IDG Contributor Network: The contact center and CRM collision leads to a new dominant species

Some weeks ago I wrote that CRM and contact center are on a collision course. I argued that as the technologies used in CRM and the contact center will naturally mash up, the vendors of these traditionally distinct technologies will collide.In this post, I will expand upon that idea and talk about the future and a key aspect that will be important to successful synergies: how each domain leverages behaviors.CRM/contact center collision The first post argued that a co-mingling of the technologies used in CRM and the contact center worlds have occurred. This has been more of a lending of functionality. Seldom has true synergy emerged.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Data Center Efficiency Key to Outsourcing Cost

52% off Logitech Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard – Deal Alert

Here's a Bluetooth keyboard for your computer that you can also use with your tablet and smartphone -- switch between all three effortlessly by just turning the dial. And unlike other Bluetooth keyboards, Logitech has integrated a cradle so your device stays propped up at just the right angle as you type. Works with Windows or Mac, Android or iOS, and features a key layout you'll be familiar with on any of those platforms. Logitech's multi-device keyboard currently averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 1,350 people (read reviews) on Amazon, where its typical list price of $49.99 has been recently dropped 52% to just $23.99.  See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Full text of Amazon’s post-mortem from its S3 cloud brownout

As is customary after a major service disruption, Amazon Web Services today released a post-mortem explaining why its Simple Storage Service experienced elevated error rates, causing many sites across the Internet to slow down or stop working on Tuesday.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: 5 Lessons from the AWS S3 outage and how to insulate yourself from the next one | Half of the top 100 retail websites had slow load times during the S3 outage, vendor finds +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

On the ‘net: LinkedIn’s DC Design Principles

Operating a large-scale, rapidly growing network requires a philosophical change in how you plan, deploy, and operate your infrastructure. At LinkedIn, as we scaled our data center network, it became evident that we needed to provision and build networks not only as quickly as possible, but also with the most simple and minimalistic approaches possible — something that previously was not quite apparent to us. Adding a new component, a new feature, or a new service without any traffic loss or architectural change is challenging. —Network Computing

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Server Makers Try To Adapt To A Harsher Climate

So, who was the biggest revenue generator, and showing the largest growth in sales, for servers in the final quarter of 2016? Was it Hewlett Packard Enterprise? Was it Dell Technologies? Was it IBM or Cisco Systems or one of the ODMs? Nope. It was the Others category comprised of dozens of vendors that sit outside of the top tier OEMs we know by name and the collective ODMs of the world who some of us know by name.

This is a sign that the server ecosystem is getting more diverse under pressure as the technical and economic climate changes …

Server Makers Try To Adapt To A Harsher Climate was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Cisco expands Docker partnership, rolls Contiv open source container networking software

Cisco and Docker today announced an expanded partnership that will see further integration of container management software from Docker with infrastructure equipment.Cisco also released a 1.0 version of an open source container networking project named Contiv.+More on Network World: 5 Lessons from Amazon’s S3 Cloud blunder – and how to protect yourself from the next one +The integration of Cisco hardware with Docker software is codified through new Cisco Validated Designs (CVD). One CVD includes a Cisco UCS deployment pre-integrated to support Docker Datacenter, a container management platform that includes the Docker runtime Engine, a Trusted Registry and a Universal Control Plane. Cisco announced another CVD that includes its FlexPod hyperconverged infrastructure with NetApp storage and support for Docker software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware roundtable: Is this the new spam?

Matt Gangwer, CTO of Rook Security and Ryan O'Leary, VP of Threat Research Center and Tech Support at WhiteHat Security join CSO Online's Steve Ragan to talk about the evolution of ransomware, and what companies need to do to combat it.

Understanding Windows 10’s Unified Update Platform

The Unified Update Platform (UUP) was introduced to the Windows 10 Insider Preview with Build 14986 on December 11, 2016. It changes how Windows Update works in a profound and interesting way. This is explained in some detail in a Windows Insider blog post entitled "Introducing Unified Update Platform (UUP)" that posted on November 3, 2016, so I'll just hit some high points here. The original post is well worth a read, if you're into the nitty-gritty details.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

How to format an SD card in Linux

As I was working on a tutorial about installing Raspbian on Raspberry Pi 3, I realized that I had to format the Micro SD card with fat32 partition. Another tutorial was in order!Since different desktop environments use different tools to perform the same task, I resorted to one method that can be consistent across desktop environments: command line.So here is how you format an SD card, USB drive or Micro SD card with fat32 file system from the command line in Linux.RELATED: 11 pointless but awesome Linux terminal tricks 1. Plug in your removable flash drive and run the ‘lsblk’ command to identify the device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SDxCentral’s Top 10 Articles — February 2017

Cisco's MPLS team is back in action; Arris makes a move on Brocade.

‘Paging Dr. VT320, paging Dr. VT320’

 Writes a contributor to Reddit’s section devoted to all things “mildly interesting:”“This is the computer (pictured above) which controls the paging system at the hospital where I work.”The audience found this much more than mildly interesting, as the post attracted more than 500 comments and 13,000 up-votes.The comments were split between those who see a disaster in the making:“You may find it funny, but aging hardware and obsolete systems plague medical facilities, and when those critical old pieces fail, it costs the facility many times more capital and labor power to restore critical systems, and risks patient health and safety.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

‘Paging Dr. VT320, paging Dr. VT320’

 Writes a contributor to Reddit’s section devoted to all things “mildly interesting:”“This is the computer (pictured above) which controls the paging system at the hospital where I work.”The audience found this much more than mildly interesting, as the post attracted more than 500 comments and 13,000 up-votes.The comments were split between those who see a disaster in the making:“You may find it funny, but aging hardware and obsolete systems plague medical facilities, and when those critical old pieces fail, it costs the facility many times more capital and labor power to restore critical systems, and risks patient health and safety.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HPE refocuses tech services group on cloud, big data

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has revamped its existing technology services unit to focus on helping customers adopt emerging technologies, including cloud computing, the internet of things, and big data.HPE's new Pointnext technology services division, announced Thursday, is designed to help businesses speed up their adoption of several technologies, also including hybrid IT services and analytics, the company said. HPE announced the rebranded services unit with an "unboxing" video.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Humans and machines: The rise of robo-advisors in the investing world

The relationship between humans and machines has captivated people for years—from robots that can win Jeopardy to those that can sense human emotions, the list is endless.Today, however, machines are no longer simply a novelty. The rise of analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) has become a key component of a business’ success. In the banking world, there are many examples to point to: self-service tellers, automated loan processing, payments, etc. But there’s one in particular that is fascinating—the robo-advisor.+ Also on Network World: AI as advisor, not magician + Managing personal investments and wealth has traditionally been left to the experts—a team of wealth advisors and managers who met annually with clients. Robo-advising, the process of providing automated, algorithm-based portfolio management advice, is changing that.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

33% off Resident Evil 7: Biohazard For PlayStation 4 – Deal Alert

Set within a sinister plantation mansion in modern day rural America and taking place after the dramatic events of Resident Evil 6, players experience the terror directly from the first person perspective for the first time in the series. Embodying the iconic gameplay elements of exploration and tense atmosphere that first coined "survival horror" some twenty years ago, Resident Evil 7 biohazard delivers a disturbingly realistic experience that will define the next era in horror entertainment. Its typical list price has been discounted 33%, at least for now, to $39.99 on Amazon. See the Resident Evil 7: Biohazard for PS4 deal on Amazon right now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Lessons learned from decommissioning a legacy service

Last quarter, I worked on a project called “kill-inbox-war.” Inbox-war was a frontend service that served legacy LinkedIn messaging UI, RPC (Remote Procedure Call) endpoints before Rest.li, and some parts of notifications and invitations for LinkedIn. Even though most of the functionality related to messaging had already been moved out of inbox-war before the project started, the service still had greater than 1,400 QPS (queries per second) at peak. Finally, after almost four months of hard work, the QPS has dropped to almost 0. The graph below is inbox-war QPS for the past six months. —LinkedIn Engineering

The post Worth Reading: Lessons learned from decommissioning a legacy service appeared first on 'net work.

Can I Question You An Ask?

Words mean things! — Justin Warren (@JPWarren)

As a reader of my blog, you know that words are my tradecraft. Picking the right word to describe a topic or a technical idea is very important. Using incorrect grammar can cause misunderstandings and lead to issues later on. You’re probably all familiar with my dissection of the Premise vs. Premises issue in IT, but today’s post is all about interrogatives.

A Question, You Say?

One would think that the basic question is something that doesn’t need to be explained. It is one of the four basic types of sentences that we learn in grade school. It’s the easiest one of the bunch to pick out because it ends in a question mark. Other languages, like Japanese, have similar signals for making a statement into an interrogative declaration.

Asking a question is important because it allows us to understand our world. We learn when we ask questions. We grow as people and as professionals. Kids learn to question everything around them at an early age to figure out how the world works. Questions are a cornerstone of society.

However, how do you come up with question? In what manner Continue reading

AMD’s Ryzen processor forces hefty price cuts from Intel

For the first time in a decade, we have competition in the x86 market. AMD is finally poised for a comeback with a true breakthrough in performance in its Ryzen line of processors, and Intel is reacting.Benchmarks show the Ryzen processors, a completely new design by Jim Keller, the same engineer who created the Athlon chip more than a decade ago and turned AMD from an also-ran into a real competitor (for at least a little while), outperform Intel's best and cost a lot less. The result is temporary sell-outs of some CPU pre-orders. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VOSS simplifies hybrid Spark provisioning

Last week, Cisco held the European version of it’s Cisco Live event in Berlin. At these events, Cisco typically makes several product announcements and demonstrates many of its new products. Cisco Live is also a time for the company’s alliance and technology partners to showcase their own wares as they look to add value to the Cisco ecosystem. One of the more interesting announcements by an technology partner at the 2017 show was from VOSS Solutions, which extended its platform to support Cisco Spark Hybrid Services. The Spark platform has been red hot of late, as Cisco has made it the company’s main UC platform. During the show, the Spark Board garnered a lot of attention, including being part of Ruba Borno’s day 1 keynote. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here