This summer, multiple high-profile organizations have experienced embarrassing and financially costly business disruptions.
The explanations and excuses for these service interruptions—delivered by company executives and Monday Morning Quarterbacks alike—fail to address the underlying cause of these issues: lack of rigorous senior management oversight.
Southwest Airlines and Delta both experienced widespread consumer dissatisfaction and business outages over the last month due to what executives have blamed on equipment failures. Pundits blame the meltdowns on cobbled-together legacy infrastructure.
Both miss the point.
On July 20, 2016, Southwest Airlines IT systems went haywire due to a malfunctioning router, cancelling 700 flights and stranding thousands of passengers. Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly characterized the outage as a “once-in-a-thousand-year flood.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Every so often, I find myself with a collection of gadgets that are seemingly unrelated, until I can come up with an overarching theme worthy enough to include them all in the same roundup. Sometimes it’s the “I gotta clean up my desk” theme, sometimes it’s “the vendors are bothering me about where that writeup is.”In this case, it’s a little bit of both, but with a very thinly veiled theme - saving stuff. The following gadgets all aim to save something when you use it. It even works as a “Keith has been saving this stuff in his office until he finally figured out a theme to tie them all together” approach.Explain more, Keith!To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Surface Pro 4 powers through everything you need to do, while being lighter than ever before. Go from ultraportable tablet to a complete laptop in a snap wherever you are. The Pro 4 has the Windows you know plus lots of new features you'll love.
Various models are now discounted on Amazon:
22% off Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (128 GB, 4 GB RAM, Intel Core M)
17% off Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (256 GB, 8 GB RAM, Intel Core i7e)
16% off Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (256 GB, 8 GB RAM, Intel Core i5)
10% off Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (256 GB, 16 GB RAM, Intel Core i7e)
9% off Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (512 GB, 16 GB RAM, Intel Core i7e)
No matter what you're doing, feel like an expert from the get-go. Use the included Surface Pen to mark-up presentations, sign documents, take notes and much more. Performance and versatility for professionals, creatives, and more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cisco today turned its attention and checkbook onto another hot enterprise market by announcing it intends to buy Container X a nearly 2-year-old startup specializing in virtual container technology.ContainerX describes its technology as a turnkey container platform “designed for enterprise IT to administer as easily as they’ve administered VMware vSphere or Microsoft HyperV over the years, with dev and ops self service. Enterprise IT can set up the platform in under 60 minutes, integrate with various enterprise infrastructure aspects including storage, network, orchestration, LDAP etc, create pools with resource limits, for various dev/ops teams to self service.” the company wrote on its website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New chips can be a reason to upgrade PCs. But does Intel's latest 7th Generation Core chip, code-named Kaby Lake, have enough bite to trigger replacements of old PCs?Intel hopes so. The company is framing Kaby Lake PCs as go-to devices for productivity, virtual reality, and 4K gaming and video.So far, Kaby Lake is off to a good start. About 100 laptops, 2-in-1s, and tablets with Kaby Lake installed will be available from PC makers by the end of this year.On paper, Kaby Lake's launch comes at an inopportune time. PC shipments are slumping, the replacement cycle has slowed to six years, and consumers are instead using smartphones and phablets for computing. Many older PCs are powerful enough to run Windows 10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Power and charge in over 150 Countries with US UK EU & AUS/CHINA Plugs. This adapter works in Canada, Russia, Asia, Central America, South America and the Middle East to name a few. Dual USB charging ports for simultaneously charging your USB devices as well. A 6-amp fuse (and built-in spare fuse) is included, as well as an 18-month warranty. LOOP's travel adapter averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 580 people (read reviews). It's $39.95 list price has been reduced a generous 50% to just $19.95. To learn more, or to take advantage of this discount, hop over to Amazon. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Surface Pro 3 owners who have had problems getting reasonable battery life from their tablets have relief coming their way. Microsoft pushed out a firmware update to Surface Pro 3 devices on Monday that's supposed to fix a problem that keeps the battery from charging all the way. An error in a limited number of devices causes the system to get the wrong charge capacity for the Surface Pro 3's battery, the company said. As a result, the battery isn't charged all the way, even though the system thinks it reached capacity. "Think of this like a fuel gauge in a car, where the car looks to the fuel gauge to determine how much to fill the tank," Microsoft said in a support document accompanying the update. "In this case, if the fuel gauge isn’t working right, the car would also not be able to fill the tank—even though the tank is fine."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. cybersecurity monitor on Monday described another breach of a voter election system just after after a leaked FBI report revealed two similar attacks.In June, anonymous hackers stole administrative login credentials in an unnamed county that would have let them delete voter registration records and prevent citizens from casting ballots.The information comes from the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), which monitors cyber attacks against state and local governments and shares information with the FBI. MS-ISAC is supported by the Department of Homeland Security.The attack in June targeted a county election official through a phishing email, according to Brian Calkin, vice president of operations for the Center of Internet Security, which runs MS-ISAC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you're struggling with wifi dead zones, boost the range of your existing WiFi and create a stronger signal in hard-to-reach areas with a wifi extender, like this one from Netgear. The AC750's design is compact and discrete. Plug it into a wall outlet and it delivers AC dual band WiFi up to 750 Mbps from your existing wifi network. 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz both supported. This model averages 4 out of 5 stars from nearly 12,000 people on Amazon (read reviews) and its typical list price of $69.98 has been reduced a generous 43% to just $39.99. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This very realistic looking book cleverly conceals a solid steel locking safe. Designed to look simply like a dictionary, the diversion safe is a good consideration for a college student or anyone looking for a creative way to hide electronics, money, documents and more. You could argue that this is safer than a real safe -- thieves just won't spend their limited time looking through your books. The dictionary safe averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 140 people (read reviews). It's typical list price of $32.99 has been reduced 45% to just $17.99.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In what’s become something of an annual tradition, we talked with VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger at the outset of the virtualization leader’s VMworld 2016 conference. In this interview with Network World Senior Writer Brandon Butler and IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant, Gelsinger shared the big news from the event, including new tools that make it easier for customers to build cross-cloud environments, as well as an expanded partnership with IBM. With finalization of the Dell/EMC merger just over the horizon, Gelsinger reassured VMware customers about the company’s independence but said the resources available from that powerful ally will put ‘turbochargers’ on VMware’s back. He discussed the state of the software-defined data center and where customers stand in the deployment of virtual networks. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
The iPhone 7 expected to debut on Sept. 7 may offer a glimpse into the future of smartphones, but it won’t have 5G. And even though the next generation of cellular is due to launch in 2020, high-end handsets may be LTE-only for years to come.A new IHS Markit survey of mobile operators says they see 5G as a tool for industry more than for smartphone users. But consumers probably won’t have to worry about getting stuck in the slow lane, because LTE is still getting faster.Increasingly, it looks like 5G will handle things 4G can’t handle while LTE continues to do the job it was designed for, based on the research company’s latest findings.Most of the service providers surveyed – 79 percent – said the internet of things will be the top use case for 5G. More are coming around to this way of thinking, too. Last year, 55 percent called IoT the main application.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Dell announced the $67 billion debt-financed takeover of VMware parent company EMC in October, the news sent shockwaves across the EMC portfolio of companies, including internally at VMware, and with customers and partners."When the deal was announced, everybody was surprised, shocked," VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a pre-VMWorld interview with Network World. "It was a big, big deal and those questions were internal as well as with customers and partners... As I described it, everybody had the deer in the headlights response."
(L-R) Joe Tucci, David Goulden, Pat Gelsinger and Michael Dell in October, 2015. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With memories of Black Hat still in my head, I’m back in Las Vegas for VMworld. I’m sure there will be plenty of generic VMware and partner announcements but I’m here to assess how VMware is addressing enterprise security requirements with its technologies and partner relationships. I will be focusing on a few key areas:1. NSX penetration. Last year, VMware talked a lot about emerging demand for NSX but I’ve seen a lot of momentum over the past 12 months. From a security perspective, large organizations adopt NSX to do a better job of segmenting workloads and network traffic, as well as network security operations. I’m interested to see how VMware security use cases are maturing and how VMware customers are moving toward building additional security controls and monitoring on top of NSX capabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For years, Microsoft has been delivering speedy and accurate Bing results with experimental servers called Project Catapult, which have now received an architectural upgrade.The Catapult servers use reprogrammable chips called FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), which are central to delivering better Bing results. FPGAs can quickly score, filter, rank, and measure the relevancy of text and image queries on Bing.Microsoft has now redesigned the original Catapult server, which is used to investigate the role of FPGAs in speeding up servers. The proposed Catapult v2 design is more flexible in circumventing traditional data-center structures for machine learning and expands the role of FPGAs as accelerators.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At VMWorld this week the virtualization giant is announcing a new integrated system for building private clouds made up of the company’s virtualized compute, network and storage products packaged together with a new management software.VMware calls its new VMware Cloud Foundation product a hyperconverged infrastructure offering. It’s also meant to be the basis for VMware’s software defined data center (SDDC). Cloud Foundation will be available to run on customers’ premises or in the public cloud, making it the basis for a hybrid cloud too.Cloud Foundation is a packaging of the company’s traditional compute virtualization software vSphere with its NSX network virtualization product and its VSAN software-defined storage area network product. Cloud Foundation also includes a new software management product named SDDC Manager which controls the virtualized compute, network and storage resources. Combined, VMware envisions this system as the basis for building private clouds, running virtual desktops and hosting newly-built applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Digital transformation may promise critical benefits for the companies undertaking it, but it's also delivering a major boost to IT spending around the world.That's according to market researcher IDC, which on Monday released new data indicating that global spending on IT products and services will grow from nearly $2.4 trillion in 2016 to more than $2.7 trillion in 2020. A big part of that growth, it says, will come from companies investing in cloud, mobility, and big data technologies as part of their digital transformation efforts. Such efforts are now particularly prominent in financial services and manufacturing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FBI has reportedly found evidence that foreign hackers breached two state election databases in recent weeks.An FBI alert warning election officials about the breach was leaked, and it was posted in a report by Yahoo News on Monday. Voter registration databases from both Illinois and Arizona were targeted in the hacks, according to the report.In the Illinois case, personal data on 200,000 voters was stolen. In July, an official with the state’s board of elections warned on Facebook that the voting system had fallen to a cyberattack, forcing a shutdown.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microservices are a popular architectural approach for cloud-native applications. But the idea of deconstructing a large service into smaller componets was originally conceived for clusters and distributed platforms—when applications were trying to increase compute performance and grow storage and network not available on a single host.
Once the boundry of a server was crossed, an application’s software components required interaction via inter-server “east-to-west” communications. As this concept developed and was applied to modern-day cloud services, building blocks such as JSON, RESTful API and Thrift were added to create what we now know as microservices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
iPhone 6s users won’t care that the iPhone 7 will be much faster. Its A10 SoC that will power the iPhone 7 will be much faster based on projecting the Geekbench3 benchmarks of the A10’s predecessors by Primate Labs. On average, the A10 could be 50% faster than the A9. But for most apps, iPhone 6s users won’t perceive the speed.Benchmarks don’t matter, Visual Reaction Time does Benchmarks like the one run by Primate Labs below are useful for comparing processors but not application performance. Benchmarks do not account for the user’s interaction with the device. The A10 performance projections were made based on the average incremental performance improvement of A6 through A9.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here