Slow growth ahead for IT outsourcing

While the IT and business process services industry continued to grow through 2016, that growth slowed over the course of the year and could fall to less than 2 percent by 2019, according to a recent report from IT and business sourcing consultancy and research firm Everest Group.[ Related: Outsourcing trends to watch in 2017 ]The pace of year-on-year revenue growth fell from 4.5 percent in the first quarter of last year to below three percent by year-end. And Everest Group predicts a continued decline over the next one to three years, falling to as low as 1.9 percent by late 2019 as a result of as a result of macro uncertainties, technology disruption and intense competition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AT&T Developed an SDN Controller for 400 GbE Trial Between D.C. and NYC

If there's a fiber cut, the SDN controller could reroute traffic.

Flaws in Moodle CMS put thousands of e-learning websites at risk

Organizations that use the popular Moodle learning management system should deploy the latest patches as soon as possible because they fix vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to take over web servers.Moodle is an open source platform used by schools, universities, and other organizations to set up websites with interactive online courses. It's used by more than 78,000 e-learning websites from 234 countries that together have more than 100 million users.A week ago the Moodle developers released updates for the still supported branches of the platform: 3.2.2, 3.1.5, 3.0.9 and 2.7.19. The release notes mentioned that "a number of security related issues were resolved," but didn't provide any additional details about their nature or impact.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Flaws in Moodle CMS put thousands of e-learning websites at risk

Organizations that use the popular Moodle learning management system should deploy the latest patches as soon as possible because they fix vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to take over web servers.Moodle is an open source platform used by schools, universities, and other organizations to set up websites with interactive online courses. It's used by more than 78,000 e-learning websites from 234 countries that together have more than 100 million users.A week ago the Moodle developers released updates for the still supported branches of the platform: 3.2.2, 3.1.5, 3.0.9 and 2.7.19. The release notes mentioned that "a number of security related issues were resolved," but didn't provide any additional details about their nature or impact.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

No Dress Code? AHAHAHAHAHA

Dress codes are funny things. Everyone in Silicon Valley likes to make out they are super-relaxed, and you can wear whatever you like. “We don’t have a dress code.” But that’s not really true. There are still rules about what you can wear. People who say “we don’t care what you wear” very much do care if you wear the wrong thing.

Here’s some examples of dress codes from well-known Bay Area tech companies:

From Google:

What to wear: For most of our interviews, the dress code is casual, but your recruiter will let you know what’s most appropriate. When in doubt, be yourself and wear what makes you comfortable.

From Twitter:

What should I wear to my interview?

We have a very relaxed, welcoming, and fun environment. While we don’t have a strict dress code, we also wouldn’t recommend pajamas. Come comfortable…

At Facebook:

What is Facebook’s dress code? There isn’t one. Wear what you are comfortable in.

When I started work, I wore a suit every day. That changed over the years, based upon where I was working, and broader industry trends. These days it’s dress shirts, trousers, and nice shoes. I like to Continue reading

No Dress Code? AHAHAHAHAHA

Dress codes are funny things. Everyone in Silicon Valley likes to make out they are super-relaxed, and you can wear whatever you like. “We don’t have a dress code.” But that’s not really true. There are still rules about what you can wear. People who say “we don’t care what you wear” very much do care if you wear the wrong thing.

Here’s some examples of dress codes from well-known Bay Area tech companies:

From Google:

What to wear: For most of our interviews, the dress code is casual, but your recruiter will let you know what’s most appropriate. When in doubt, be yourself and wear what makes you comfortable.

From Twitter:

What should I wear to my interview?

We have a very relaxed, welcoming, and fun environment. While we don’t have a strict dress code, we also wouldn’t recommend pajamas. Come comfortable…

At Facebook:

What is Facebook’s dress code?

There isn’t one. Wear what you are comfortable in.

When I started work, I wore a suit every day. That changed over the years, based upon where I was working, and broader industry trends. These days it’s dress shirts, trousers, and nice shoes. I like to mix Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: 4 possible outcomes for Avaya

Avaya is one of the largest providers of enterprise communications products and services. It is a complex company of 158 separate entities that employ about 9,700 people worldwide. Most of its entities in North America, representing about 3,800 of its employees, filed for Chapter 11 reorganization earlier this year.Avaya reported 2016 revenue at $3.7 billion. Despite an annual adjusted EBITDA of $940 million and positive free cash flow, it has a debt problem. It owes about $6 billion due to multiple investors spread over multiple maturity dates over the next several years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Don’t Use Cloud Titans for Applications, Says Mesosphere

Mesosphere gives portability of cloud services.

IBM’s bringing Watson to a whole bunch of new developer tools

As IBM welcomes an estimated 20,000 developers, customers and partners to Las Vegas this week for its InterConnect conference, a running theme throughout the three-day show is providing application builders with cognitive and analytical tools based off the company’s Watson platform.+MORE FROM NETWORK WORLD: How IBM wants to bring blockchain from Bitcoin to your data center | IBM + Red Hat = An open source hybrid cloud +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HPE unveils a new SimpliVity appliance

Two months after acquiring SimpliVity for US$650 million, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is beginning to reshape the company's converged infrastructure offering in its own image. SimpliVity’s hyperconverged infrastructure appliance, the OmniCube, replaces storage switches, cloud gateways, high-availability shared storage, and appliances for backup and deduplication, WAN optimization, and storage caching. The company also offers OmniStack, the software powering the OmniCube, packaged for other vendors’ hardware.Now HPE has qualified that software on its workhorse ProLiant DL380 server and will sell it as the snappily titled HPE SimpliVity 380 with OmniStack, Mark Linesch, the vice president for global strategy and operations of HPE's enterprise group, said Tuesday at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HPE unveils a new SimpliVity appliance

Two months after acquiring SimpliVity for US$650 million, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is beginning to reshape the company's converged infrastructure offering in its own image. SimpliVity’s hyperconverged infrastructure appliance, the OmniCube, replaces storage switches, cloud gateways, high-availability shared storage, and appliances for backup and deduplication, WAN optimization, and storage caching. The company also offers OmniStack, the software powering the OmniCube, packaged for other vendors’ hardware.Now HPE has qualified that software on its workhorse ProLiant DL380 server and will sell it as the snappily titled HPE SimpliVity 380 with OmniStack, Mark Linesch, the vice president for global strategy and operations of HPE's enterprise group, said Tuesday at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

On the ‘net: Nothing to Hide, Everything to Gain

The IETF Journal published an article by Shawn and I last week about open source, open standards, and participation by vendors and providers.

Why should a provider—particularly a content provider—care about the open standards and open source communities? There is certainly a large set of reasons why edge-focused content providers shouldn’t care about the open communities. A common objection to working in the open communities often voiced by providers runs something like this: Isn’t the entire point of building a company around data—which ultimately means around a set of processing capabilities, including the network—to hide your path to success and ultimately to prevent others from treading the same path you’ve tread? Shouldn’t providers defend their intellectual property for all the same reasons as equipment vendors?

The post On the ‘net: Nothing to Hide, Everything to Gain appeared first on 'net work.

First Look: New Apple iPad, red iPhone and iWatch gear

The least-Apple tablet update everImage by AppleLess sleek and thin? More hardware bang for your buck? The price actually dropped?! Who are you, and what have you done with Apple? The inscrutable gadget company also announced the availability of red iPhone 7s, a new video feature, extra bands for Apple Watch, and a Swift update. Check them out.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Realm ties PostgreSQL databases to mobile applications

Gartner, the analyst firm that makes squillions of dollars advising its enterprise clients on technology decisions, came up with a concept a few years ago entitled Bi-modal IT. From the expectedly wordy Gartner definition, the company defines this approach thusly: “Bimodal is the practice of managing two separate but coherent styles of work: one focused on predictability, the other on exploration. Mode 1 is optimized for areas that are more predictable and well-understood. It focuses on exploiting what is known, while renovating the legacy environment into a state that is fit for a digital world. Mode 2 is exploratory, experimenting to solve new problems and  optimized for areas of uncertainty. These initiatives often begin with a hypothesis that is tested and adapted during a process involving short iterations, potentially adopting a minimum viable product (MVP)  approach.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can FPGAs Beat GPUs in Accelerating Next-Generation Deep Learning?

Continued exponential growth of digital data of images, videos, and speech from sources such as social media and the internet-of-things is driving the need for analytics to make that data understandable and actionable.

Data analytics often rely on machine learning (ML) algorithms. Among ML algorithms, deep convolutional neural networks (DNNs) offer state-of-the-art accuracies for important image classification tasks and are becoming widely adopted.

At the recent International Symposium on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (ISFPGA), Dr. Eriko Nurvitadhi from Intel Accelerator Architecture Lab (AAL), presented research on Can FPGAs beat GPUs in Accelerating Next-Generation Deep Neural Networks. Their research …

Can FPGAs Beat GPUs in Accelerating Next-Generation Deep Learning? was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: Why there won’t ever be a CCIE SDN

There’s a lot of work that’s been done recently to bring the CCIE up to modern network standards. Yusuf and his team are working hard to incorporate new concepts into the written exam. Candidates are broadening their horizons and picking up new ideas as they learn about industry stalwarts like OSPF and spanning tree. But the biggest challenge out there is incorporating the ideas behind software defined networking (SDN) into the exam. I don’t believe that this will ever happen. Here’s why. —The Networking Nerd

The post Worth Reading: Why there won’t ever be a CCIE SDN appeared first on 'net work.

12M connected cars gives General Motors a massive IoT fleet

Steve Schwinke has worked on OnStar at GM in a variety of roles for some 20 years, watching the service evolve from a customer benefit into a full fledged connectivity mesh that helps the automotive giant improve its vehicles.  Now Director of Advanced Development, Schwinke recently talked to Network World Editor in Chief John Dix about OnStar as an IoT platform.How has OnStar evolved over the years?OnStar started as safety, security and peace of mind for customers, and we have a rich history of that and continue to deliver those services today, but we had a big transformation about 12 years ago when we started moving towards the digital world. When the digital hardware came out we started leveraging vehicle data to do more things beyond those core services, and that was really around trying to provide better insights into how vehicles are performing and trying to build a better product moving forward.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware NSX and vRNI Enabling Customer Operations

Recently, we had a customer challenge our team to prove to them the operational gains and demonstrate the cross-functional tooling VMware provides to assist them in scaling from zero to hundreds of VMs on the platform.  Our goal was simple –  exhibit a complete lifecycle for any customer to go from evaluation to production operation... Read more →

42% off Yeti Rambler 18 oz Bottle – Deal Alert

The Rambler 18 oz. bottle is next-level, and the perfect addition to your rough commutes, day hikes, or kayak sessions. Features a no-sweat design, tough 18/8 stainless steel construction and a leakproof, 3-finger grip, insulated TripleHaul cap to protects your truck cab or day pack from spills. The Rambler 18 oz. bottle stands 9 1/2 inches high, has a diameter of 3 inches, sized to fit in standard sized cup holders. The popular Yeti bottle's list price has been reduced a significant 42% to $23.25. See the deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to add an external HDD to Sony PS4 (plus video)

Sony has finally released an update to its PS4 system software that lets you add an external hard drive to the console to help extend storage capacity on the gaming console. On behalf of the millions of PS4 owners who have been performing data management surgery on their console every time they wanted to play a new game, let me say “Hallelujah!”.Before you email me, I know that storage capacity improvement could be done with the PS4 before this update. But this involved grabbing a screwdriver and cracking open the case to install a higher capacity internal hard disk drive. This approach involved too much time needed for my limited-free-time-available lifestyle. This from a guy who likes tech – for other parents and PS4 owners with limited time and experience with hardware, the external HDD approach makes more sense than messing around with screws and slots and such.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here