The Internet of Things is a business phenomenon at least as much as it is a technological one, which means that every company in the world with a possible angle on IoT is doing its best to claim a piece of the large and growing pie. In the case of the big four U.S. mobile data providers, the trick is selling more than just connectivity.To talk about the big four as a single entity, however, is slightly misleading. The bigger two – AT&T and Verizon – have a considerable lead in customer reach and technological maturity over T-Mobile and Sprint, with both of the former companies on track to deliver about $1 billion in IoT-related revenue in 2018, according to 451 Research vice president Brian Partridge.To read this article in full, please click here
The Internet of Things is a business phenomenon at least as much as it is a technological one, which means that every company in the world with a possible angle on IoT is doing its best to claim a piece of the large and growing pie. In the case of the big four U.S. mobile data providers, the trick is selling more than just connectivity.To talk about the big four as a single entity, however, is slightly misleading. The bigger two – AT&T and Verizon – have a considerable lead in customer reach and technological maturity over T-Mobile and Sprint, with both of the former companies on track to deliver about $1 billion in IoT-related revenue in 2018, according to 451 Research vice president Brian Partridge.To read this article in full, please click here
I didn’t even stop to imagine that people pronounced Linux commands differently until many years ago when I heard a coworker use the word “vie” (as in "The teams will vie for the title") for what I’d always pronounced “vee I”. It was a moment that I’ll never forget. Our homogenous and somewhat rebellious community of Unix/Linux advocates seemed to have descended into dialects – not just preferences for Solaris or Red Hat or Debian or some other variant (fewer back in those days than we have today), but different ways of referring to the commands we knew and used every day.The "problem" has a number of causes. For one thing, our beloved man pages don't include pronunciation guidelines like dictionaries do. For another, Unix commands evolved with a number of different pronunciation rules. The names of some commands (like "cat") were derived from words (like "concatenate") and were pronounced as if they were words too (some actually are). Others derived from phrases like "cpio" which pull together the idea of copying (cp) and I/O. Others are simply abbreviations like "cd" for "change directory". And then we have tools like "awk" that go in an entirely different direction by Continue reading
The tech industry got a jolt last week worse than the 3.5 magnitude quake that hit Oakland, California, on Monday. A report by Bloomberg, citing the usual anonymous sources, said that after a whole lot of R&D and hype, Qualcomm was looking to shut down or sell its Centriq line of ARM-based data center processors.Qualcomm launched the 48-core Centriq 2400 last November. At the time, potential customers, such as Microsoft, Alibaba and HPE, took to the stage to voice their support and interest.To read this article in full, please click here
HPE today took a step toward bolstering its data-center technology with plans to acquire Plexxi and its hyperconverged networking fabric.HPE said it expects the deal to close in its third quarter, which ends July 31, 2018 but did not release other financial details. Plexxi was founded in 2010 and targeted the nascent software-defined networking (SDN) market.[ Check out our 12 most powerful hyperconverged infrasctructure vendors. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
“Plexxi’s technology will extend HPE’s market-leading software-defined compute and storage capabilities into the high-growth, software-defined networking market, expanding our addressable market and strengthening our offerings for customers and partners,”To read this article in full, please click here
For traditional Communications Service Providers (CSPs), the barriers to applying automation are coming down faster than ever before due to the use of new technologies such as analytics and machine learning. So, what is different, and why is now the time to act?The three V’s of automationWithin most traditional Operations Support System (OSS) projects there is an established methodology for identifying the environments best suited for automation. People use different names for these network automation target areas, but I like to refer to them as The Three V’s. These are:WHITE PAPERTo read this article in full, please click here
When three major vendors all make similar product announcements, you know things are cooking in that space. In this case, Hitachi Vantara, HP Enterprise, and IBM all made news around SSD-based storage, much of it related to de-duplication and other ways to get control over data creep.With users generating gigabytes of data every week, the solution for many enterprises has been to throw storage at it. That can get expensive, especially with SSD. SSD averages about 40 cents per gigabyte, while HDD storage averages about 5 cents per gigabyte.To get control over data sprawl, storage vendors are offering de-duplication, or in the case of Hitachi Vantara, better de-duplication with their new systems. We’ll run down the news alphabetically.To read this article in full, please click here
At Nutanix's .NEXT user conference last week, the company certainly flexed its software muscles with a cornucopia of new products and a roadmap to becoming the next big enterprise platform vendor. To achieve this status, Nutanix has shifted to selling software and letting its customers run its stack on their preferred hardware platform.There is currently a wide range of hardware partners supporting Nutanix, including Lenovo, IBM, and HPE. However, the vendor that has done perhaps the best job at providing the widest range of options for Nutanix customers is Dell EMC.To read this article in full, please click here
The Justice Department investigation into Huawei recalls a similar probe into whether Shenzhen rival ZTE broke U.S. sanctions by exporting devices containing American components to Iran. ZTE was found guilty last year not only of breaking the sanctions, which resulted in an $892 million fine, but of breaking the settlement deal’s terms by failing to punish those involved.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
It’s rare to see a processor find great success outside of the area it was intended for, but that’s exactly what has happened to the graphics processing unit (GPU). A chip originally intended to speed up gaming graphics and nothing more now powers everything from Adobe Premier and databases to high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI).GPUs are now offered in servers from every major OEM plus off-brand vendors like Supermicro, but they aren’t doing graphics acceleration. That’s because the GPU is in essence a giant math co-processor, now being used to perform computation-intensive work ranging from 3D simulations to medical imaging to financial modelingTo read this article in full, please click here
When it comes to security and manageability, Enterprise of Things (EoT) devices must have far more stringent requirements than consumer IoT devices, which often have virtually no built-in security. Indeed, enterprise use of consumer-grade IoT is highly risky.Making the matter even more urgent is the growing number of deployed EoT devices, which is expected to increase significantly over the next two to three years. (I estimate there will be more “things” in an enterprise than PC and mobile phone clients combined within three to four years.)To read this article in full, please click here
The rise of programmable networks has changed the role of the network engineer, and accepting those changes is key to career advancement. Network engineers need to become software fluent and embrace automation, according to a panel of network professionals brought together by Cisco to discuss the future of networking careers.[ For more on SDN see where SDN is going and learn the difference between SDN and NFV. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
“The whole concept of engineer re-skilling has become a pretty hot topic over the last four or five years. What’s notable to me is that the engineers themselves are now embracing it,” says Zeus Kerravala, founder of ZK Research, who moderated the panel. To read this article in full, please click here
The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to make machines smarter, industrial processes more efficient and consumer devices more responsive to our needs. According to research firm Gartner, there will be more than 20 billion connected things in use worldwide by 2020.But these constrained devices often run on woefully out-of-date software that must be manually patched and upgraded; the market potential is enormous, but so are the risks.[ Click here to download a PDF bundle of five essential articles about IoT in the enterprise. ]
Figuring out successful IoT business models is still a work in progress, and many are trying. We’ve looked at a large sampling of companies that have formed to work on these problems and pared the list down to 10 that warrant special attention. (See how we did it.)To read this article in full, please click here
The competition to find 10 hot IoT startups to watch began with 79 contenders, 14 of which were eliminated in round 1 for not really being IoT startups or for not following directions. (Pro tip: if you try the hard-to-get strategy - making us chase you down for the information we already asked for in my query – we won’t play that game. We just hit “delete” instead.)In Round 2, visitors to our website, Startup50.com, cast votes for their three favorite startups, with votes weighted at five points for a first-place vote, two points for a second-place vote and one point for a third-place vote. Only the top 20 startups moved into the final round.To read this article in full, please click here
Every big vendor has had to start small and then grow into a major platform. Nutanix is no exception. And this week at its .NEXT user conference, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) provider outlined a plan to move from being a niche vendor that makes VDI work better to becoming the next big enterprise platform vendor.In a recent interview, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey talked about the building blocks of becoming a major enterprise vendor. Nutanix started off with an integrated hardware/software appliance to deliver its HCI solution. Pandey referred to this as their “iPhone,” meaning it was a fully integrated and turnkey product where Nutanix owns the entire experience.To read this article in full, please click here
Every big vendor has had to start small and then grow into a major platform. Nutanix is no exception. And this week at its .NEXT user conference, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) provider outlined a plan to move from being a niche vendor that makes VDI work better to becoming the next big enterprise platform vendor.In a recent interview, Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey talked about the building blocks of becoming a major enterprise vendor. Nutanix started off with an integrated hardware/software appliance to deliver its HCI solution. Pandey referred to this as their “iPhone,” meaning it was a fully integrated and turnkey product where Nutanix owns the entire experience.To read this article in full, please click here
10 competitors Cisco just can't kill offImage by IDG / jesadaphorn, Getty ImagesCreating a short list of key Cisco competitors is no easy task as the company now competes in multiple markets. In this case we tried to pick companies that have been around awhile or firms that have developed key technologies that directly impacted the networking giant. Cisco is now pushing heavily into software and security, a move that will open it up to myriad new competitors as well. Take a look.To read this article in full, please click here
When I started my journey in the technology sector back in the early 2000’s, the world of networking comprised of simple structures. I remember configuring several standard branch sites that would connect to a central headquarters. There was only a handful of remote warriors who were assigned, and usually just a few high-ranking officials.As the dependence on networking increased, so did the complexity of network designs. The standard single site became dual based with redundant connectivity to different providers, advanced failover techniques, and high availability designs became the norm. The number of remote workers increased and eventually, security holes began to open in my network design.To read this article in full, please click here
Enterprise applications are subjected to intense but unpredictable loads. Ensuring consistent application delivery, in line with Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees, requires sophisticated load balancing and related capabilities for clustering, performance management and so forth. Application Delivery Controllers perform these tasks, helping application owners deliver a reliable, fast application user experience.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
"I am all about useful tools. One of my mottos is 'the right tool for the right job.'" –Martha StewartIf your "right job" involves wrangling computer networks and figuring out how to do digital things effectively and efficiently or diagnosing why digital things aren't working as they're supposed to, you've got your hands full. Not only does your job evolve incredibly quickly becoming evermore complex, but whatever tools you use need frequent updating and/or replacing to keep pace, and that's what we're here for; to help in your quest for the right tools.[ Don’t miss customer reviews of top remote access tools and see the most powerful IoT companies . | Get daily insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
We've done several roundups of free network tools in the past, and since the last one, technology has, if anything, sped up even more. To help you keep up, we've compiled a new shortlist of seven of the most useful tools that you should add to your toolbox.To read this article in full, please click here