Salesforce.com is moving beyond CRM and into e-commerce with the acquisition of cloud service provider Demandware.It will use the purchase to kick-start a new field of business, the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, it said Wednesday.The company already has its Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Analytics Cloud.By rebranding Demandware Commerce Cloud as its own, Salesforce will be able to combine e-commerce, order management, point-of-sale, store operations and predictive intelligence into its own platform.Commerce Cloud will allow Salesforce customers to connect with their own clients in new ways, the company said, while Demandware customers will gain access to sales, marketing and analytics functions from Salesforce. Demandware customers include L’Oreal and U.K. retail chain Marks & Spencer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
News today from DigitalOcean, the little engine that could of the cloud world. Despite being a relative unknown, at least compared to the big three of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, DigitalOcean has managed to grow incredibly fast in its short life.The company, which is headquartered in New York City, has a massive 700,000 customers globally, customers who are attracted to its super-simple offering. DigitalOcean offers the simplest of products, in contrast to the other cloud vendors that give customers a plethora of different options.While that simplicity may be a problem if and when DigitalOcean wants to go up market, for the moment it is scooping up hundreds of thousands of grassroots developers in its main market of the U.S. and Europe.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners paid about 22 percent too little for Dell when they took the company private in 2013 and will have to pay millions of dollars more to shareholders who opposed the deal, a Delaware court ruled on Tuesday.Though the buyers paid $24.9 billion, or $13.75 per share, the company's actual fair value at the time was $17.62 per share, according to Delaware Vice Chancellor Travis Laster.The decision comes in response to a lawsuit brought by a number of Dell investors who felt shortchanged by the deal. Through what's known as an appraisal suit, they asked the Chancery Court to determine the fair value of their shares at the time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Many businesses either have implemented or claim to be implementing microservice architectures, for better or for worse. Microservice architectures give you strong module boundaries, independent deployment and independent scaling of lightweight pieces, isolation of concerns, and the opportunity to use whatever technology is appropriate for each small service. On the other hand, distributed systems inherently have higher latency and more opportunities for failure than monolithic systems, as well as higher operational complexity, so the application has to be “big enough” to justify the overhead of being distributed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
On March 24th of this year, 59 printers at Northeastern University in Boston suddenly output white supremacist hate literature, part of a wave of spammed printer incidents reported at Northeastern and on at least a half dozen other campuses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
The burgeoning market for gadgets that trigger a sprinkler system, help you count the number of times you swing a bat, or dim the lights automatically are rising.That’s a concern for any business due to how these devices are also starting to show up at the corporate office for use in conference rooms, executive suites, and even as a low-cost building security camera system. Experts claim the industry is not doing enough to protect these devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Going above and beyond the typical Dad giftI’ve been a father for a decade now, so I’ve become accustomed to getting a lot of Father’s Day gifts from my wife and kids. At first it was the “Draw something cute for Dad” type of gifts, or my wife took over and got me some really cool stuff. With the kids getting older, though, I’m entering the “Typical gifts for Dad” era of my life, where I’ll end up with things like “Hey, Dad, here’s a tie” or “Hey, want this cool coffee mug?” even though I don’t wear ties or drink coffee.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As of the end of March, 93 percent of all phishing emails contained encryption ransomware, according to a report released today by PhishMe.That was up from 56 percent in December, and less than 10 percent every other month of last year.And the number of phishing emails hit 6.3 million in the first quarter of this year, a 789 percent increase over the last quarter of 2015.RELATED: How to respond to ransomware threats
The anti-phishing vendor also counted the number of different variants of phishing emails that it saw. Ransomware accounted for 51 percent of all variants in March, up from just 29 percent in February and 15 percent in January.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Just because your wireless equipment is authorized for use by the FCC doesn't mean you can do whatever the heck you please with it, according to an enforcement advisory issued by the commission just before the long weekend (see the entire warning below)."Authorized equipment must be used in a manner that complies with federal law and the Commission’s rules," reads the advisory, in part.While the advisory might appear to be stating the obvious, an FCC spokesman elaborates that "the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau is taking proactive measures to decrease the number of complaints about the use of authorized equipment in a manner that is not compliant with their authorizations. Reducing complaint volume helps us handle those that do come in in a timely manner. The issue is an ongoing, steady problem."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
An annual customer satisfaction survey says that T-Mobile is now the highest-rated of America’s big four wireless carriers, and that Comcast is no longer the least-popular ISP in the country, among other results.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: New JavaScript spam wave distributes Locky ransomware + Google cleared of infringement in Oracle lawsuit over JavaThe American Customer Satisfaction Index, released today, found that the percentage of users satisfied by T-Mobile’s service rose 6% in year-over-year terms to 74%, while the wireless service provider industry as a whole saw a 1.4% improvement, to 71%. The only named provider to lose ground was TracFone, which dropped to 75% from 77% in 2015, though that still makes it the highest-rated in the category.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Finder from FlashForge is a 3D printer designed for the beginner. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (read reviews) and it's $699 list price has been reduced by 29% to just $499. Perfect for home or a school, being both wallet friendly as well as user friendly makes this a good model for anyone who has ever wanted to get hand-on with this cutting edge technology. The unit features a slide-in build plate, assisted bed-leveling, and an intuitive color touchscreen. All heated components are encased, and the PLA is non-toxic, making it safe to use as well. Learn more about the FlashForge 3D printer and take advantage of this 29% discount now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Back in February, Apple took a big hit when it lost to patent troll VirnetX to the tune of $626 million for supposedly violating four patents related to Apple's messaging technology. Now, VirnetX wants more money and for a federal judge to permanently turn off those features. download
Download the VirnetX vs. Apple injunction court document (pdf)
VirnetX has been labeled a patent troll because it is a patent holding company and sells a single product, the Gabriel Security Platform, but has more than 80 patents. With just 14 employees in its Nevada office, the company makes most of its money by licensing patents to other firms and by suing businesses that it believes has infringed on its intellectual property. It has also sued Microsoft and Cisco.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marketing-software maker Marketo has agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for $1.79 billion, the company announced Tuesday.Marketo shareholders will receive $35.25 in cash per share -- a sum the company says represents a 64 percent premium over its closing price earlier this month, before reports emerged that it was exploring strategic alternatives.The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016. Marketo's headquarters will remain in San Mateo, California, the company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel's upcoming 7th Generation Core processor family, code-named Kaby Lake, is off to a quick start.More than 400 devices with Intel's upcoming chip design will reach the market, said Navin Shenoy, corporate vice president and general manager for Intel's Client Computing Group.One of those devices will be Asus' Surface-like Transformer 3, which will ship in the third quarter starting at US$799. The device has a 12.6-inch screen that displays images at a resolution of 2880 x 1920 pixels. It weighs 695 grams and is 6.9 millimeters thick. The device has a 13-megapixel camera, and it can be configured with a 512GB SSD and up to 8GB RAM.Shenoy, speaking during a keynote at the Computex trade show in Taipei, also showed a 2-in-1 made by Compal during the keynote. It's not clear if the first Kaby Lake chips to reach PCs will be low-power Core M or the faster Core i chips.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you work in an office, your work days include the standard routine of commuting to work and taking your place at a cubicle in a corporate facility amid your fellow employees.Most likely, your employer has provided you with a desk and a laptop, and on your desk is a telephone connected to the corporate multi-line telephone system (MLTS) known as an MLTS/PBX. Alice in accounting or David in sales is easily reached by directly dialing that person's extension number. Reaching someone outside of your company is just as easy. First, an access code is dialed, then the 10- or 11-digit telephone number of the desired remote party. The rest is telephone network magic that is likely out of sight and out of mind.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Serious vulnerabilities have crept into the software tools that PC manufacturers preload on Windows computers, but the full extent of the problem is much worse than previously thought.Researchers from security firm Duo Security have tested the software updaters that come installed by default on laptops from five PC OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) -- Acer, ASUSTeK Computer, Lenovo, Dell and HP -- and all of them had at least one serious vulnerability. The flaws could have allowed attackers to remotely execute code with system privileges, leading to a full system compromise.In most cases, the problems resulted from the OEM software updaters not using encrypted HTTPS connections when checking for or downloading updates. In addition, some updaters didn't verify that the downloaded files were digitally signed by the OEM before executing them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
So we live in a world where a guy can’t begin to sell vaping-related goods over the Internet without being shaken down by a patent troll claiming a legal right to the courtesy of sending USPS tracking codes via email.
From an Electronic Frontier Foundation press release:
In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, EFF is representing Jason Cugle, who last year began running a small business selling accessories for electronic cigarettes. Cugle, a Maryland resident, received a letter accusing his company and website (Triple7vaping.com) of violating Shipping & Transit’s patents, which relate to ideas for monitoring and reporting the status of delivery vehicles. Cugle simply sent customer shipments through the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and manually emailed each customer a message saying the package had been shipped and providing the USPS tracking number. Florida-based Shipping & Transit claims its patents cover a variety of methods of notifying people when a vehicle is about to reach its destination, including Cugle’s.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A new report from 451 Research theorizes that the “race to the bottom” of public IaaS cloud prices is an unsustainable model that is not expanding market share. Instead vendors have transitioned to a “race to the top” to add higher-level application services on top of their clouds to grow their businesses.Three years ago IaaS vendors dropped prices regularly, sometimes within hours of each other, in what appeared to be a race to the lowest prices in the cloud. Today, public cloud IaaS vendors focus much more on providing higher-level application services that run on top of their infrastructure in an effort to attract and retain customers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The SharePoint community has reacted with enthusiasm to Microsoft’s roadmap for SharePoint 2016, even though much of it is familiar to anyone who’s been using SharePoint for a while. It’s so confusingly familiar, in fact, that you may find yourself asking whether that wasn’t what SharePoint already did or wondering what else SharePoint was trying to do.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Apple is looking to make evolutionary rather than revolutionary changes to its iPhone this year as it extends the major refresh cycle to once every three years, according to a report in Tuesday's Nikkei newspaper.
The change, which the newspaper said Apple is "likely" to make, is due to there being little room left for major advances in smartphone hardware -- at least until an entirely new technology comes on the scene. As chips get faster and software gets better, the benefits seen by annual upgrades are getting smaller.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch
Nikkei said this year's model will look "almost identical" to the iPhone 6 and have minor changes such as improved camera quality, water resistance and a better battery. The headphone jack is also slated to be removed, it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here