Network managers should be checking their list twice

Make sure it is a holly jolly time of the yearAs IT Ops teams begin preparation for the upcoming holiday season, which in retail is the busiest time of the year for web traffic, the team at BigPanda along with some other vendors have prepared a checklist of the key factors IT Ops teams need to consider to ensure their IT infrastructure is ready.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network managers should be checking their list twice

Make sure it is a holly jolly time of the yearAs IT Ops teams begin preparation for the upcoming holiday season, which in retail is the busiest time of the year for web traffic, the team at BigPanda along with some other vendors have prepared a checklist of the key factors IT Ops teams need to consider to ensure their IT infrastructure is ready.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 11.21.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.BetterWorks Program AutopilotKey features: BetterWorks Program Autopilot helps enterprise customers automate goal setting and performance management program administration. Automated program reminders, timely communications and usage dashboards all ensure engagement and adoption without administrative overhead. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 11.21.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.BetterWorks Program AutopilotKey features: BetterWorks Program Autopilot helps enterprise customers automate goal setting and performance management program administration. Automated program reminders, timely communications and usage dashboards all ensure engagement and adoption without administrative overhead. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 11.21.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.BetterWorks Program AutopilotKey features: BetterWorks Program Autopilot helps enterprise customers automate goal setting and performance management program administration. Automated program reminders, timely communications and usage dashboards all ensure engagement and adoption without administrative overhead. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 reasons to divorce the cloud

For some companies, using cloud services isn’t what they hoped or expected it to be. Reason’s like these might be enough to make them leave. 1. Your costs went out of the control. This can be significant. Prices go up and go down. A new product gets introduced that might be more financially attractive—but only if you started from that point and not if you include the added cost of migration (documentation, security and other audit) not to mention re-budgeting and rate of return over the lifecycle of the data flows. 2. Security was tougher than you thought. You were probably smart and already had extensive key control, but perhaps your cloud vendor wanted it done their way. Asset control, the cost of embedding security control planes and audit infrastructure that duplicates data center standards created a duopoly of security infrastructure—perhaps both equal but not the same—adding to costs of control, training, documentation, audit and more. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pandora FMS wins open-source management shootout

Doing more with less remains an ongoing challenge for IT execs. Making sure everything keeps humming along to meet service-level agreements can be challenging for resource-stretched IT departments. For all but the smallest shops, effective monitoring requires tools that provide a meta view of the entire infrastructure with drill-down capabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

2016 – the year 5G wireless testing really took off

The concept of 5G wireless has been around for a long time, but only recently have meaningful moves taken place to bring the new technology to customers.5G stakeholders – which include silicon giants such as Qualcomm and Intel, infrastructure players like Ericsson and Nokia, and, of course the major wireless carriers – have been unsurprisingly bullish on the technology’s rapid advance, announcing numerous breakthroughs and field trials over the past several months. We’ve constructed a timeline of these 5G trials, embedded below, to give you a visual sense of how much action has been taking place.+ MORE: Read our 5G FAQ +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What we talk about when we talk about 5G wireless

So what is 5G, exactly, anyway? Well, if you’re asking about “exactly,” it doesn’t exist yet. Oh, that helps me a lot. Sorry. But the best answer to your question is probably that 5G is sort of a catch-all name to describe the next generation of carrier wireless technology that’s going to be slinging tweets and videos and connected home signals from the internet to your smartphone or your smartwatch or, really, any smart object you’ve got handy. So why’s it better than 4G? Haven’t we had enough Gs? Oh, not hardly. You see, 5G – like 4G, and the rest of the Gs, in fact – is entirely a marketing term, meant to give an overview of a certain generation of carrier wireless tech. Most of what we’ve got in this country that we refer to as 4G is called LTE, although regular LTE isn’t quite 4G, according to standards groups, and LTE Advanced.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Best open source management tools

Open source holds up to commercial productsOpen source software provides an attractive alternative to more costly commercial products, but can open source products deliver enterprise-grade results? To answer this question we tested four open source products: OpenNMS, Pandora FMS, NetXMS and Zabbix. All four products were surprisingly good. We liked Pandora FMS for its ease of installation and modern user interface. In general, we found configuration to be easier and more intuitive with Pandora than the other contenders. NetXMS came in a close second with a nice user interface, easy to configure rules and a solid user manual. Overall, we found all four products suitable for enterprise use, particularly in small-to-midsize environments. (Read the full review.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

2016 – the year 5G wireless testing really took off

The concept of 5G wireless has been around for a long time, but only recently have meaningful moves taken place to bring the new technology to customers.5G stakeholders – which include silicon giants such as Qualcomm and Intel, infrastructure players like Ericsson and Nokia, and, of course the major wireless carriers – have been unsurprisingly bullish on the technology’s rapid advance, announcing numerous breakthroughs and field trials over the past several months. We’ve constructed a timeline of these 5G trials, embedded below, to give you a visual sense of how much action has been taking place.+ MORE: Read our 5G FAQ +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ultimate guide to setting up a small business Wi-Fi network

A peek inside a typical small business today will likely reveal lots of wireless devices, with little, if any, wired hardware in evidence. Problems could occur, however, if the small business deploys consumer-centric access points targeted at home users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

First Speakers in Building Network Automation Solutions Online Course

Like with the Next-Generation Data Center course, the live sessions in the Building Network Automation Solutions course include guest speakers, Q&A discussions, and solutions to sample challenges that you’ll be able to use to complete your homework assignments.

The guest speakers for the January 2016 course include:

Apple offers new battery for iPhone 6s phones that suddenly shut down

Apple has said that a few iPhone 6s smartphones are unexpectedly shutting down, confirming a problem reported last week by a Chinese consumer protection group.The company said the problem is restricted to a small number of phones within a limited serial number range that were manufactured between September and October last year.Apple said it was not a safety issue, and appeared to suggest that the problem would be resolved by a replacement battery which the company offered free. It did not say how many iPhone 6s phones were affected and in which markets.The China Consumers Association asked Apple to investigate problems with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s phones that were automatically shutting off. The unexpected shutdowns were said to happen when the phone’s battery charge dropped to between 60 and 50 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM Opens IoT Solutions Group Dedicated to Watson Platform

The goal is to help customers tackle industry-specific IoT challenges.

Symantec will acquire identity protection firm LifeLock in $2.3B deal

Aiming to boost its consumer security business, Symantec is acquiring LifeLock, a vendor of identity protection services, for US$2.3 billion in enterprise value. The deal will create what the two companies described as the world’s largest consumer security business with over $2.3 billion in annual revenue based on last fiscal year revenue for both companies. The immediate opportunity for Symantec comes from the large number of consumers worldwide that have been victims of cybercrime, generating as a result greater user concern in digital safety. The companies estimate the market at $10 billion, and growing in the high single digits. In the U.S. alone, the total addressable market is estimated to be about 80 million people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Symantec will acquire identity protection firm LifeLock in $2.3B deal

Aiming to boost its consumer security business, Symantec is acquiring LifeLock, a vendor of identity protection services, for US$2.3 billion in enterprise value. The deal will create what the two companies described as the world’s largest consumer security business with over $2.3 billion in annual revenue based on last fiscal year revenue for both companies. The immediate opportunity for Symantec comes from the large number of consumers worldwide that have been victims of cybercrime, generating as a result greater user concern in digital safety. The companies estimate the market at $10 billion, and growing in the high single digits. In the U.S. alone, the total addressable market is estimated to be about 80 million people.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

50-plus jaw-dropping Black Friday 2016 tech deals

Some have begun referring to this month as Black November since pre-Black Friday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales have all blended together. Not all the supposed deals are actually deals at all – in many cases, the retailers are just trying to offload stuff – but there are plenty of bargains to be had on the hottest smartphones, tablets, PCs and gaming systems. Here’s a look at some of the best deals.Websites such as BFads.net, BlackFriday.com and BestBlackFriday.com have all been helpful in collecting this information. MORE: Best Black Friday Apple Watch dealsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 8 launch will see Apple release 3 brand new devices

Given that the overall design of the iPhone hasn't changed much since the release of the iPhone 6 back in 2014, there's a lot of pressure on Apple to deliver a home run when the company launches the iPhone 8 later next year.Though next year's iPhone would ordinarily be called the iPhone 7s, it's widely believed that Apple's next-gen iPhone will represent such a compelling upgrade that Apple will opt to call it the iPhone 8 instead.Now as for what Apple has in store for us with the iPhone 8, the company's plans are beginning to crystalize slowly but surely. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via Apple Insider), Apple next year will introduce three distinct iPhone models.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 8 launch will see Apple release 3 brand-new devices

Given that the overall design of the iPhone hasn't changed much since the release of the iPhone 6 back in 2014, there's a lot of pressure on Apple to deliver a home run when the company launches the iPhone 8 later next year.Though next year's iPhone would ordinarily be called the iPhone 7s, it's widely believed that Apple's next-gen iPhone will represent such a compelling upgrade that Apple will opt to call it the iPhone 8 instead.Now, as for what Apple has in store for us with the iPhone 8, the company's plans are beginning to crystalize slowly but surely. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (via Apple Insider), Apple next year will introduce three distinct iPhone models.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here