We’ve probably all used the phrase “too much of anything is a bad thing.” Too much ice cream makes you fat, too many cats and you get called crazy, and too much NFL football on Sunday gets you banned to the doghouse by your wife. + Also on Network World: Network World annual State of the Network survey results +
In IT, too much network traffic is certainly a bad thing. We need networks and rely on them to access cloud applications, call people on via videoconferencing and do a whole bunch of other tasks. However, too much traffic and the network becomes unusable and a source of frustration for workers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Acquia Labs has no illusions of making self-driving cars or shooting things into space like Google X, but the budding applied research arm of enterprise open-source Drupal provider Acquia does have designs on a slew of new applications for what it anticipates will be an increasingly browserless world. Preston So, development manager at Acquia Labs and a 9-year veteran of the Drupal community, shared his vision for Acquia’s skunkworks-plus outfit at the company’s annual Engage event for customers held in Boston this week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You’re seated in a restaurant you’ve never visited before, and the waiter hands you the menu. As you scan the items, do you look for something familiar you know you’ll like? Or do you want something you’ve never tried before?People respond differently to new situations and opportunities, sometimes with opposite reactions. “Better safe than sorry,” caution some, while others urge, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”+ Also on Network World: 3 tips to foster a culture of innovation +
Such reactions, engrained deep in our temperament, are described by psychologist and neuroscientists as our degree of novelty seeking. The trait is associated with positive aspects, such as curiosity, and negative aspects, such as impulsivity. It follows a normal distribution in the population, and scientific research even suggests a genetic basis, which makes sense considering our species has sought novelty strongly enough to inhabit almost every part of the planet and beyond.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon has quietly released another good set of deals on its popular Kindle series of e-readers, but the deal is scheduled to end tonight at 6pm ET. Kindle's price sinks from $80 to $60, Kindle Paperwhite from $120 down to $100, the Kindle Voyage drops from $200 to just $180, and the worry-free Kindle for Kids Bundle is reduced from $125 to just $80. The Kindle discounts are almost over for now, so if you're in the market for one right now, you may want to consider pulling the trigger soon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One of the biggest issues with high-end virtual reality experiences right now is that they often require people invest thousands of dollars in powerful computers in order to work. One solution to this is the VR arcade, where operators buy machines and then rent time on them to the public.HTC announced a new software platform Thursday that aims to help with the creation of such arcades. Viveport Arcade is designed to help arcade operators find games that are well-suited to the sort of public experience that they're building, while also helping developers better monetize their creations. It's built for the Taiwanese hardware maker's Vive headset, one of the leading offerings in the realm of high-end virtual reality headgear.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Taking a cue from Uber drivers, a ‘foot and bike’ courier has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the ride-hailing company and a subsidiary, demanding minimum wages, and reimbursement of tools-of-the-trade expenses and gratuities as would be typically provided to regular employees.Uber has introduced its delivery services, called UberEats and UberRush, in some cities in the U.S. and other countries.In a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of himself and other Uber couriers in New York, Matthew B. Burgos, claims that among other things, Uber circumvents its duty of supplying safety gear by misclassifying its couriers as independent contractors. Couriers are also required to purchase their own ‘tools of the trade’ including their own bicycles, helmets and reflectors in making deliveries for Uber.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung's cancellation of the Galaxy Note7 hurt Qualcomm's chip sales, but the company expects other smartphones to fill that void.The impact of the Note7 fiasco on the company's chip revenue is small, but will ride into the first financial quarter next year, Qualcomm executives said during an earnings call on Wednesday.Some models of Note7 used Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chip. But sales of Note7 aren't as big as that of Samsung's Galaxy S7 or S7 edge, which have sold in large volumes.Other device makers could release high-end devices with Snapdragon chips to replace Note7, which could fill the void in chip sales, said Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm, during the earnings call.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When it comes to enterprise data visualization, IBM Software Engineer Rosstin Murphy thinks augmented reality trumps virtual reality. In his view, VR's "transportational" nature makes it less suited to business applications."It takes you and it sends you to the moon, or to outer space or to or an alien planet," he said. "But augmented reality is transformational. It will transform the world you're already in, and for a business context, that's exactly what you want."Murphy pointed out during a talk at the Virtual Reality Developers Conference in San Francisco that AR headsets let users continue to interact with the objects on their desks, like keyboards and phones. That's important for people who want to get work done while reaping the benefits of new hardware like the Microsoft HoloLens.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Las Vegas Commercial UAV Expo Image by Magdalena Petrova Now in its second year, the Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas attracts companies who what to integrate drones into their workflows. Industries range from security, to construction, to surveying and mapping. Let's check out some of the drones that darted across our radar. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I must have touched a nerve with my last post, as I was contacted by two vendors that wanted to share their perspective on private cloud computing. Even though I don’t consider myself an analyst and therefore typically avoid “briefings,” I thought it would be interesting to see what they had to say.Both vendors covered what I consider well-trod ground: Organizations use private clouds for reasons of security/compliance, data sovereignty, data gravity (i.e., there is lots of data on-premises and it would be very difficult to migrate it to a public cloud provider), application inflexibility, and so on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
MongoDB just released version 3.4 of its database product. The company states that this release targets enterprises wanting to conduct a "digital transformation."What MongoDB appears to mean is that version of the software extends operational and analytical capabilities with the goal in mind of helping those enterprises select a single database for their "Next-Generation Applications."Here's what MongoDB has to say about version 3.4
The latest version is a major advance that places MongoDB at the center of enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives. Organizations today are focused on delivering new classes of applications, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence, which have deep operational and analytical requirements. By further strengthening the product’s always-on operational and real-time analytics capabilities, MongoDB makes it easier for enterprises to consolidate their technology footprint and accelerate their digital transformation with a single database.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The still-fragmented internet of things is slowly converging on protocols that may someday work in both homes and enterprises.The latest move to standardize how IoT devices talk to each other is a push by the Thread Group into industrial and commercial systems. Its Thread protocol, with roots in Alphabet’s Nest division, defines a low-power wireless mesh network. The organization hopes Thread will bring systems with proprietary network technologies into the Internet Protocol world, letting companies leverage their existing IP skills and technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Workplace collaboration has become increasingly focused on chat in the past couple of years, and Microsoft is jumping into the new space with both feet, launching a new product it calls Teams.Teams allows groups within a company to divide into subgroups and then set up individual channels to discuss their work. The chat-based workspace is designed to integrate deeply with the rest of Microsoft's Office 365 productivity suite, including OneDrive and Skype, for file sharing, voice and video chat. The application is available in beta starting Thursday on the web, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Aligned Energy is about to complete construction of its Phoenix data center, a facility that it claims is leading the way in terms of data center efficiency. Aligned Energy's leaders are so sure of the efficiencies they're driving that they're introducing a new model for how data center space is bought and sold.But before we look at that, let's look at some fundamentals around data centers.+ Also on Network World: Google's DeepMind A.I. can slash data center power use 40% +
It is a generally accepted fact that data centers, a massive and growing industry, is highly wasteful of both energy and water. Indeed, Greenpeace recently went out on a limb with a campaign and report questioning the environmental impact of some major data center users and calling for a move to environmentally efficient construction and operation of data centers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Announced today, the Cape Sensor is a simple device that can be installed anywhere in a company’s campus, and behaves just like any other Wi-Fi client being used in that area – the idea being that any wireless issues experienced by actual clients should be seen by the Cape Sensor operating in the same place.
ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Hottest Enterprise Networking & IT Startups of 2016 + Cisco says it'll make IoT safe because it owns the networkTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco has announced security upgrades to cut the time compromises go unnoticed on endpoints, giving attackers less time to do damage if they get past preventive security measures.Unveiled at the Cisco Partner Summit this week, the new AMP for Endpoints comes with a lightweight agent to gather data that is analyzed in the Cisco AMP cloud. This lifts the processing burden from customers’ infrastructure.And the platform now includes an agentless feature for devices that can’t take an agent, such as visitors’ laptops.In addition to the cloud version, the analytics part of the platform can also be purchased for deployment on customer premises in their own private clouds. Detection, analysis and recommended response are handled in the cloud and pushed to the endpoints.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lawmakers on Tuesday objected to a Facebook feature that allows advertisers to target housing ads to exclude certain racial and ethnic groups from promotions and marketing.In another race-related development that affects tech companies, the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said a study had indicated a pattern of discrimination by drivers of ride hailing apps against both African Americans and women.“We are writing to express our deep concerns with reports that Facebook’s 'Ethnic Affinities' advertising customization feature allows for advertisers to exclude specific racial and ethnic groups when placing housing advertisements,” Congresswoman Robin Kelly, a Democrat from Illinois, G.K. Butterfield, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and two other representatives wrote in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You’re seated in a restaurant you’ve never visited before, and the waiter hands you the menu. As you scan the items, do you look for something familiar you know you’ll like? Or do you want something you’ve never tried before?People respond differently to new situations and opportunities, sometimes with opposite reactions. “Better safe than sorry,” caution some, while others urge, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”Such reactions, engrained deep in our temperament, are described by psychologist and neuroscientists as our degree of “novelty seeking.” The trait is associated with positive aspects like curiosity and negative aspects like impulsivity. It follows a normal distribution in the population, and scientific research even suggests a genetic basis, which makes sense considering our species has sought novelty strongly enough to inhabit almost every part of the planet and beyond.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco Systems is making a play for the fundamental process of putting IoT devices online, promising greater ease of use and security as enterprises prepare to deploy potentially millions of connected objects.Thanks to a dominant position in Internet Protocol networks, Cisco can do what no other company can: Change networks that were not designed for IoT in order to pave the way for a proliferation of devices, said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager of the IoT & Applications Group.“The internet as we know it today, and the network that you operate, will not work for the internet of things,” Trollope said in a keynote presentation at the Cisco Partner Summit in San Francisco on Tuesday. “We can solve that problem because we own the network.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Law enforcement agencies across the globe staged a crackdown on so-called darknet web sites last week, targeting marchants and thousands of customers who were looking to obtain illegal drugs and goods.From Oct.22 to the 28th, the agencies took action against merchants and customers that used these sites for illicit items, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement on Monday.Unlike other websites, these underground marketplaces reside within the darknet -- a sort of parallel internet accessible to visitors via anonymizing software like Tor. While the software has legitimate uses, such as safeguarding communications in authoritarian countries, it has been adopted for more illicit means.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here