IDG Contributor Network: Why mobile will determine the future of IT

From mobile hardware breakthroughs to the explosion of cloud services and leaps in mobile and wireless network speeds, many factors have contributed to the rise of smartphones and mobile devices as prominent tools in the office and workplace.More and more companies are now adopting Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategies and issue tablets and smartphones to their employees to access company email and digital resources. According to analytics firm IDC, 90 percent of companies support BYOD policies. Further, Flurry Analytics, the firm that monitors mobile app usage and statistics, says business app usage had a 30 percent year-over-year growth in 2016. And every year, more enterprise applications offer mobile app versions or become mobile friendly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

32% off JBL Charge 3 Waterproof Portable Bluetooth Speaker – Deal Alert

JBL Charge 3 is the ultimate, high-powered portable Bluetooth speaker with powerful stereo sound and a power bank all in one package. The Charge 3 takes the party everywhere, poolside or in the rain, thanks to the waterproof design, durable fabric and rugged housing. Its high-capacity 6,000mAh battery provides 20 hours of playtime and can charge your smartphones and tablets via its USB output. A built-in noise and echo-cancelling speakerphone gives you crystal clear calls with the press of a button. Wirelessly link multiple JBL Connect-enabled speakers to amplify the listening experience. The Charge 3 currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 1,140 people (read reviews), and its typical list price of $180 has been reduced to $123. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What the FCC chair’s actions tell us about net neutrality

With the elevation of Ajit Pai to chairman of the FCC, everyone is waiting for Pai to tip his hand on net neutrality. Looking at his first few actions, though, we can get a sense of what’s to come.Since becoming chairman, Pai has used his authority to rescind much of the work implemented by his predecessor, Tom Wheeler, in the past 30 days. Pai’s orders are similar to President Trump’s executive orders. They are exercises of his discretion as chairman that do not need sign-off by the other commissioners.+ Also on Network World: The end of net neutrality is nigh—here’s what’s likely to happen + Steve Augustino, a partner at law firm Kelley Drye who specializes in telecommunications, expects to see a lot of disruption until we get a better understanding of what Pai considers importantTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Putting ARM-Based Microservers Through The Paces

When ARM officials and partners several years ago began talking about pushing the low-power chip architecture from our phones and tablets and into the datacenter, the initial target was the emerging field of microservers – small, highly dense and highly efficient systems aimed at the growing number of cloud providers and hyperscale environments where power efficiency was as important as performance.

The thinking was that the low-power ARM architecture that was found in almost all consumer devices would fit into the energy-conscious parts of the server space that Intel was having troubling reaching with its more power-hungry Xeon processors. It …

Putting ARM-Based Microservers Through The Paces was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

NASA begins recovery after tornado hits Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans

A tornado struck NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans on Tuesday. About 3,500 employees were at the facility when a large tornado hit at 11:25 a.m. Fortunately, only five people suffered minor injuries. After the tornado, local law enforcement helped employees reach their homes, as NASA reported about 200 parked cars had been damaged.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA begins recovery after tornado hits Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans

NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans was impacted by a tornado on Tuesday. 3,500 employees were at the facility when a large tornado stuck yesterday, Feb. 7, at 11:25 a.m.; fortunately, only five employees suffered minor injuries. After the tornado, local law enforcement helped employees reach their homes as NASA reported that about 200 parked cars had been damaged.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Leave Your Ego at the Door

You are just about to walk into the interview room. Regardless of whether you are being interviewed, or interviewing—what are you thinking about? Are you thinking about winning? Are you thinking about whining? Or are you thinking about engaging? I have noticed, on many mailing lists, and in many other forums, that interviews in our world have devolved into a contest of egos.

The person on the other side of the table has some certification I don’t care about—how can I prove they are dumb, not as smart as their certification might indicate, or… The person on the other side of the table claims to know some protocol, can I find some bit of information they don’t know? These kinds of questions are really just ego questions—and you need to leave them at the door. This is particularly acute with certifications right now—a lot of people doubt the value of certifications, claiming folks who have them don’t know anything, the certifications are worthless, they don’t reflect the real world, etc.

I will agree that we have a problem with the depth and level of knowledge of network engineers at the moment. We all need to grow up a little, learn Continue reading

The IT-business gap remains

In light of its increasingly prominent and strategic role, IT continues to remain in control of technology budgets. One-third of the CIOs responding to CIO.com's 2017 State of the CIO survey said IT controls 71 percent or more of their organizations' technology budgets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Lessons from the rise and fall of an open source project

Eight years ago, the CyanogenMod project exploded onto the mobile device software scene. The Android-based open source mobile operating system quickly caught the attention of developers, Android fans and investors, and attracted interest from tech giants including Microsoft and Google. But at the end of last year the project imploded spectacularly.  Today the CyanogenMod project is no more, but the arc of its story offers fascinating insight into the world of open source software development.The project started out innocently enough following the discovery, in 2008, of a way to root mobile phones running Google's Android operating system, allowing modified firmware to be installed on rooted devices. One such piece of firmware was created by a developer called Steve Kondik, whose online handle was Cyanogen — a colorless toxic gas made by oxidizing hydrogen cyanide. The modified firmware was known as CyanogenMod.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Insurance spin-out rides API-driven strategy

Allstate has spun out an analytics business that harnesses driver risk scores, roadside rescue services and other telematics data, which it is packaging into software to sell to rival insurers, automakers, as well as ride-sharing companies. So it is fitting that the startup, called Arity, is also aping the API-based platform strategies of the very startups that have blown up the transportation industry.The symmetry isn't lost on Chetan Phadnis, vice president of Arity Platform, who says a platform is the best way Arity can make its APIs and software development kits (SDKs) available to customers in the software-is-eating-the-world era. Arity’s products could help insurers, for example, better price policies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Cloud for the enterprise

Portions of this post were originally posted on the Puppet blog, and are republished here with Puppet's permission.Enterprise companies turn to the cloud for lots of reasons: to quickly and economically provide development and testing environments; to burst at times of peak customer demand; and to generally be able to make changes faster and more flexibly.Whatever you think you may need from the cloud — and whatever concerns and reservations you may have — others have been there.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Accenture wants to help businesses secure their blockchains

Accenture wants to help businesses use blockchain technologies more securely by locking away the encryption keys they use to sign transactions.It's built a system that blockchain developers can use to store credentials in specialized cryptoprocessors called hardware security modules (HSMs).HSMs are typically used by banks to store the PINs associated with payment cards or the credentials used to make interbank payments over the SWIFT network, and are much more secure than storing the credentials, even in encrypted form, on network-connected servers from where attackers could steal them.The PINs or credentials never leave the HSMs, and their use within them is strictly controlled.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Accenture wants to help businesses secure their blockchains

Accenture wants to help businesses use blockchain technologies more securely by locking away the encryption keys they use to sign transactions.It's built a system that blockchain developers can use to store credentials in specialized cryptoprocessors called hardware security modules (HSMs).HSMs are typically used by banks to store the PINs associated with payment cards or the credentials used to make interbank payments over the SWIFT network, and are much more secure than storing the credentials, even in encrypted form, on network-connected servers from where attackers could steal them.The PINs or credentials never leave the HSMs, and their use within them is strictly controlled.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Here’s how Evernote moved 3 petabytes of data to Google’s cloud

Evernote decided last year that it wanted to move away from running its own data centers and start using the public cloud to operate its popular note-taking service. On Wednesday, it announced that the lion's share of the work is done, save for some last user attachments.The company signed up to work with Google, and as part of the migration process, the tech titan sent a team of engineers (in one case, bearing doughnuts) over to work with its customer on making sure the process was a success.Evernote wanted to take advantage of the cloud to help with features based on machine learning that it has been developing. It also wanted to leverage the flexibility that comes from not having to run a data center.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

In-memory noSQL DBMS Client in Big Data Cluster

This is guest post by Sergei Sheinin, creator of the 2DX Web UI Database Cluster Framework, a low latency big data cluster with in-memory noSQL DBMS Web Browser client.

When I began working in the field of data management the disconnect between rigid structure of relational database tables and free form of documents managed by end users and their businesses stood out as a technical and managerial hurdle. On the one hand there were strict definitions of normalized relational database models and unstructured document formats on the other. Often the users in charge of changing document structures held organizational responsibilities far removed from database modeling or programming. On one occasion I was involved in a project where call center operators made on the fly decisions to update a document structure based on phone conversations with customers. Such updates had to be streamed into a relational back-end creating havoc in database structure and build of table columns.

In seeking a permanent solution I researched merits of Entity-Attribute-Value database schema and its applications. This technique proved successful in enabling front end users to modify relational-bound documents through performing updates to structure described in their metadata. However application of EAV raised Continue reading

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