IDG Contributor Network: Should you buy an SD-WAN service?

When we first started evaluating SD-WANs, the market was pretty straightforward. You had a few appliance (virtual and hardware) providers, a service provider and that’s about it. Today, more than 30 vendors deliver some kind of SD-WAN.Mind boggling? A bit, but we can help. There are three categories of SD-WAN offerings today. You can buy SD-WAN equipment (and software) and do it yourself (DIY), subscribe to an over-the-top (OTT) SD-WAN service, or have your SD-WAN bundled with a carrier network, such as MPLS or Direct Internet Access (DIA). We’ll look at each one of them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Systems admin role isn’t dead

With the ubiquity of cloud technology and the availability of modern systems administration tools that allow anyone from developers to administrative assistants to procure and provision servers and services, it's tempting to think that the role of the system administrator, or sysadmin, is obsolete.The sysadmin role isn't dying off, however. It's simply evolving along with the rest of the technology industry and becoming less focused on hardware and infrastructure and more on services delivery -- a shift away from being seen as a cost center in an organization to an innovation engine. And that's great news for IT pros looking to further their careers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Should you buy an SD-WAN service?

When we first started evaluating SD-WANs, the market was pretty straightforward. You had a few appliance (virtual and hardware) providers, a service provider and that’s about it. Today, more than 30 vendors deliver some kind of SD-WAN.Mind boggling? A bit, but we can help. There are three categories of SD-WAN offerings today. You can buy SD-WAN equipment (and software) and do it yourself (DIY), subscribe to an over-the-top (OTT) SD-WAN service, or have your SD-WAN bundled with a carrier network, such as MPLS or Direct Internet Access (DIA). We’ll look at each one of them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

4 tips for job searching this holiday season

You may have heard that it's not worth your time to look for a new job during the hectic holiday season. But according to Ford R. Myers, author of Get the Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring, and president of the career consulting firm Career Potential, there are a number of ways to make the holiday season work for your job search.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

And the coolest robots of 2016 are…

Robots are becoming more and more ubiquitous in our daily lives, but these seven bots stole the show in 2016.The Zenbo personal assistant robot can be a caretaker and entertainer. While Boston Dynamic's SpotMini will help you do the dishes, preserve the planet by recycling, and even bring you a coke. Got a pile of clean laundry? Laundroid will fold it for you...just make sure to give it a few hours to finish the job. Feeling lonely on that long road trip? Kirobo Mini will chat with you, as long as your trip's shorter than 2 and a half hours. Amelia will show you the way at the airport and even take a selfie. And Sophia...wow she looks so human! As long as you disregard her giant see-through computer brain.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Get started with Azure Machine Learning

Machine learning is fast becoming the go-to predictive paradigm for data scientists and developers alike. Of the many tools available for tapping neural networks, Microsoft’s Azure ML Studio offers a quick learning curve that won’t take deep data or coding chops to get up and running.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Singapore’s ‘city brain’ project is groundbreaking — but what about privacy?

You've read about cities installing smart parking meters and noise- and air-quality sensors, but are you ready to embrace the idea of a city brain?The residents of Singapore are on track to do just that.Creating a centralized dashboard view of sensors deployed across a distributed network is nothing new, but it takes on a bigger -- perhaps ominous -- meaning when deployed across a major city.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Singapore’s ‘city brain’ project is groundbreaking — but what about privacy?

You've read about cities installing smart parking meters and noise- and air-quality sensors, but are you ready to embrace the idea of a city brain?The residents of Singapore are on track to do just that.Creating a centralized dashboard view of sensors deployed across a distributed network is nothing new, but it takes on a bigger -- perhaps ominous -- meaning when deployed across a major city.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Why banks love mainframes

If you’ve been following this blog, you may have seen me mention mainframes are popular with banks and financial institutions. In reading that again and again, you may have thought to yourself, “So what?” After all, banks are notoriously hidebound and slow to adopt new ideas (there’s a reason Mary Poppins’ Mr. Banks worked for the bank of London and not a toymaker to represent being conservative and slow to change.)And slow to change though the banks may be, what they most certainly are not is impractical. Banks don’t just love mainframes because that’s what they’ve always used. They love mainframes because they’re the right tool for the job: a tool with power.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Why banks love mainframes

If you’ve been following this blog, you may have seen me mention mainframes are popular with banks and financial institutions. In reading that again and again, you may have thought to yourself, “So what?” After all, banks are notoriously hidebound and slow to adopt new ideas (there’s a reason Mary Poppins’ Mr. Banks worked for the bank of London and not a toymaker to represent being conservative and slow to change.)And slow to change though the banks may be, what they most certainly are not is impractical. Banks don’t just love mainframes because that’s what they’ve always used. They love mainframes because they’re the right tool for the job: a tool with power.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

2016: The year of tech products nobody wanted

7 tech products we didn't need—and 1 we need but never arrivedImage by Thinkstock2016 has been a rather odd year in many ways. Not least of which has been the onslaught of technology gizmos and doodads produced by some of the biggest companies in the world—that just outright stink. What follows are some of the most interesting stinkers I could think of—stuff that nobody in their right mind would want. That statement, along with the rest of this list, is sure to annoy many. And I stand by it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What to expect from Cisco in 2017

Calendar year 2016 was a big year of change at Cisco.Coming into the year, I wasn’t sure how aggressive new CEO Chuck Robbins would be at making changes. It turns out, he was far more active than I would have ever imagined, and 2016 will be remembered as the year Robbins stamped the company with his own thumbprint.During the year Cisco made several, the biggest of which was Jasper Technologies. That transformed Cisco from being an IoT evangelist into a major player. We also saw the company enter the analytics market with its Cisco Tetration Analytics Platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What to expect from Cisco in 2017

Calendar year 2016 was a big year of change at Cisco.Coming into the year, I wasn’t sure how aggressive new CEO Chuck Robbins would be at making changes. It turns out, he was far more active than I would have ever imagined, and 2016 will be remembered as the year Robbins stamped the company with his own thumbprint.During the year Cisco made several, the biggest of which was Jasper Technologies. That transformed Cisco from being an IoT evangelist into a major player. We also saw the company enter the analytics market with its Cisco Tetration Analytics Platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Azure’s cloud chief believes Microsoft is in prime position

In Satya Nadella’s first press conference as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he laid out a vision for the company to be a mobile-first, cloud-first company.On the cloud side, Microsoft has a broad portfolio of products that includes market-leading SaaS productivity applications, highlighted by Office 365. On the IaaS and PaaS side, Microsoft has Azure, a public cloud that has turned into one of the most prominent cloud platforms in the market and is considered the chief rival to market-leading Amazon Web Services’ public IaaS cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 12.12.16

New products of the weekImage by BrocadeOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.BlueData EPIC on AWSImage by Blue DataTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 12.12.16

New products of the weekImage by BrocadeOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.BlueData EPIC on AWSImage by Blue DataTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 enterprise-related things you can do with blockchain technology today

Diamonds. Bitcoin. Pork. If you think you've spotted the odd one out, think again: All three are things you can track using blockchain technologies today. Blockchains are distributed, tamper-proof, public ledgers of transactions, brought to public attention by the cryptocurrency bitcoin, which is based on what is still the most widespread blockchain. But blockchains are being used for a whole lot more than making pseudonymous payments outside the traditional banking system. Because blockchains are distributed, an industry or a marketplace can use them without the risk of a single point of failure. And because they can't be modified, there is no question of whether the record keeper can be trusted. Those factors have prompted a number of enterprises to build blockchains into essential business functions, or at least to test them there.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump, tech executives may try to untangle relationship

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is meeting this week in New York with top tech executives, including Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Alphabet CEO Larry Page and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, according to news reports.Invitations to the meeting were signed by Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus, and billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley figure who came out openly early on in favor of Trump.The relationship between Trump and Silicon Valley companies has been difficult with some senior tech executives openly backing his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the presidential elections. The president-elect and tech companies also appear to have differing views on issues such as immigration, outsourcing abroad, clean energy, net neutrality, encryption, surveillance and on restoring lost manufacturing jobs in the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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