Here’s our interactive chart following the top mergers and acquisitions in the enterprise IT market. So check in regularly to see which companies your vendors are buying and which startups and established tech players are getting gobbled up. To sort within the columns, click on the column headers.
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Reacting to the surging popularity of the Docker virtualization technology, Red Hat has customized a version of its Linux distribution to run Docker containers.The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host strips away all the utilities residing in the stock distribution of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that aren’t needed to run Docker containers.Removing unneeded components saves on storage space, and reduces the time needed for updating and booting up. It also provides fewer potential entry points for attackers.Containers are valuable for organizations in that they cleanly separate the application from the underlying infrastructure, explained Lars Herrmann, Red Hat senior director of product strategy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Waze, the fast growing urban navigation app, has revealed what life has been like after it was acquired by Google nearly two years ago.The Israeli firm was snapped up by the Silicon Valley internet giant for a reported $1.3 billion (£850 million) in June 2013 in what was one of Google's biggest ever acquisitions.Following the deal, each of Waze's 100 employees at the time received an average of $1.2 million (£780,000) but beyond that the Google acquisition hasn't had much impact on the way Waze operates, according to Di-Ann Eisnor, head of growth at Waze.+ SHOW COVERAGE See all the news out of MWC 2015 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IT professionals with skills in Amazon Web Services will once again swarm Las Vegas come October.Amazon will hold its next annual cloud services conference, re:Invent, from October 6 to October 9.As has been the case since the event’s debut in 2012, the venue will be the Venetian, a spacious hotel and conference facility.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel has revealed more details about its next-generation chip code-named Skylake, indicating it will go into a broad range of tablets, PCs and servers.
Intel has hailed Skylake as its most important chip architecture in a decade and now says that it will be used in mainstream Core i3, i5 and i7 PC processors as well as Xeon server chips.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 +
The first Skylake chip is expected to be Core M, designed to be used in Windows as well as Android tablets and hybrids.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Tablets, tablets, tablets!Even though the BBC argues that the age of the tablet has essentially ended, manufacturers exhibiting at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year have only begun to fight. Here's a look through some of the coolest tablets on display.RELATED: See a running list of stories from MWC 2015To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IBM has acquired computing services provider AlchemyAPI to broaden its portfolio of Watson-branded cognitive computing services.AlchemyAPI’s set of services could help developers augment their applications with machine-learning capabilities typically too complex to maintain in-house.IBM is banking on a great need for such services. Cognitive computing will generate $50 billion in IT business within the U.S. alone, according to consulting firm Deloitte.AlchemyAPI was founded in 2005 to provide computing services accessed over the Internet by a set of APIs (application programming interfaces). Approximately 40,000 developers have used AlchemyAPI’s services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Editor's note: Traction Watch is a new column focused obsessively on growth, and is a companion to the DEMO Traction conference series, which brings together high-growth startups with high-potential customers. Companies can apply here to showcase, or those similarly obsessed can register here to attend.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple will replace a number of contract security positions with direct hires for its Silicon Valley operations, amid widespread demands from contract workers like drivers and security guards for better working conditions at tech companies.The move by Apple comes in the wake of growing concerns about inequality in Silicon Valley, arising largely from the gentrification and high-costs in the area driven by the influx of hi-tech employees.In October, Google said it would employ on its payroll security guards, rather than have them placed by a contractor, shortly after a report in August by community labor organization Working Partnerships USA that highlighted the poor working conditions of janitors, security guards and other contract staff, supplied by third-party companies, that are used extensively by tech companies in the valley.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IBM will roll out a cloud computing service next quarter using OpenPower-based servers, continuing an effort to expand the market for Power processors and challenge Intel in hyperscale data centers.The company’s SoftLayer division will provide an infrastructure-as-a-service offering using OpenPower systems in the second quarter, initially from a data center in Dallas, Texas, it said Wednesday. It will roll out the service worldwide at a later date.IBM kicked off its OpenPower initiative about two years ago. Its goal is to license its Power architecture to other server makers, who can use it to design systems targeted at online service providers like Google and cloud providers like Amazon Web Services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hard on the heels of debuting a cloud storage service for financial services firms, Box announced Tuesday that it has acquired Subspace, a startup focused on cross-device collaboration security.“The Subspace team will let us go even deeper with our security and data policies, enabling reliable corporate security policies, even when content leaves the Box platform to be accessed on a customer or partner’s device,” Box cofounder and CEO Aaron Levie said in a blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel has done well in PCs and tablets, but success in smartphones has eluded the chip maker for years. Cracking the challenging market is the next big task for Intel CEO Brian Krzanich , who is chasing an aggressive strategy to get its mobile processors into more handsets.At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Intel rebranded its Atom line with an easier-to-remember naming scheme for various models in the product family, to increase market visibility of the processors. The company also introduced the new Atom X3 chip, which will initially go into smartphones, and Atom X5 and X7 chips, which will be in tablets.A few handsets with the Atom X3 chip, code-named Sofia, were shown at Mobile World Congress. Sofia is the result of a speedier chip development strategy formulated by Krzanich to make Intel more competitive in smartphones. Krzanich sat down with the IDG News Service to talk about smartphones, wearables, services and the company’s plans in new markets. Below is an edited version of the transcript.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel has done well in PCs and tablets, but success in smartphones has eluded the chip maker for years. Cracking the challenging market is the next big task for Intel CEO Brian Krzanich , who is chasing an aggressive strategy to get its mobile processors into more handsets.
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Intel rebranded its Atom line with an easier-to-remember naming scheme for various models in the product family, to increase market visibility of the processors. The company also introduced the new Atom X3 chip, which will initially go into smartphones, and Atom X5 and X7 chips, which will be in tablets.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD Follow all the stories from Mobile World Congress +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
SanDisk is hoping the $1/GB price of its new InfiniFlash storage platform will be enough to convince customers that all-flash systems can be viable for big-data applications, including content streaming and giant databases.The first InfiniFlash product, the rack-mountable IF100, will sell for less than $1 per gigabyte, with the exact cost depending on who’s buying, and how many, said Ravi Swaminathan, SanDisk’s general manager of systems and software solutions.Pretty much everything about the IF100 is hot-swappable, whether it’s the dual power supplies, the four fans, or the row of up to 64 flash storage cards each holding 8 terabytes. That gives the 3U (133 millimeter-high) box a capacity of up to 512TB.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The push to virtualize mobile networks is picking up speed at Mobile World Congress this week as carriers and vendors promise new services and faster connections.Telefonica, the big international carrier based in Spain, plans to roll out a virtualized platform from Hewlett-Packard across its whole network in the coming years, a significant vote of confidence in NFV (network functions virtualization) only about four years after the concept emerged.NFV changes the back end of a carrier’s network from a set of specialized appliances into applications running on virtualized servers. The same way virtualization gives enterprise IT more freedom to deploy new capabilities, NFV should help carriers roll out new services and meet capacity demands.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The push to virtualize mobile networks is picking up speed at Mobile World Congress this week as carriers and vendors promise new services and faster connections.
Telefonica, the big international carrier based in Spain, plans to roll out a virtualized platform from Hewlett-Packard across its whole network in the coming years, a significant vote of confidence in NFV (network functions virtualization) only about four years after the concept emerged.
NFV changes the back end of a carrier’s network from a set of specialized appliances into applications running on virtualized servers. The same way virtualization gives enterprise IT more freedom to deploy new capabilities, NFV should help carriers roll out new services and meet capacity demands.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chromebooks are pretty darn handy. Even some hardcore Windows users now acknowledge that a Chromebook might be just what you need for work. But, as great as Chromebooks are, and as much progress as Google has made in getting "Web-only" apps such as Google Docs to work offline, there are still times that you want an application that's only available off-line such as the LibreOffice office suite or the GIMP photo editor. For those times, it's darn handy to be able to run a Linux desktop on a Chromebook.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google will sell wireless service in the U.S.At Mobile World Congress on Monday, Google executive Sundar Pichai confirmed the rumors: The company plans to sell mobile service in the U.S., but insists it won’t mount significant competition to mobile carriers. Pichai said the offering will give Google a platform for experimenting with new services for Android smartphones....And teases launch of Internet-via-balloon, but Zuckerberg scoffsGoogle’s ambitious efforts to bring balloon and aircraft-borne connectivity to underserved areas of the globe are pushing past some key milestones, with a public launch likely in a few years, Pichai said at MWC. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg later picked holes in the plans, criticizing them as costly and impractical, and said the best way to grow Internet access worldwide is to work with telco operators—as he’s doing with the internet.org effort.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Volvo has developed a system that provides real-time warnings to drivers of black ice or disabled vehicles on the road ahead.The technology is currently being tested in Sweden and pulls data from wheel sensors to detect when tires encounter black ice. When that happens, the car transmits a GPS location to a Volvo server, which then sends the data to other vehicles nearby that are equipped with the system.Drivers of those cars see a small warning icon on the dashboard to alert of the black ice ahead. The icon gets bigger as the car approaches the dangerous area, said Erik Israelsson , project leader for safety at Volvo, during a demonstration at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Business-class tabletsIn this review, we looked at two types of business-class tablets, traditional tablets used by the sales force or other front-office workers, and ruggedized devices that can be used on the factory floor or other back-office environments. In the front-office category, we tested the Lenovo ThinkPad 10 and the E FUN Nextbook 10. In the back-office category, we looked at the Adlink IMT-1, Arbor Gladius Atom and Gammatach’s Durabook R11. Here are the individual reviews:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here