In 2012, Swedish pest control company Anticimex began a period of rapid expansion into 18 countries and now reaps revenues of $474 million thanks in part to an aggressive new technology plan that hinges in part on the Internet of Things.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: DreamWorks: The animation studio's powerful network + What Cisco’s new programmable switches mean for youAnticimex’s embrace of IoT goes back to a regional manager in central Europe reading a story about rat infestations in Copenhagen and inventing a motion-detector-based rat trap for use in sewers, according to company’s CIO Daniel Spahr.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain are among new technologies that are driving a need for increased data center capacity, according to a telco, announcing an expansion recently.China Telecom said in a press release that these “rapidly maturing” technologies, such as machine learning and adaptive security, will propel investment in data centers. And that they are one reason for its data center-business enlargement.Interestingly, though, data centers themselves may end up using this new tech as heavily as the customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The leveraged buyout of Dell that resulted in its merger with EMC and the computer giant going private was the first of what appears to be many similar moves. Private equity firms are looking to gobble up some of the enterprise giants and in the process, take them private.BMC Software, which develops IT services software and data center automation software, among many other products, is looking to merge with CA, formerly Computer Associates. BMC is owned by Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital, so any deal to acquire CA would take the company off the public market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Multiple news outlets in Seattle and the tech press report that Microsoft plans to announce a significant reorganization in an effort to refocus its cloud computing division. In the process, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs.The Seattle Times, Puget Sound Business Journal, Bloomberg and TechCrunch all cite sources claiming that the news could come this week, and that could mean layoffs in the thousands. RELATED: How a giant like GE found a home in the cloud
The Seattle Times said it was unclear what groups would be affected and where they are located but that the move would be to get its sales teams to emphasize its cloud computing products instead of pushing packaged software. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On June 3, 2017, Andrew Lerner, vice president of research for enterprise networking at Gartner published a new blog: SD-WAN is going Mainstream. In this blog, Andrew offered two key takeaways:1. SD-WAN is real and has real and tangible benefits.2. At the same time, SD-WAN has downsides and/or challenges affiliated with early deployments. The downsides are mainly around gaps many vendors have for features like IPv6, WAN optimization, etc.I agree with Andrew’s assessment that there are downsides to many offerings, and want to underscore the key considerations for distributed enterprise when selecting the right SD-WAN solution. It’s reflective of carefully listening, learning and adapting to our more than 400 production customers around the world who evaluated multiple SD-WAN solutions before selecting Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
During the past few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has become one of the hottest movements of our time. Although many technology trends and buzzwords come and go overnight, it’s clear that the IoT is here to stay. Almost half of the world's population is online, and technology is a deeply integrated part of our lives. Smart thermostats regulate our business and household temperatures, connected cameras watch over our homes and pets, online TVs and speakers respond to our every need, and intelligent devices constantly monitor our health.According to Gartner, the number of world-wide Internet connected devices will grow to 11.4 billion by 2018. It’s a phenomenal trend that will continue to spread until human and machine connectivity becomes ubiquitous and unavoidably present.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon's Music Unlimited service is typically offered at $9.99/month, but Amazon has activated a special promotion as a teaser to their upcoming Prime Day on July 11. The promotion just dropped today and gets you 4 months of their Music Unlimited service for just $0.99, if you're a Prime member (or have a 30 day Prime free trial: get one here). Music Unlimited offers tens of millions of songs, with new releases from today's most popular artists. Listen ad-free with unlimited skips on all of your devices, and download for offline listening. Learn more about the very competitive streaming music service from Amazon, and take advantage of the $0.99 subscription offer, at Amazon's Music Unlimited page located here.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Fitbit's Aria WiFi smart scale is a great add-on for anyone using a Fitbit to track progress towards their fitness goals. The current 23% discount shaves a solid $30 off its regular $129.95 list price, so you can buy it now on Amazon for $99.95 (see this item on Amazon). The Fitbit Aria will accurately track weight, % body fat, and Body Mass Index (BMI) for up to 8 users. Using WiFi, data is automatically uploaded to your Fitbit account, so you can graph and track your progress easily and privately online. The product averages 3.5 out of 5 stars from over 6,200 people on Amazon (see reviews). Click over to Amazon for more information and to review buying options for the discounted Fitbit Aria smart scale.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What is interconnection, and why does it matter?Interconnection is the deployment of IT traffic exchange points that integrate direct, private connections between counterparties. Interconnection is best achieved hosted in carrier-neutral data center campuses, where distributed IT components are collocated. In an age when reams of information race around the world with the click of a finger and massive transactions routinely occur several times faster than the blink of an eye, interconnection powers digital business.Interconnection is much more than successfully connecting Point A to Point B. Telephone wires pulled off that kind of simple connectivity ages ago. Today’s enterprise-grade interconnection has some key characteristics that can help take digital business to the next level:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Steve Werner joined Milhaus, the company was gearing up for a growth spurt that took it from roughly 80 employees in 2015 to more than 270 employees today. Upgrading the company’s IT infrastructure was a priority for Werner, who is the first director of technology at the Indianapolis-based company, which designs, builds and manages luxury apartments in urban areas.“They went from a very small business to a pretty good sized business in a short amount of time. But we were still running on small business hardware, with a small business backup plan,” Werner says. The company’s IT gear was running in an old server closet with no air conditioning. “It couldn’t handle all that we were adding to it,” Werner says. “Everything was about to melt down.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Unix shell’s && and || operators provide some very useful functionality, but they can be a bit mysterious, especially considering the number of options for how they are used.The most common use of these Boolean operators is in the construction of multi-conditional tests—when you want two or more conditions to be true (or any in a set of operators to be true) before some command is run. The && serves as a logical AND (requiring all conditions to be true) operation, while the || provides a logical OR (requiring only one to be true).Combining tests
In the script below, we’re using && to combine two very simple conditions. We won’t get output unless both conditions are true. This particular script runs through the tests twice, but only to demonstrate the two “flavors” of the brackets that can be used. Note that && doesn’t work inside square brackets unless they’re doubled.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Back in May 2016 when Charter officially closed the deal to acquire Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, they took on a monumental task of merging many different systems to make one cohesive customer experience. (As a disclaimer, my company does sell and manage Spectrum Enterprise services.)This deal was worth over $60 billion and effects over 90,000 employees and 25 million customers with significant coverage in 48 states. Among old school telecom pros, the move to snag Tom Rutledge from Cablevision in late 2012 and relocating the headquarters to Tom’s backyard in Connecticut was a sign of big things to come.As it stands today, Spectrum does not have an online payment option for enterprise services that allows you to view your bill or even your bill amount. Bright House did have a platform but it was recently taken down after performing some maintenance, pointing customers to the Spectrum Business billing log in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cray has announced a new suite of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) software called Urika-XC for its top-of-the-line XC Series of supercomputers. Urika-XC is a set of analytics software that will let XC customers use Apache Spark, Intel’s BigDL deep learning library, Cray’s Urika graph analytics engine, and an assortment of Python-based data science tools.With the Urika-XC software suite, analytics and AI workloads can run alongside scientific modeling and simulations on Cray XC supercomputers, eliminating the need to move data between systems. Cray XC customers will be able to run converged analytics and simulation workloads across a variety of scientific and commercial endeavors, such as real-time weather forecasting, predictive maintenance, precision medicine and comprehensive fraud detection. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A report from a data center consulting group BroadGroup says Ireland is the best place, at least in Europe, to set up a data center. It cites connectivity, taxes and active government support among the reasons.BroadGroup’s report argued Ireland’s status in the EU, as well as its “low corporate tax environment,” make it an attractive location. It also cites connectivity, as Ireland will get a direct submarine cable system from Ireland to France—bypassing the U.K.—in 2019. The country also has a high installed base of fibre and dark fibre with further deployment planned.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the wake of yet another ransomware attack—this time named NotPetya—I have a special message specifically for those of you working in organizations that continue to run Microsoft Windows as the operating system on either your servers or your desktops:
You are doing a terrible job and should probably be fired.
I know. That’s harsh. But it’s true. If you haven’t yet replaced Windows, across the board, you absolutely stink at your job. For years, we’ve had one trojan, worm and virus after another. And almost every single one is specifically targeting Microsoft Windows. Not MacOS. Not Linux. Not DOS. Not Unix. Windows. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you don’t know what DreamWorks is, you probably haven’t been to the movies for a couple decades. It’s a digital film studio that turns out critically acclaimed CGI animated movies like Shrek, Madagascar, and Kung Fu Panda, averaging about two a year since the turn of the century, and a major contributor to the cause of keeping kids occupied for a couple of hours.The creation of CGI movies is enormously demanding from a network standpoint. Animation and rendering require very low input latency and create huge files that have to be readily available, which poses technological challenges to the DreamWorks networking team.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: What Cisco's new programmable switches mean for you + Trend: Colocation facilities provide tools to manage data center infrastructureTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While everyone is talking about the impressive performance potential and scale of AMD’s new Epyc server chips, overlooked in all the hoopla are the security features of the chip that may prove just as appealing.To start off, there is the tag team of Secure Memory Encryption (SME) and Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV). Secure Memory Encryption allows for full encryption of data stored in DRAM, and SEV allows individual virtual machines to be assigned a unique cryptographic key, thus isolating them from each other as well as the OS hypervisor and administrator layer. These functions are based on a hardware security processor attached to the memory controller with a 128-bit AES encryption engine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There’s an open source insurgence happening in the networking industry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
When Docker first (re) popularized the use of container-based infrastructure, there was a bit of discussion around the storage problems related to containers. Two startups came into being to try and resolve the issue: ClusterHQ and Portworx.While ClusterHQ flamed out, Portworx is still going strong and today announced a high-profile and interesting case study.To clarify exactly what Portworx does, users can use it to manage any database or stateful service on any infrastructure using any container scheduler, including Kubernetes, Mesosphere DC/OS and Docker Swarm. Portworx solves the five most common problems DevOps teams encounter when running containerized databases and other stateful services in production: persistence, high availability, data automation, support for multiple data stores and infrastructure, and security. As such, Portworx technology is ideally suited for solution verticals such as databases, messaging queues, continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), big data, and content management. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here