Azure Stack, Microsoft's system for building private clouds that run the same software it uses in its public cloud, has been delayed until the middle of 2017, the company announced Tuesday.Microsoft has changed its strategy and will provide Azure Stack through integrated systems built by hardware partners, rather than allowing companies to deploy the software on any compatible hardware they choose. Microsoft has been pushing Azure Stack as a differentiator of its cloud platform compared to many of its competitors in the public cloud arena -- especially Amazon. The change came about because the company wants to give businesses prevalidated hardware to simplify deployments of Azure Stack, according to Mike Schutz, the general manager of product marketing for Microsoft's Server and Tools division. At launch, Microsoft will be working with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Dell, and Lenovo. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Forget hoverboards. The Segway miniPRO is a smarter, stronger and safer personal transporter, UL 2272 Certified for the highest standards of electrical and fire safety requirements established by Underwriter Laboratories. The miniPRO has large air-filled tires suitable for almost any terrain. Its innovative knee bar makes steering easy and precise, and its powerful lithium-ion battery will take you up to 14 miles on a single charge at speeds of up to 10 miles per hour. Automatic head and tail-lights produce maximum visibility night or day, personalized from a spectrum of 16 million color variations. It comes with a full-featured app, available for iOS and Android, that lets you personalize your miniPRO, activate anti-theft features, control your miniPRO remotely, and much more. It's available to ship now, and its initial list price of $1,299 has been reduced to $699. See or buy it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It looks like it's safe to go back into the Pokemon Gyms and PokeStops, as Pokemon Go maker Niantic has addressed concerns that it has unfettered access to Google accounts of those who signed up for the popular mobile game via their iOS devices.(Those who have signed up for Pokemon Go via the Pokemon Trainer Club weren't threatened with the security/privacy issue, but it has proven difficult for some to get through the crowded Trainer Club servers.)Niantic, looking to assuage fears that it can read/send from your Gmail account and dip into your Google Docs, has issued the following statement:
Permissions update
We recently discovered that the Pokémon GO account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user’s Google account. However, Pokémon GO only accesses basic Google profile information (specifically, your User ID and email address) and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected. Once we became aware of this error, we began working on a client-side fix to request permission for only basic Google profile information, in line with the data that we actually access. Google has verified that no other information has been received or Continue reading
iPhones and cable TV have a lot in common: Consumers tend to buy more than they need. iPhones and the Android flagship phones have more features than an individual consumer will use—like cable TV has a lot of channels that an individual consumer won’t watch. Given the choice, consumers might shave their consumption of both and save a few hundred dollars to a thousand dollars a year.Compare the prices of Apple’s entry-level iPhone SE to the Moto G4 Plus. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but an insightful one, nevertheless.
The comparison is in a way apples to oranges. The iPhone SE has Apple’s powerful brand, an NFC chip for payments, and a glass and metal design. The G4 Plus, on the other hand, lacks the NFC chip and is has a mostly plastic exterior design. But the G4 Plus has a larger higher-resolution screen and its storage can be expanded with a microSD cards with as much as 128GB. Depending on the configuration of the Chinese-manufactured devices, the G4 Plus costs $150 to $200 less than the iPhone SE.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Startups are typically at the mercy of venture capitalist funding, but as of the first quarter of 2016, VCs are pulling back on how quickly they hand over that much-needed funding. According to a report from Dow Jones VentureSource, funding for U.S. startups fell 25 percent from the previous quarter -- marking the largest quarterly decline since the dot-com bust in 2000.It's bad news for startups. As these small companies feel the pressure, they're forced to budget cuts, layoffs and buy-outs as a way to stay afloat amid limited funding. Startups will need to get strategic, says Al Stevenson, a principal with WinterWyman Executive Search's Technology practice.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The most recent top 25 list of IT service providers from outsourcing analyst firm HfS Research leads with a couple of the usual suspects, with IBM and Accenture in the No. 1 and 2 spots, with 7.8 percent and 5.1 percent market shares, respectively.[ Related: 10 outsourcing trends to watch in 2016 ]But not far behind are India’s Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), at No. 5, offshore-centric Cognizant in 8th, and as-a-service Amazon Web Services (AWS) already in the No. 12 spot. HfS is calling it a “full-scale assault” on the traditional providers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Microsoft introduced the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) the common refrain was that you could use it to run Linux's beloved Bash tool but full Linux desktops were out.Turns out that wasn’t exactly true.It didn’t take long for people to note you could run an X server for windowed Linux applications. From there, it was only a short hop to running the Linux desktop on Windows without using a virtual machine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook's staff of 13,000 employees are now Microsoft Office 365 users, the social networking giant announced Tuesday.
"Do you want to know why we chose Office 365? It's because of Microsoft," Facebook CIO Tim Campos said in a video. "Microsoft got cool again."
This is a big customer win for Microsoft because tech companies are often the core domain of Google's productivity suite. The news comes as Google has been pushing harder to try and pick up enterprise customers from Microsoft with offers aimed at getting them way from long-term contracts with the company.
Office 365 met the company's needs for an office suite that is cross-platform, mobile, and secure, Campos said during a presentation at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security researchers have discovered a new malware threat that goes to great lengths to remain undetected while targeting energy companies.The malware program, which researchers from security firm SentinelOne have dubbed Furtim’s Parent, is a so-called dropper -- a program designed to download and install additional malware components and tools. The researchers believe it was released in May and was created by state-sponsored attackers.The goal of droppers is to prepare the field for the installation of other malware components that can perform specialized tasks. Their priority is to remain undetected, gain privileged access, and disable existing protections. These are all tasks that Furtim’s Parent does well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security researchers have discovered a new malware threat that goes to great lengths to remain undetected while targeting energy companies.The malware program, which researchers from security firm SentinelOne have dubbed Furtim’s Parent, is a so-called dropper -- a program designed to download and install additional malware components and tools. The researchers believe it was released in May and was created by state-sponsored attackers.The goal of droppers is to prepare the field for the installation of other malware components that can perform specialized tasks. Their priority is to remain undetected, gain privileged access, and disable existing protections. These are all tasks that Furtim’s Parent does well.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft officially ended support for Windows Server 2003 a year ago, and there was a major push to get people off the aging operating system and onto something new all through 2014 and 2015. But the zombie OS lives on mostly because people feel no urgency to get rid of it.Spiceworks, the helpdesk and monitoring provider, released a survey focused on virtualization but with a few OS tidbits as well.Virtualization use
According to Spiceworks' 2016 State of IT report, more than 76 percent of organizations today use virtualization, and another 9 percent expect to adopt it in the coming years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft officially ended support for Windows Server 2003 a year ago, and there was a major push to get people off the aging operating system and onto something new all through 2014 and 2015. But the zombie OS lives on mostly because people feel no urgency to get rid of it.Spiceworks, the helpdesk and monitoring provider, released a survey focused on virtualization but with a few OS tidbits as well.Virtualization use
According to Spiceworks' 2016 State of IT report, more than 76 percent of organizations today use virtualization, and another 9 percent expect to adopt it in the coming years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft says its Surface devices generate revenue of US$1 billion every quarter, and hopes to raise that number by putting the devices on more corporate desktops.The company is partnering with IBM, one of the world's largest software makers, to write applications specifically for Surface devices. The goal is to tailor Surface devices to meet the needs of financial, consumer goods and retail organizations.The deal is significant for Microsoft, which wants to make Surface devices more attractive to enterprises. IDC expects enterprise PC upgrades to pick up in the second half of this year, and Surface devices with tailored software could appeal to companies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chef and Puppet are often held up as the two big names in the first generation of IT automation. About the same time that virtualization was growing to dominance, these two companies, and the open source initiatives they're involved with, sprung up to allow IT operators to automate their server setup and deployment.The rationale for these players was obvious: Since servers were no longer physical items that needed to be set up in person every time, it made sense that organizations could develop "recipes" for their servers, thus eliminating repetitive setup tasks and speeding up the deployment of servers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Salesforce.com is stepping up its efforts to woo security-conscious businesses by adding "bring your own key" encryption to its Salesforce Shield cloud services.Introduced a year ago, Shield offers encryption, auditing and event-monitoring functions to help companies build cloud apps that meet compliance or governance requirements. Encryption is based on keys generated by Salesforce using a combination of an organization-specific "tenant secret" and a Salesforce-maintained master one. Originally, secrets and keys in Shield were generated and managed through Salesforce's built-in key-management infrastructure, accessed through a point-and-click interface.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Today is Amazon's biggest event of the year – Prime Day. As you read this, over 100,000 products have been dramatically discounted for today only. Laptops, cell phones, gadgets, gear, and everything in-between has been slashed up to 40% or more. You need to be a Prime member to access the deals, but a free trial of Prime - Sign up here - gets you access just the same. Jump over to Amazon and explore the seemingly endless list of products on sale right now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Today is Amazon's biggest event of the year – Prime Day. As you read this, over 100,000 products have been dramatically discounted for today only. Laptops, cell phones, gadgets, gear, and everything in-between has been slashed up to 40% or more. You need to be a Prime member to access the deals, but a free trial of Prime - Sign up here - gets you access just the same. Jump over to Amazon and explore the seemingly endless list of products on sale right now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Today is Amazon's biggest event of the year – Prime Day. As you read this, over 100,000 products have been dramatically discounted for today only. Laptops, cell phones, gadgets, gear, and everything in-between has been slashed up to 40% or more. You need to be a Prime member to access the deals, but a free trial of Prime - Sign up here - gets you access just the same. Jump over to Amazon and explore the seemingly endless list of products on sale right now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After months of uncertainty, businesses will once again have a simple, legal way to export the personal information of European Union citizens to the U.S. for processing from Aug. 1.Privacy Shield, the replacement for the defunct Safe Harbor Agreement, ensures an adequate level of protection for personal data transferred from the EU to self-certified organisations in the U.S., the European Commission ruled Tuesday morning. It plans to notify the governments of the EU's 28 member states of its adequacy decision later in the day, at which point Privacy Shield will enter effect, although it will still be a few more weeks before companies can register their compliance with it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
