At MWC, Machine Learning and AI Suddenly Get the Spotlight

The cloud took operators by surprise. They want AI to have a different story.

Amazon S3 Outage: Another Opinion Piece

So Amazon S3 had some “issues” last week and it’s taken me a few days to put my thoughts together around this. Hopefully I’ve made the tail-end of the still interested-enough-to-find-this-blog-valuable period.

Trying to make the best of a bad situation, the good news, in my opinion, is that this shows that infrastructure people still have a place in the automated cloudy world of the future. At least that’s something right?

What happened:

You can read the detailed explanation on Amazon’s summary here.

In a nutshell

• there was a small problem
• they tried to fix it
• things went bad for a relatively short time
• They fixed it

What happened during:

The internet lost it’s minds. Or more accurately, some parts of the internet went down. Some of them extremely ironic

Initial thoughts

The reaction to this event is amusing and it drives home the point that infrastructure engineers are as critical as ever, if not even more important considering the complete lack of architecture that seems to have gone into the majority of these “applications”.

First let’s talk about availability: Looking at the Amazon AWS S3 SLA, available here, it looks like they did fall below there 99.9% SLA for Continue reading

Cisco’s exam prices increase for first time in three years

Cisco recently updated the pricing for its certification exams, raising them by between 10 and 20 percent.Certification exams price increases include (all amounts in US dollars): Entry Skills exams (certifications 101-105 and 200-105) changed from $150 to $165, a 10% increase CCN Routing and Switching exam (certifications 220-125) increased from $295 to $325, a 10% increase Professional, Specialist and Technical skill certification exams (300, 500, 600, 640, 642, 642 and 648 series certifications), went up from $250 to $300, a 20% increase. CCIE and CCDE written exams, (350 and 400 level certifications, as well as the 352 level exams) rose from $400 to $450, a 12.5% increase. “Cisco continues to make investments in the content and integrity of its certification and training program to support the increased demand for skilled IT professionals,” wrote Chris Jacobs, Director of certifications and lab deliveries in Cisco's Technical Services Department. “As a result, effective February 9, 2017, Cisco has adjusted the prices of some of its certification exams to align with this effort.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Cisco’s identity crisis

Our Cisco team has been reaching out to get feedback on our relationship with Cisco and its products — a healthy practice for any vendor. I’ve tried to be open, honest, and consistent in all our talks. As I mentally review our conversations, I conclude I’ve been contradictory. On one hand, I’ve talked about how the industry is changing and Cisco’s products need to evolve in a software-defined marketplace. At the same time, I’ve decried their decision to move last-generation data center products to the campus portfolio to make way for newer technology. —Eyvonne Sharp

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IDG Contributor Network: The future of work is surprisingly human: 2 trends to relieve your fears

AI, big data and bots! Oh my! You don’t need to be a troglodyte or tech-wary prognosticator to fear the future of work. Everywhere we look, the same trend is making headlines: less human, more artificial. But is the future of work really inhuman? To answer that question, it is vital to understand the rise of tech at both the popular and professional level. While it’s certainly given us the ability to defy distance, only recent innovations have cracked the code, allowing us to truly relate. Many lament the perceived shallowness of this tide, but communication and collaboration are primitive desires. We are, after all, tribal creatures who rally around shared purposes and common goals. Dangers exist, but the good news is technology is finally catching up with human nature.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: 17 questions to measure DevOps

If you ask 10 people to define DevOps, you’ll probably get 10 different answers. Some answers will focus on culture and collaboration; others may focus on tooling. (If you’re interested in our definition of DevOps, we wrote a post called What is DevOps?)DevOps is hard to pin down, but most people agree that it’s about much more than tooling. It’s about people, processes and tools — and probably in that order. It’s about aligning team values and workflows to achieve business objectives. By adopting DevOps practices, you can move faster without sacrificing quality, and set yourself up for future innovation and growth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s Slack competitor is coming March 14

Microsoft’s entry into the modern workplace chat app market will be generally available in a week. The company announced Tuesday it will be marking the occasion with a webcast to discuss what’s new since the service was announced last year.The Teams product is Microsoft’s answer to group chat apps like Slack and HipChat. The service provides Office 365 customers with shared workspaces they can use to discuss work with one another. It connects with Office 365 to let users collaborate on notes, documents, spreadsheets, and more while discussing work in the same place.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Raspberry Pi roundup: Happy 5th birthday, baby! Also, new software, a tough piano, and, well, Windows 98

I am a shameful forgetter of important dates, as family and ex-girlfriends will be happy to tell you. They can detail the brainless “duh?” expression, with tinges of dawning comprehension, that I make when I am reminded that, yes, it’s today, and yes, I have forgotten.It’s a different story, professionally – I did remember that the Raspberry Pi’s fifth birthday took place this weekend, but I was traveling to cover a wireless company’s annual conference for work, and I simply couldn’t fit it in. So, to the little tiny computer that was one of the very first stories I covered for Network World, I’m sorry. I really did have other stuff to do.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Catalyst for Cloud Networking with Containerization

Today's applications are connected both to users and other applications, increasing traffic and profoundly affecting performance.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise to Buy Nimble Storage for $1B

It's a maneuver mostly – but not entirely – about size.

50% off Corsair Gaming MM300 Anti-Fray Cloth Gaming Mouse Pad – Deal Alert

The MM300 is a high endurance, pro-grade cloth mouse pad for high-DPI gaming mice. Reinforced stitched edges guard against surface peeling, and the optimized textile-weaved surface design gives superior control and precision tracking for absolutely lethal in-game accuracy. With multiple sizes available, from small to extended, the MM300 has just the right size to fit your needs.  This gaming pad currently averages 4.7 out of 5 stars from over 700 people (read reviews) on Amazon, where the extended version's typical list price of $29.99 has been recently dropped 50% to just $14.99.  See this deal now on Amazon To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Trust in our systems: Chapter 11 and Avaya’s prognosis

In times of uncertainty, it is best to trust our systems. There are systems that keep us safe such as air traffic control, providing that we arrive at safely distant destinations. There are street light systems that help us cross at busy intersections. In our government, we must have faith in systems, including our separation of powers and a free press.For the business world, other systems such as the Chapter 11 processes, may not be well understood, but many experts argue are critical.The Chapter 11 set of processes are especially important at this period of time for the universe of stakeholders that I wrote about recently in "Avaya’s Chapter 11 filing sends waves of disruption." In this follow-up post, I’ll talk a bit about the Chapter 11 processes and provide some information I gained recently that makes me feel just a bit more comfortable about the future for that universe that surrounds Avaya. Part of this is some recent research and part is due to a briefing that I participated in with Avaya corporate treasurer John Sullivan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HPE Snaps Up Flash Supplier Nimble Storage

Both Fixed and Mobile Operators Join to Incorporate NFV into 5G

They don’t want the NFV wheel reinvented for 5G.

IDG Contributor Network: Can we trust the public cloud vendors?

Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) outage on Feb. 28 took down many well-known websites and web services. For the complete post-mortem from Amazon Web Services (AWS), read this lengthy explanation of what went wrong and what AWS is doing to address the issue.If the full explanation too long and too complicated, here is a short version: An administrator was going to perform maintenance on a set of S3 servers. He mis-typed the command to take a set of servers offline, and more servers than intended were taken off line This took the entire S3 environment in the U.S. East Zone closer to the edge in capacity than the system was designed for and caused widespread availability issues in web services that relied upon the S3 environment.  More instructive and more worrisome are the steps Amazon took to prevent this issue from happening again:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Can we trust the public cloud vendors?

Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) outage on Feb. 28 took down many well-known websites and web services. For the complete post-mortem from Amazon Web Services (AWS), read this lengthy explanation of what went wrong and what AWS is doing to address the issue.If the full explanation too long and too complicated, here is a short version: An administrator was going to perform maintenance on a set of S3 servers. He mis-typed the command to take a set of servers offline, and more servers than intended were taken off line This took the entire S3 environment in the U.S. East Zone closer to the edge in capacity than the system was designed for and caused widespread availability issues in web services that relied upon the S3 environment.  More instructive and more worrisome are the steps Amazon took to prevent this issue from happening again:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Automation

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ZTE pays $892M settlement to US over illegal sales to Iran

Chinese smartphone maker ZTE has agreed to pay US$892 million to the U.S. government for illegally selling networking technology to Iran.   ZTE entered a guilty plea over the charges, which include violating export controls meant to keep sensitive U.S. technology away from the Iranian government, the U.S Department of Justice said on Tuesday. "They (ZTE) lied to federal investigators and even deceived their own counsel and internal investigators about their illegal acts," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ZTE pays $892M settlement to US over illegal sales to Iran

Chinese smartphone maker ZTE has agreed to pay US$892 million to the U.S. government for illegally selling networking technology to Iran.   ZTE entered a guilty plea over the charges, which include violating export controls meant to keep sensitive U.S. technology away from the Iranian government, the U.S Department of Justice said on Tuesday. "They (ZTE) lied to federal investigators and even deceived their own counsel and internal investigators about their illegal acts," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Digital Transformation Impact on Enterprise Architecture

Digital transformation is a top business initiative for CIO’s. What does it really mean for IT and how does it impact the business itself?  In this post, we will try to cover some of the basics.

Digital transformation is a fundamental change to an organization’s product development and product delivery process to deliver a highly personalized product or service. This often involves using technology such as big data analytics, social, mobile and cloud as a means to deliver these services to the consumer. Digital transformation also implies the ability to create sustainable business differentiation with software and the ability to rapidly introduce new products and services to meet new customer needs.

Industry veterans and incumbent giants are facing significant competitive pressure and potential disruption from new market players. Startups (such as Uber, Tesla, and many others) have moved quickly from being niche players to be a dominant force in many verticals such as auto, banking, manufacturing, healthcare. Industry leaders from large enterprises acknowledge this trend and are now looking to transform their product development process and customer engagement to compete with new players –

• Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMC – 2015 Annual Report to shareholders
  • “Silicon Valley is coming. Continue reading