designs that they can then ask low-cost manufacturers to produce. Part of the goal is to get cheaper, more standardized hardware than what’s normally supplied by top-tier vendors like Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell.Facebook is already using the top-of-rack switch, known as Wedge, in its own data centers, and it will be available to others in the first half from Accton and its OEM partners, said Jay Parikh, head of Facebook’s infrastructure division. Cumulus Networks and Big Switch Networks will provide software for it, and Facebook has put some of its own network software on Github for companies that want to “roll their own.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer, is retiring, the company said Tuesday.The exact date of his retirement is not yet known nor is his replacement, though Google expects to have a new CFO within the next six months, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.Pichette, who has worked as Google’s finance chief for nearly seven years, informed the company of his decision last week, the filing said.He cited a desire to spend more time with his family as the reason behind his decision, in a Google+ post on Tuesday. Specifically, leaving Google will give him more time to travel with his wife, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here