The long, slow death of private cloud continues

I must have touched a nerve with my last post, as I was contacted by two vendors that wanted to share their perspective on private cloud computing. Even though I don’t consider myself an analyst and therefore typically avoid “briefings,” I thought it would be interesting to see what they had to say.Both vendors covered what I consider well-trod ground: Organizations use private clouds for reasons of security/compliance, data sovereignty, data gravity (i.e., there is lots of data on-premises and it would be very difficult to migrate it to a public cloud provider), application inflexibility, and so on.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: MongoDB 3.4 accelerates digital transformation in the enterprise

MongoDB just released version 3.4 of its database product. The company states that this release targets enterprises wanting to conduct a "digital transformation."What MongoDB appears to mean is that version of the software extends operational and analytical capabilities with the goal in mind of helping those enterprises select a single database for their "Next-Generation Applications."Here's what MongoDB has to say about version 3.4 The latest version is a major advance that places MongoDB at the center of enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives. Organizations today are focused on delivering new classes of applications, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence, which have deep operational and analytical requirements. By further strengthening the product’s always-on operational and real-time analytics capabilities, MongoDB makes it easier for enterprises to consolidate their technology footprint and accelerate their digital transformation with a single database.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: MongoDB 3.4 accelerates digital transformation in the enterprise

MongoDB just released version 3.4 of its database product. The company states that this release targets enterprises wanting to conduct a "digital transformation."What MongoDB appears to mean is that version of the software extends operational and analytical capabilities with the goal in mind of helping those enterprises select a single database for their "Next-Generation Applications."Here's what MongoDB has to say about version 3.4 The latest version is a major advance that places MongoDB at the center of enterprises’ digital transformation initiatives. Organizations today are focused on delivering new classes of applications, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence, which have deep operational and analytical requirements. By further strengthening the product’s always-on operational and real-time analytics capabilities, MongoDB makes it easier for enterprises to consolidate their technology footprint and accelerate their digital transformation with a single database.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Thread Group aims its IoT mesh network at enterprises

The still-fragmented internet of things is slowly converging on protocols that may someday work in both homes and enterprises.The latest move to standardize how IoT devices talk to each other is a push by the Thread Group into industrial and commercial systems. Its Thread protocol, with roots in Alphabet’s Nest division, defines a low-power wireless mesh network. The organization hopes Thread will bring systems with proprietary network technologies into the Internet Protocol world, letting companies leverage their existing IP skills and technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Thread Group aims its IoT mesh network at enterprises

The still-fragmented internet of things is slowly converging on protocols that may someday work in both homes and enterprises.The latest move to standardize how IoT devices talk to each other is a push by the Thread Group into industrial and commercial systems. Its Thread protocol, with roots in Alphabet’s Nest division, defines a low-power wireless mesh network. The organization hopes Thread will bring systems with proprietary network technologies into the Internet Protocol world, letting companies leverage their existing IP skills and technologies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft goes after Slack with new Teams service

Workplace collaboration has become increasingly focused on chat in the past couple of years, and Microsoft is jumping into the new space with both feet, launching a new product it calls Teams.Teams allows groups within a company to divide into subgroups and then set up individual channels to discuss their work. The chat-based workspace is designed to integrate deeply with the rest of Microsoft's Office 365 productivity suite, including OneDrive and Skype, for file sharing, voice and video chat. The application is available in beta starting Thursday on the web, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Aligned Energy changes the data center model

Aligned Energy is about to complete construction of its Phoenix data center, a facility that it claims is leading the way in terms of data center efficiency. Aligned Energy's leaders are so sure of the efficiencies they're driving that they're introducing a new model for how data center space is bought and sold.But before we look at that, let's look at some fundamentals around data centers.+ Also on Network World: Google's DeepMind A.I. can slash data center power use 40% + It is a generally accepted fact that data centers, a massive and growing industry, is highly wasteful of both energy and water. Indeed, Greenpeace recently went out on a limb with a campaign and report questioning the environmental impact of some major data center users and calling for a move to environmentally efficient construction and operation of data centers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Aligned Energy changes the data center model

Aligned Energy is about to complete construction of its Phoenix data center, a facility that it claims is leading the way in terms of data center efficiency. Aligned Energy's leaders are so sure of the efficiencies they're driving that they're introducing a new model for how data center space is bought and sold.But before we look at that, let's look at some fundamentals around data centers.+ Also on Network World: Google's DeepMind A.I. can slash data center power use 40% + It is a generally accepted fact that data centers, a massive and growing industry, is highly wasteful of both energy and water. Indeed, Greenpeace recently went out on a limb with a campaign and report questioning the environmental impact of some major data center users and calling for a move to environmentally efficient construction and operation of data centers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Broadcom Buys Brocade Communications for $5.9B

Broadcom strengthens its enterprise storage portfolio.

Your very own canary for the wireless coal mine: Cape’s new Wi-Fi monitor

Announced today, the Cape Sensor is a simple device that can be installed anywhere in a company’s campus, and behaves just like any other Wi-Fi client being used in that area – the idea being that any wireless issues experienced by actual clients should be seen by the Cape Sensor operating in the same place. ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Hottest Enterprise Networking & IT Startups of 2016 + Cisco says it'll make IoT safe because it owns the networkTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco seeks faster time to discovery for breaches, compromises

Cisco has announced security upgrades to cut the time compromises go unnoticed on endpoints, giving attackers less time to do damage if they get past preventive security measures.Unveiled at the Cisco Partner Summit this week, the new AMP for Endpoints comes with a lightweight agent to gather data that is analyzed in the Cisco AMP cloud. This lifts the processing burden from customers’ infrastructure.And the platform now includes an agentless feature for devices that can’t take an agent, such as visitors’ laptops.In addition to the cloud version, the analytics part of the platform can also be purchased for deployment on customer premises in their own private clouds. Detection, analysis and recommended response are handled in the cloud and pushed to the endpoints.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco seeks faster time to discovery for breaches, compromises

Cisco has announced security upgrades to cut the time compromises go unnoticed on endpoints, giving attackers less time to do damage if they get past preventive security measures.Unveiled at the Cisco Partner Summit this week, the new AMP for Endpoints comes with a lightweight agent to gather data that is analyzed in the Cisco AMP cloud. This lifts the processing burden from customers’ infrastructure.And the platform now includes an agentless feature for devices that can’t take an agent, such as visitors’ laptops.In addition to the cloud version, the analytics part of the platform can also be purchased for deployment on customer premises in their own private clouds. Detection, analysis and recommended response are handled in the cloud and pushed to the endpoints.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco goes crazy with collaboration

Remember the Prince song Let’s Go Crazy? “Are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down? Oh, no let’s go! Let’s go crazy, let’s get nuts.” The famed singer and poet sang about not letting others bring you down. Instead, go crazy and get yourself out that downward spiral—at least that’s my interpretation.+ Also on Network World: Cisco CEO Robbins: Wait til you see what’s in our innovation pipeline + Cisco collaboration has gone through a similar trend. A few years ago the Cisco Collaboration Business Unit was in a free fall, and people were pointing to Microsoft, Google and startups such as Slack as being Cisco killers. Since then, the company has punched back and completely turned the business around to the point where it has now seen something like 12 consecutive quarters of growth. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Broadcom bids billions for Brocade in order to break it up

Chip maker Broadcom wants to buy storage vendor Brocade Communications Systems, stripping out its Fibre Channel business and selling the rest. Broadcom has agreed to pay around US$5.5 billion for Brocade, it said Wednesday. But it doesn't want all of it: After the deal closes -- between May and October 2017, Broadcom hopes -- it plans to sell off Brocade's IP-based wireless and campus networking, data center switching and routing, and software networking products. The bit Broadcom wants to keep, Brocade's Fibre Channel SAN business, is in for a challenging time as enterprises turn to cloud storage and hyperconverged infrastructures. Fibre Channel doesn't play well in the virtualized SANs that hyperconvergence entails.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Broadcom bids billions for Brocade in order to break it up

Chip maker Broadcom wants to buy storage vendor Brocade Communications Systems, stripping out its Fibre Channel business and selling the rest. Broadcom has agreed to pay around US$5.5 billion for Brocade, it said Wednesday. But it doesn't want all of it: After the deal closes -- between May and October 2017, Broadcom hopes -- it plans to sell off Brocade's IP-based wireless and campus networking, data center switching and routing, and software networking products. The bit Broadcom wants to keep, Brocade's Fibre Channel SAN business, is in for a challenging time as enterprises turn to cloud storage and hyperconverged infrastructures. Fibre Channel doesn't play well in the virtualized SANs that hyperconvergence entails.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Broadcom bids billions for Brocade in order to break it up

Chip maker Broadcom wants to buy storage vendor Brocade Communications Systems, stripping out its Fibre Channel business and selling the rest. Broadcom has agreed to pay around US$5.5 billion for Brocade, it said Wednesday. But it doesn't want all of it: After the deal closes -- between May and October 2017, Broadcom hopes -- it plans to sell off Brocade's IP-based wireless and campus networking, data center switching and routing, and software networking products. The bit Broadcom wants to keep, Brocade's Fibre Channel SAN business, is in for a challenging time as enterprises turn to cloud storage and hyperconverged infrastructures. Fibre Channel doesn't play well in the virtualized SANs that hyperconvergence entails.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA: Asteroid mission starts with a marriage of rocks, styrofoam and plywood

Robotically grabbing hunks of asteroid in deep space is no trivial task so it would be nice to practice the mission beforehand.That’s the goal with a mock-up asteroid NASA and the University of West Virginia recently built from rock, styrofoam, plywood and an aluminum endoskeleton. The mock-up is in preparation for NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) which will send a spacecraft to rendezvous with a target asteroid, land a robotic spacecraft on the surface, grab a 4 meter or so sized boulder and begin a six-year journey to redirect the boulder into orbit around the moon for exploration by astronauts.+More on network World: How to protect Earth from asteroid destruction; Quick look: NASA’s ambitious asteroid grabbing mission+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA: Asteroid mission starts with a marriage of rocks, styrofoam and plywood

Robotically grabbing hunks of asteroid in deep space is no trivial task so it would be nice to practice the mission beforehand.That’s the goal with a mock-up asteroid NASA and the University of West Virginia recently built from rock, styrofoam, plywood and an aluminum endoskeleton. The mock-up is in preparation for NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) which will send a spacecraft to rendezvous with a target asteroid, land a robotic spacecraft on the surface, grab a 4 meter or so sized boulder and begin a six-year journey to redirect the boulder into orbit around the moon for exploration by astronauts.+More on network World: How to protect Earth from asteroid destruction; Quick look: NASA’s ambitious asteroid grabbing mission+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Using rowhammer to root Android

Researchers have devised an attack that gains unfettered “root” access to a large number of Android phones, exploiting a relatively new type of bug that allows adversaries to manipulate data stored in memory chips. The breakthrough has the potential to make millions of Android phones vulnerable, at least until a security fix is available, to a new form of attack that seizes control of core parts of the operating system and neuters key security defenses. —ARS Technica

The post Worth Reading: Using rowhammer to root Android appeared first on 'net work.

Do smartphone trade-ins threaten corporate security?

As the holiday season approaches (OK, it may already be here), workers in your company will likely be acquiring new smartphones. In fact, a recent survey by Blancco Technology Group says a whopping 68 percent of mobile users plan to purchase a new smartphone for the holidays. That number seems high to me, but come January, you can be pretty sure there will be a lot of shiny new iPhones, Galaxies and Pixels connecting to your corporate network. But that’s not what this post is about. No, this post is about what happens to all those no-longer-shiny BYOD smartphones that used to connect to your corporate network and work with your corporate data, but have now been replaced with something new. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here