Oracle has entered into an agreement to buy NetSuite, which provides cloud-based accounting, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and other business software packages, for US$9.3 billion.
The NetSuite package of products is complementary to Oracle's cloud products and the companies' cloud packages will "coexist in the marketplace forever," Mark Hurd, Oracle's CEO, said in a press release.
The deal will allow Oracle to serve a broader range of customers, including smaller businesses, and expand to more industries and more countries, the company said. Asked what additional advantages the deal brings, and Oracle spokeswoman said, "We are declining additional comment today."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wacky storiesImage by Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/Beck Diefenbach/Stephen LamYes it's that time again…Time to search the old news-feed and find some of the most interesting and sometimes weird and wacky high-tech stories of the year. This time out we feature a look at everything from fireworks displays in space to Starship Enterprise remakes and mermaid robots – just to name a few cool stories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
“Misusing the internet”. . . precisely what might that mean? Unfortunately, people in Pakistan may be about to find out as the vague “misusing the internet” would be punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of one million Pakistani rupees (currently equal to about $9,550); that's according to an overview of the cybercrime bill written by the newspaper Dawn.That was just one example of what is in the controversial Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill (PECB) [pdf] which was approved by the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunications. The country’s National Assembly previously approved the bill and it will move on to the Pakistan senate for approval before it is signed into law by President Mamnoon Hussian.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
According to ESG research, 31% of cybersecurity professionals working at enterprise organizations (i.e. more than 1,000 employees) believe the threat landscape is much worse today than it was 2 years ago while another 36% say the threat landscape is somewhat worse today than it was 2 years ago (note: I am an ESG employee).Why the cynicism? Look no further than the Russian hack of the DNC as this particular data breach is a microcosm of cybersecurity at large. This one incident illustrates a few important points:1. All data is at risk. Way back when, state-sponsored cyber-attacks were government-on-government affairs, typically focused on military and intelligence. The cyber-theft of design documents for the F-22 and F-35 are perfect examples here. Unfortunately, state-sponsored attacks have gone beyond spooks and soldiers. China went after the NY Times, North Korea breached Sony Pictures, and Russia blew the lid off the DNC. When matched against sophisticated state-sponsored actors, pedestrian cybersecurity defenders are simply fighting out of their weight class.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One wonders if it took social media to finally motivate the White House to act on cyber incidents.The Democratic National Committee (DNC) was hacked, and the emails, many quite damning of the governance of the DNC, were released by WikiLeaks. Reports link the hack to the Russian government. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the DNC, resigned—one in any number of political and government officials to fall on their swords after security breach exposés.Then on Tuesday morning, President Barack Obama announced a U.S. Cyber Incident Coordination Directive. If the directive is actually followed, expect several agencies to drown in complaints, even though private citizen complaints aren’t included. Commercial and governmental complaints appear to be the only complaints covered by the directive. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Enterprise-targeting cyber enemies are deploying vast amounts of potent ransomware to generate revenue and huge profits – nearly $34 million annually according to Cisco’s Mid-Year Cybersecurity Report out this week.Ransomware, Cisco wrote, has become a particularly effective moneymaker, and enterprise users appear to be the preferred target.+More on Network World: Security was the HOT topic at Cisco Live+“Defenders are not protecting systems in a way that matches how attackers do their work. Although defenders have evolved their strategies and tools for fighting online criminals, attackers are still permitted far too much unconstrained time to operate,” Cisco wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Yes, Belgium. Every time you read a story or visit a website devoted to worldwide IPv6 adoption rates, sitting atop the list of highest achievers is Belgium, otherwise better known for chocolate, waffles, beer and diamonds. Google, for example, has worldwide IPv6 adoption at about 12%, Belgium leading at 45%.For an explanation I turned to Eric Vyncke, co-chair of Belgium’s IPv6 Council. I emailed him a half-dozen questions about technology and culture and such that essentially could have been boiled down to one: Why Belgium? Here is his reply:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
University researchers have found that organizations looking to clean up their IT systems need to pay more attention to the moods and personalities of those people working on them."Organizations focus too much on the technical and mechanical aspects of IT errors, rather than the human and environmental aspects of the errors," said Sumantra Sarkar, assistant professor of information systems at Binghamton University’s School of Management, in a statement. "Our study suggests the mood and personality traits of the software development team affect how they report on self-committed errors in IT projects. A minor glitch in design or programming can have devastating consequences."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
White box switches have been around for years, but adoption has been limited to niche companies that have large engineering departments. The rise of software-defined networking (SDN) has brought them into the public eye, though, as a lower-cost alternative to traditional network hardware. In fact, some of the early messaging around SDN revolved around using white boxes as a complete replacement for all network hardware.Despite the promise that SDN brought, the use of white boxes has been limited for a couple of reasons. The first is that historically, any organization that wanted to leverage a white box switch needed to have a number of technical specialists that many enterprises do not have. This would include network programmers and engineers fluent in Linux. These skills are commonly found in companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon, but not so much in your average enterprise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the 2016 Google Founder’s Letter, CEO Sundar Pichai cited Google’s long-term investment in machine learning and AI. “It’s what allows you to use your voice to search for information,” he explained, “to translate the web from one language to another, to filter the spam from your inbox, to search for ‘hugs’ in your photos and actually pull up pictures of people hugging ... to solve many of the problems we encounter in daily life. It’s what has allowed us to build products that get better over time, making them increasingly useful and helpful.”Beyond that, the translation API is straightforward. Supply the source and target language codes, as many source strings as you wish, your API key, and optionally specify the output format. Options include HTML or plain text, pretty printing (using indentations and line breaks), and supplying a callback function.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
On July 12, Microsoft announced it will release Windows Server 2016 to the world as a final RTM edition at the company's Ignite conference in late September. The software, now in its fifth technical preview, continues to mature, and this date matches the estimations previously released from Redmond regarding the OS's completion date. There were other recent announcements regarding Windows Server as well, and this piece aims to demystify them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
There’s an old saying in corporate America that nobody gets fired for buying IBM. Buying from the big players is viewed as a safe move. And large companies have a reputation for stability and reliability.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Nothing exemplifies the double-edged sword of life with a smartphone like notifications. Staying connected with push notifications is essential, but if you're like me, you probably get pinged way too often. All of those games, apps, and system notices add up.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch
Android gives you a ton of controls to tweak notifications just to your liking. However, you have to put in a little bit of work in order to get the experience just the way you want. If you just want to give yourself a little breathing room, it’s worth it to put in the time to get things just right.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Near Field Communication (NFC) – the “mobile wallet” technology – hasn’t exactly gone mainstream yet. And experts don’t expect it will anytime soon, even with some high-profile promo at the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio.While it has been available to consumers for a couple of years from mega-vendors like Google, Samsung and Apple, it is a long way from displacing the legacy credit card. Google even dropped support for its Google Wallet Card last month (Android Pay is still available).But, perhaps hearing about, or seeing, Olympic athletes using an NFC device will get the masses more interested.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
First, the easy part:Identity Finder, a company focused on helping organizations reduce the risks they face when it comes to the leakage of sensitive data, is rebranding as Spirion. At the same time, it has named Dr. Jo Webber as its new CEO. Webber, who previously headed up Energy Solutions International among, comes on board at a good time for the company. It has seen 250 percent growth in customer adoption across many different verticals. That customer growth is fueled in part by concerns around recent high-profile cases of data leakage from retail, health, insurance and other sources. These leaks have meant that both boards and CEOs are increasingly putting huge pressure on CIOs to ensure data is safe.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
25 things you probably don’t know about GoogleGoogle (now officially a subsidiary of Alphabet) has a relatively storied history for being such a young company. Founded in the late 1990s by Stanford grad students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s search engine quickly supplanted more established players in the search space before ultimately becoming synonymous with search altogether. Today, Google is much than a search engine, as the company leveraged its success to branch off into many other tech areas, including mobile operating systems, robotics, and self-driving cars.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Faced with increasingly troubling attacks on its cyber infrastructure, the United States has outlined new measures intended to help it respond more effectively to attacks that might compromise public safety or its national security interests.On Tuesday, President Obama approved a directive that lays out how federal agencies will respond to “significant cyber incidents," with the FBI to be formally in charge of investigating.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple has reported its second straight quarter of falling iPhone sales, hit by stiff competition in China and the ongoing slowdown in the worldwide smartphone market.The company sold 40.4 million iPhones from April to June, down from 47.5 million in the same quarter last year, Apple announced Tuesday.Revenue for the quarter, the third of its fiscal year, was $42.4 billion, down 17 percent from $49.6 billion a year earlier. Its net profit fell 27 percent to $7.8 billion. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here