Q&A: Oracle’s future lies in cloud, APIs, and microservices

In addition to Java, Oracle has been focusing lately on cloud, chatbots, and APIs. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill met with Oracle's Amit Zavery, senior vice president of Oracle Cloud, at this week's DeveloperWeek conference in San Francisco to talk about the company's technology directions.[ Docker, Amazon, TensorFlow, Windows 10, and more: See InfoWorld's 2017 Technology of the Year Award winners. | Cut to the key news in technology trends and IT breakthroughs with the InfoWorld Daily newsletter, our summary of the top tech happenings. ] InfoWorld: How are microservices and chatbots driving enterprises to an API-first strategy, the notion of which was posed in a description of your upcoming presentation?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

RSA: Eric Schmidt shares deep learning on AI

SAN FRANCISCO – Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt says artificial intelligence is key to advances in diverse areas such as healthcare and datacenter design and that security concerns related to it are somewhat misguided. (Alphabet is the parent company of Google).In a wide-ranging on-stage conversation here at the RSA Security conference with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of The Great A.I. Awakening, Schmidt shared his insights from decades of work related to AI (he studied AI as a PhD student 40 years ago) and why the technology seems to finally be hitting its stride.In fact, last year Google CEO Sundar Pichai said AI is what helps the search giant build better products over time. "We will move from a mobile-first to an AI-first world,” he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The high price of security shaming [Infographic]

Bad press following a security breach hits companies hard. In fact, it can be so damaging that “two-thirds of companies would pay an average of $124k to avoid public shaming scandals,” according to a recent Bitdefender survey of 250 IT security professionals. What’s more, “some 14 percent would pay more than $500k.” If you think that’s a high price to pay, consider this: 34 percent of companies were breached in the past 12 months, according to the report, and “74 percent of IT decision makers don’t know how the company was breached.” Among the survey’s other notable findings is that while 64 percent of respondents said they think their current security budget is sufficient, they also admitted that “only 64 percent of cyberattacks can be stopped, detected or prevented with the current resources.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

The high price of security shaming [Infographic]

Bad press following a security breach hits companies hard. In fact, it can be so damaging that “two-thirds of companies would pay an average of $124k to avoid public shaming scandals,” according to a recent Bitdefender survey of 250 IT security professionals. What’s more, “some 14 percent would pay more than $500k.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

RSA: Eric Schmidt shares deep learning on AI

SAN FRANCISCO – Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt says artificial intelligence is key to advances in diverse areas such as healthcare and datacenter design and that security concerns related to it are somewhat misguided. (Alphabet is the parent company of Google).In a wide-ranging on-stage conversation here at the RSA Security conference with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of The Great A.I. Awakening, Schmidt shared his insights from decades of work related to AI (he studied AI as a PhD student 40 years ago) and why the technology seems to finally be hitting its stride.In fact, last year Google CEO Sundar Pichai said AI is what helps the search giant build better products over time. "We will move from a mobile-first to an AI-first world,” he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle preps developers for Java 9 upgrade

In preparation for the planned July release of Java 9, Oracle has released guidance for moving applications over to the forthcoming upgrade, which features big changes through modularization.The newly released JDK (Java Development Kit) 9 Migration Guide notes that every update brings with it binary, source, and behavioral incompatibilities with previous versions. "The modularization of the Java SE Platform brings many benefits but also many changes," Oracle said. "Code that uses only official Java SE Platform APIs and supported JDK-specific APIs should continue to work without change." But code that uses certain features or JDK-internal APIs may not run or may give different results, the company cautioned.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

H-1B advocate Sen. Orrin Hatch sets stage for new visa battle

The U.S. Senate's leading proponent for increasing the H-1B visa cap is Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). His previous legislative efforts have infuriated critics of the visa program. Hatch's 2015 visa cap-increasing bill, I-Squared, was so awful, said the IEEE-USA, that it would "help destroy" the U.S. tech workforce.Hatch is updating his I-Squared bill with reforms he hopes buy leeway with his critics. That doesn't seem likely.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Raspberry Pi roundup: Hi, my breath is fresh, remote access, and a darker shade of Pi

Sticking Raspberry Pis in cute little packages is, after all, part of the point of the Raspberry Pi. It’s a small computer, so let’s put it places you can’t fit laptops or desktops. We’ve seen them behind picture frames, inside Nintendo Game Boy-ish shells, and in so many other places.Step forward, PiMiniMint creator Matt Wagner, who has managed to stuff a Raspberry Pi Zero – along with a screen, a battery, an SD card reader and much more – into a tin of Altoids. Curious.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Cisco reserves $125 million to pay for faulty clock component in switches, routers + Microsoft's monthlong delay of patches may pose risksTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Industrial IoT: Removing Roadblocks

Startup Nyansa helps companies quantify the impact of application performance

Understanding the impact of an IT outage is a fairly standardized process. Take how much revenue the company generates, break it down to an hourly amount and, as they say in the UK, “Bob’s your Uncle”. However, IT outages aren’t nearly as common as they used to be a decade or more ago. Businesses build their infrastructure with so much redundancy that the concept of an outage is rare. I believe most companies could go into their data center and flick any piece of equipment off and not one user would notice.The bigger problems today are related to “brown out” situations, where things are working but not quite right. A user tries to make a call from a VoIP phone and the call is choppy or attempts to input some information into a CRM system and the interface is slow. These are much more difficult problems to quantify the impact of. Last year I asked a number of IT leaders if they were aware of how much productivity was lost due to poor application performance and most either took a shot in the dark or admitted they had no idea. As best as I can tell, the number is Continue reading

Startup Nyansa helps companies quantify the impact of application performance

Understanding the impact of an IT outage is a fairly standardized process. Take how much revenue the company generates, break it down to an hourly amount and, as they say in the UK, “Bob’s your Uncle”. However, IT outages aren’t nearly as common as they used to be a decade or more ago. Businesses build their infrastructure with so much redundancy that the concept of an outage is rare. I believe most companies could go into their data center and flick any piece of equipment off and not one user would notice.The bigger problems today are related to “brown out” situations, where things are working but not quite right. A user tries to make a call from a VoIP phone and the call is choppy or attempts to input some information into a CRM system and the interface is slow. These are much more difficult problems to quantify the impact of. Last year I asked a number of IT leaders if they were aware of how much productivity was lost due to poor application performance and most either took a shot in the dark or admitted they had no idea. As best as I can tell, the number is Continue reading

Arrest of Samsung’s Lee may not affect smartphone business in short term

The arrest of Samsung Electronics’ vice chairman Lee Jae-yong on Friday in South Korea may not have a direct impact on the company’s high-profile electronics business, including its smartphones unit, according to analysts.Samsung announced in 2012 the promotion of the executive, also known as Jay. Y. Lee, to his current formal position at Samsung Electronics. But he is largely seen as the de-facto leader of the Samsung Group, running the business on behalf of his ailing father, Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-Hee.He was arrested on charges of bribery as part of an alleged corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenConfig: From Basics to Implementations

In 2013, large-scale cloud providers and ISPs decided they had enough of the glacial IETF process of generating YANG models used to describe device configuration and started OpenConfig – a customer-only initiative that quickly created data models covering typical use cases of the founding members (aka “What Does Google Need”).

Apple to unveil iOS 11 at WWDC on June 5

With so many rumors surrounding the iPhone 8, it's been easy to lose sight of the fact that we're just a few short months away from seeing the next-generation version of iOS, the mobile OS that powers Apple's iconic smartphones.Earlier today, Apple announced that WWDC 2017 will be held from June 5-9 at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. The annual developer's conference is where Apple will take the wraps off of iOS 11 while also showing us what the future of macOS, tvOS and watchOS will look like."Each year during WWDC," Apple's press release reads, "millions of talented developers around the world learn about Apple's breakthrough platform technologies ranging from programming languages like Swift to breakthrough developer APIs like SiriKit, HomeKit, HealthKit and CarPlay. These Apple technologies inspire developers to continue creating incredible experiences for every aspect of customers’ lives and improve the way they manage their smart homes, cars, health and more for over one billion active Apple devices."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dockercast Interview: Docker Captain Stefan Scherer on Microsoft and Docker

In this podcast we chat with Docker Captain and newly minted Microsoft MVP Stefan Scherer. Stefan has done some fantastic work with Docker for Windows and Microservices. We also talk about how lift and shift models work really well for Docker and Windows and Stefan walks us through some of the basics of running Docker on Windows. In addition to the podcast, below is his interview on why being a Captain allows him to give back to the awesome Docker community.

Dockercast with Stephen Scherer

Interview with Stefan Scherer

How has Docker impacted what you do on a daily basis?

Docker helps me to keep my machines clean. I realize more and more that you only need a few tools on your laptop, keeping it clean and lean. And instead of writing documentation on how to build a piece of software, describe all steps in a Dockerfile. So multi GByte fat developer VM’s we maintained some years ago shrink down so a few KByte Dockerfiles for each project. No time-consuming backups needed, just keep the Dockerfile in your sources and have a backup of your Git repos.

Having practiced that on Mac and Linux now for a while, I’m happy Continue reading

Experts at RSA give their best cybersecurity advice

Come to the RSA show, and you’ll find plenty of cybersecurity technology. The top vendors from across the industry are here, showing products for fighting ransomware, preventing data breaches and more.But even the best security software is useless if users and businesses aren’t taking the right steps to protect themselves. So we asked experts at the show for their best cybersecurity tips.Joe Stewart, director of malware research at Dell SecureWorks He advises everyone to set up two-factor authentication to protect their internet accounts, especially email. It can be particularly useful when stopping hackers who are trying to steal login passwords from users, whether through malware or email phishing schemes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Experts at RSA give their best cybersecurity advice

Come to the RSA show, and you’ll find plenty of cybersecurity technology. The top vendors from across the industry are here, showing products for fighting ransomware, preventing data breaches and more.But even the best security software is useless if users and businesses aren’t taking the right steps to protect themselves. So we asked experts at the show for their best cybersecurity tips.Joe Stewart, director of malware research at Dell SecureWorks He advises everyone to set up two-factor authentication to protect their internet accounts, especially email. It can be particularly useful when stopping hackers who are trying to steal login passwords from users, whether through malware or email phishing schemes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Technology Short Take #78

Welcome to Technology Short Take #78! Here’s another collection of links and articles from around the Internet discussing various data center-focused technologies.

Networking

• The rise of the disaggregated network operating system (NOS) marches on: this time, it’s Big Switch Networks announcing expanded hardware support in Open Network Linux (ONL), upon which its own NOS is based.
• The Pivotal Engineering blog has an article that shows how to use BOSH with the vSphere CPI to automate adding servers to an NSX load balancing pool.
• Mircea Ulinic has a nice article describing the combination of NAPALM and Salt for network automation.
• Here’s a post by Ron Fuller on changing the IP address of NSX Manager.

Servers/Hardware

Nothing this time around, sorry!

Security

• As part of some research around my Linux migration, I came across this write-up on how to do encrypted instant messaging on OS X with Adium and Off the Record (OTR). I’ve been using OTR with Adium for a while so this wasn’t new to me, but I wanted to share it here for others who may not be familiar with the solution. (I use OTR with Adium on OS X, and OTR with Pidgin on my Fedora Linux Continue reading

Wrapping Kubernetes Around Applications Old And New

Kubernetes, the software container management system born out of Google, has seen its popularity in the datacenter soar in recent years as datacenter admins look to gain greater control of highly distributed computing environments and to take advantage of the advantages that virtualization, containers, and other technologies offer.

Open sourced by Google three years ago, Kubernetes is derived from the Borg and Omega controllers that the search engine giant created for its own clusters and has become an important part of the management tool ecosystem that includes OpenStack, Mesos, and Docker Swarm. These all try to bring order to what …

Wrapping Kubernetes Around Applications Old And New was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Google open source TensorFlow 1.0 debuts – vies for platform status

Google Brain announced release 1.0 of its machine learning (ML) library yesterday at the TensorFlow Developer Summit in Mountain View. ML is a method of programing computers with data to make highly reliable predictions, instead of creating a program in a language like Java, C# or Python.ML is a more efficient method of solving problems such as image recognition, language translation and ranking things like comments and recommendations. Google, along with Facebook, IBM and Microsoft has used ML internally to solve problems like ranking search results.A little over a year ago Google released TensorFlow based on its experience with its proprietary ML library, DistBelief. TensorFlow is in use within Google with about 4,000 source code directories including TensorFlow model description files. It is used in many applications including Google Search, Maps and Gmail’s spam filter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here