Take a Brief Survey to Support Community Networks

The Internet Society has worked with NetCommons to promote community networks. They are a conducting a survey to examine users’ concerns about Internet use and explore the potential of alternative Internet provision.

The netCommons project funded by EU (EU Horizon 2020 project netCommons: Network Infrastructure as Commons) aspires to study, support, and further promote community-based networking and communication services that can offer a complement, or even an alternative, to the global Internet’s current dominant model. It involves a collaboration of six organizations, namely the University of Trento in Italy, The Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Spain, the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, the University of Westminster (UK), the Athens University of Economics and Business in Greece, and the non-profit organization Nethood in Switzerland. 

Community networks provide citizens with access to a neutral, bottom- up network infrastructure, which increases the transparency of data flow, but they also represent an archetype of networked collective cooperation and action, mixing common or communal ownership and management of an infrastructure with a balanced set of services supported by the local stakeholders. In this way, they are a departure from the standard Internet, which is dominated by commercial Internet providers, global corporate Continue reading

On-premises data center spending drops in priority

A survey has found that on-premises data centers are the lowest priority for investment by IT organizations, a reflection of the growing impact of cloud infrastructure and services. For Computer Economics’ annual IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks report, the organization surveyed more than 200 IT organizations over the first half of this year. It noted that top-line findings show that IT organizations continue on a path of “steady but modest growth in operational budgets while capital budgets and hiring are essentially flat.”+ Also on Network World: IT budgets shift away from capital expenses thanks to the cloud + Now, that’s not to say data center spending will be cut. It’s just that it won’t get the priority for increased spending and is being reduced. IT capital spending now accounts for only 18% of total IT spending, compared to 24% in 2013. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

On-premises data center spending drops in priority

A survey has found that on-premises data centers are the lowest priority for investment by IT organizations, a reflection of the growing impact of cloud infrastructure and services. For Computer Economics’ annual IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks report, the organization surveyed more than 200 IT organizations over the first half of this year. It noted that top-line findings show that IT organizations continue on a path of “steady but modest growth in operational budgets while capital budgets and hiring are essentially flat.”+ Also on Network World: IT budgets shift away from capital expenses thanks to the cloud + Now, that’s not to say data center spending will be cut. It’s just that it won’t get the priority for increased spending and is being reduced. IT capital spending now accounts for only 18% of total IT spending, compared to 24% in 2013. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Drilling Into Microsoft’s BrainWave Soft Deep Learning Chip

There are a lot of different ways to skin the deep learning cat. But for hyperscalers and cloud providers who want to use a single platform internally as well as providing deep learning services to customers externally, they really want to have as few different architectures as possible in their datacenters to maximize efficiencies and to lower both capital and operational costs. This is particularly true when the hyperscaler is also a cloud provider.

If Moore’s Law had not run out of gas – or at least shifted to lower octane fuel – then the choice would have been easy.

Drilling Into Microsoft’s BrainWave Soft Deep Learning Chip was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Cumulus does container networking the right way

About a month ago, someone asked me to define the term “digital transformation.” At first, I thought about giving a long technical definition that mentioned the convergences of people, process and data, but then I shortened to one word — speed. Digital transformation is all about doing things faster than the competition. This is one of those things that’s easier to say than do. Most businesses simply can’t move faster just because they want to. Instead it requires an entirely new approach to IT. Gartner uses the term “Mode 2,” but other terms are things like agile development or DevOps. + Also on Network World: Adapting the network for the rise of containers + This new approach to IT has brought with it several new technologies, one of which is containers. The use of containers has steadily increased because IT departments can quickly spin them up, do whatever task they need to do and then shut them down. The whole process can be automated, so the IT organization doesn’t even need to be involved. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cumulus does container networking the right way

About a month ago, someone asked me to define the term “digital transformation.” At first, I thought about giving a long technical definition that mentioned the convergences of people, process and data, but then I shortened to one word — speed. Digital transformation is all about doing things faster than the competition. This is one of those things that’s easier to say than do. Most businesses simply can’t move faster just because they want to. Instead it requires an entirely new approach to IT. Gartner uses the term “Mode 2,” but other terms are things like agile development or DevOps. + Also on Network World: Adapting the network for the rise of containers + This new approach to IT has brought with it several new technologies, one of which is containers. The use of containers has steadily increased because IT departments can quickly spin them up, do whatever task they need to do and then shut them down. The whole process can be automated, so the IT organization doesn’t even need to be involved. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT powerhouses try to come from behind in enterprise IoT

It’s unusual for technology vendors of sufficient size not to be the most powerful companies in any market space they enter – the mere fact that they’re there arranges other players into a “Google/Microsoft/Amazon against everybody else” formation.That’s why, according to experts, the heterodox, wide-open IoT platform marketplace is so strange – it’s an area in which all the traditional powerhouses of IT are playing, but they’re not dominating market share the way they usually do.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: How Google is speeding up the Internet + Cisco brings its SDN to Amazon, Microsoft and Google’s public cloudTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 4 ways to simplify data management

If it seems your IT team has more data to manage than ever before, you’re not mistaken. Just about every enterprise is trying to determine how to manage more data growth without scaling budget or staff as well.451 Research analyst Henry Baltazar emphasized this trend in a recent report, noting, “The increasing relevancy of data management is in parallel with the ongoing growth of the sheer volume of data that enterprises must deal with.” The good news is that there are many approaches IT can take to ease the challenges of data growth. Let's take a look at four steps IT can use to make a big impact.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 4 ways to simplify data management

If it seems your IT team has more data to manage than ever before, you’re not mistaken. Just about every enterprise is trying to determine how to manage more data growth without scaling budget or staff as well.451 Research analyst Henry Baltazar emphasized this trend in a recent report, noting, “The increasing relevancy of data management is in parallel with the ongoing growth of the sheer volume of data that enterprises must deal with.” The good news is that there are many approaches IT can take to ease the challenges of data growth. Let's take a look at four steps IT can use to make a big impact.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Moby Project and Open Source Summit North America

Docker will be at Open Source Summit from to highlight new development with the Moby Project and it’s various components: containerd, LinuxKit, InfraKit, Notary, etc.

Come see us at Booth #510 to learn more about:

  • The different uses cases for the Moby Projects and components
  • The difference between Docker and the Moby Project
  • How to get started with each component

As part of the OSS NA, Docker is also organizing a Moby Summit on September 14, 2017. Following the success of the previous editions, we’ll keep the same format which consists of short technical talks / demos in the morning and Birds-of-a-Feather in the afternoon.

Moby Project

 We have an excellent line up of speakers in store for you and are excited to share the agenda below. We hope that these sessions inspire you to come participate in the Moby community and register for this Moby summit.

For those of you who can’t attend the summit we recommend the following sessions as part of the main event / tracks:

 

Building specialized container-based systems with Moby: a few use cases

Speaker: Patrick Chanezon

This talk will explain how you can leverage the Moby project to assemble your own Continue reading

AfPIF Day Two: Identifying Challenges and Opportunities

AfPIF Day Two Summary 

The second day at the Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) is dedicated to plenary presentations and discussions between the technical community, private sector, and government representatives.

The discussions aim to foster understanding of the landscape the various players operate in, the challenges faced, opportunities and ways to create synergies that guarantee increased connectivity, and exchange of content within the region.

The first session of the day was the formal opening ceremony, with Yves Miezan Ezo, representative of the Conseiller Technique du Ministre de la Communicatiln, de l’Economie Numerique et de la Poste de la république de Cote d’Ivoire, Caliste Claude M’Bayia, representative of l’ARTCI, and Moctar Yadaly, head of Infrastructure and Energy at the African Union Commission (AUC).

In his speech, Dawit Bekele, Head of the Internet Society Africa Bureau, welcomed participants to the 8th AfPIF session, noting that great strides have been made in Africa’s technology landscape, and it will get better.

The first AfPIF session was held in 2010 by the Internet Society out of the realization that too much African Internet traffic was exchanged outside the continent, and the region could save costs by exchanging the content locally.

Bekele noted Continue reading

This Linux tool could improve the security of IoT devices

The first rule of building a secure and feature-rich ecosystem is software management — push and pull software updates and software discovery through an app store mechanism from a trusted source.In the go-to-market IoT race, though, that often doesn’t happen. Many Internet of Things (IoT) product developers have ignored the traumatic early history of Microsoft Windows, Android and web platforms, and expoits of IoT devices — because software updates have not been designed in — are regularly reported.+ Also on Network World: How to improve IoT security + Those earlier platforms have been hardened, updates have been automated, and the app discovery and installation have been made trustworthy. IoT developers need to follow their lead. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here