Inside That Big Silicon Valley Hyperscale Supermicro Deal

Among the major companies that design and sell servers with their own brands, which are called original equipment manufacturers or OEMs, and those that co-design machines with customers and then make them, which are called original design manufacturers or ODMs, Supermicro stands apart. It does not fall precisely into either category. The company makes system components, like motherboards and enclosures, for those who want to build their own systems or those who want to sell systems to others, and it also makes complete systems, sold in onesies or twosies or sold by the hundreds of racks.

Supermicro is also a …

Inside That Big Silicon Valley Hyperscale Supermicro Deal was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Speaking at Red Hat Summit 2017

Hi Folks, I know it’s been a few weeks but I assure you I’ve been heads down on good stuff. You’ll get to see much of it on the blog, but also at Red Hat Summit 2017 in Boston, MA if you’re so inclined.

So what will I (and my colleagues) be talking about at “Summit” this year?Well, there are several RHV & KVM specific activities at Summit that I’ll have something to do with, 2 directly and multiple indirectly:

Breakout Session – High Availability for Red Hat Virtualization Manager 
This will be my primary presentation on RHV, where I talk about and provide demo’s on RHV Hosted Engine, mostly in the context of HA (why and how), but also in the context of how it’s used in a new Red Hat product… (cue dramatic music..)

Breakout Session – Red Hat Virtualization and KVM Roadmaps
This is my colleagues’ session, and typically standing room only. I may help organize, but the Product Managers (Moran & Yaniv) will knock this out. It lays out the future of both Red Hat Virtualization and the core technology, KVM.

Lightning Talk – Reporting and Metrics Update
Again, my colleague’s session (Yaniv), but Continue reading

Rackspace is cuting 6% of its workforce

Via a blog post by CEO Taylor Rhodes, Texas-based cloud computing company Rackspace announced that it is cutting about 6% of its workforce in areas that have seen slowed growth in recent years.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: How Rackspace will stay alive in cloud: Stop competing with Amazon, start partnering +Rhodes says the cuts will primarily be focused on the company’s corporate administrative expenses and management, and that the company’s “front-line” support staff and product teams will be least impacted by the layoffs. Rackspace did not provide additional details about where the cuts will come from, saying only they are in areas “where the workforce has grown more rapidly than the revenue.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

In the Labs: Connected vehicles in Ohio, artificial intelligence in Illinois and Massachusetts

Activity on the tech labs front is happening faster than we can get to it these days, so here are a few "in case you missed it" items...$45M for Transportation Research Center The state of Ohio, JobsOhio and the Ohio State University are putting $45 million into an expansion of the Transportation Research Center's (TRC) 540-acre Smart Mobility Advanced Research and Test (SMART) Center in the Columbus area. Research will focus both on connected and driverless vehicles within this section of the 4,500-acre TRC expanse.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Arista Founder: Networking Standards Move Too Slowly for Cloud Giants

Arista is trying to start a grass-roots standards effort for 800 Gb/s optics.

Networking Pros Grapple With “Clockgate”

After Ryzen, AMD has no immediate plan to purge its other PC chips

An AMD Athlon or Sempron chip may not drum as much excitement as Ryzen, but loyalty has helped those brands stick around for more than a decade.So what happens to those and other PC processors, like the A-series and FX, when AMD's new Ryzen chips start flooding the market in March? AMD has said the first high-end desktop Ryzen chips will ship in March.For now, AMD plans to make no changes to its lineup of existing chips, a company spokesman said.Instead, the chips will be regrouped to focus on price-sensitive PC buyers.Ryzen-based PCs are expected to be priced at a premium, competing with Intel's top gaming CPUs. The FX chips will not go away once Ryzen arrives, and will be targeted toward budget gamers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AT&T, IBM, Nokia join to make IoT systems safer

Some big players in security and the internet of things, including AT&T and Nokia, are joining forces to solve problems that they say make IoT vulnerable in many areas.The IoT Cybersecurity Alliance, formed Wednesday, also includes IBM, Symantec, Palo Alto Networks, and mobile security company Trustonic. The group said it won’t set standards but will conduct research, educate consumers and businesses, and influence standards and policies.As IoT technologies take shape, there’s a danger of new vulnerabilities being created in several areas. Consumer devices have been in the security spotlight thanks to incidents like the DDoS attacks last year that turned poorly secured set-top boxes and DVRs into botnets. But the potential weaknesses are much broader, spanning the network, cloud, and application layers, the new group said in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

AT&T, IBM, Nokia join to make IoT systems safer

Some big players in security and the internet of things, including AT&T and Nokia, are joining forces to solve problems that they say make IoT vulnerable in many areas.The IoT Cybersecurity Alliance, formed Wednesday, also includes IBM, Symantec, Palo Alto Networks, and mobile security company Trustonic. The group said it won’t set standards but will conduct research, educate consumers and businesses, and influence standards and policies.As IoT technologies take shape, there’s a danger of new vulnerabilities being created in several areas. Consumer devices have been in the security spotlight thanks to incidents like the DDoS attacks last year that turned poorly secured set-top boxes and DVRs into botnets. But the potential weaknesses are much broader, spanning the network, cloud, and application layers, the new group said in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Is your IT infrastructure healthy?

From my experience, if you look at 200 or so companies, you’ll find approximately 10 with enterprise tool sets for infrastructure management, six with middle-of-the-road packages, and four with home-grown solutions. That’s 20 total, just 10 percent. To make matters worse, the enterprise tool sets tend to be difficult to install and use, so system admins fail to use them as much as they should.Based on my observations, most businesses do not have a good read on the health of their IT infrastructure. They need a cost-effective, practical solution to monitor their IT environment so they can manage it more efficiently.Preventing Murphy’s Law IT infrastructure management tools can help to prevent slowdowns and downtime, thus help you to avoid the firefights that occur when Murphy’s Law strikes. That, of course, should be a priority. After all, when you have three people hunting down a problem for a week, each spending perhaps 10 hours on the problem, you waste 30 working hours.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Gartner: Algorithm-based technology patents are raging

Algorithms are hot – so hot that Gartner is saying that by 2019, 250,000 patent applications will be filed that include claims for algorithms, a tenfold increase from five years ago.Gartner wrote that according to a worldwide search on analytics vendor Aulive, nearly 17,000 patents applied for in 2015 mentioned "algorithm" in the title or description, versus 570 in 2000. Including those mentioning "algorithm" anywhere in the document, there were more than 100,000 applications last year versus 28,000 five years ago.At this pace, and considering the rising interest in protecting algorithmic intellectual property, by 2020 there could be nearly half a million patent applications mentioning "algorithm," and more than 25,000 patent applications for algorithms themselves, Gartner stated. Of the top 40 organizations patenting the most algorithms the past five years, 33 are Chinese businesses and universities – IBM is the only western tech company on the list at No. 10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Gartner: Algorithm-based technology patents are raging

Algorithms are hot – so hot that Gartner is saying that by 2019, 250,000 patent applications will be filed that include claims for algorithms, a tenfold increase from five years ago.Gartner wrote that according to a worldwide search on analytics vendor Aulive, nearly 17,000 patents applied for in 2015 mentioned "algorithm" in the title or description, versus 570 in 2000. Including those mentioning "algorithm" anywhere in the document, there were more than 100,000 applications last year versus 28,000 five years ago.At this pace, and considering the rising interest in protecting algorithmic intellectual property, by 2020 there could be nearly half a million patent applications mentioning "algorithm," and more than 25,000 patent applications for algorithms themselves, Gartner stated. Of the top 40 organizations patenting the most algorithms the past five years, 33 are Chinese businesses and universities – IBM is the only western tech company on the list at No. 10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Gartner: Algorithm-based technology patents are raging

Algorithms are hot – so hot that Gartner is saying that by 2019, 250,000 patent applications will be filed that include claims for algorithms, a tenfold increase from five years ago.Gartner wrote that according to a worldwide search on analytics vendor Aulive, nearly 17,000 patents applied for in 2015 mentioned "algorithm" in the title or description, versus 570 in 2000. Including those mentioning "algorithm" anywhere in the document, there were more than 100,000 applications last year versus 28,000 five years ago.At this pace, and considering the rising interest in protecting algorithmic intellectual property, by 2020 there could be nearly half a million patent applications mentioning "algorithm," and more than 25,000 patent applications for algorithms themselves, Gartner stated. Of the top 40 organizations patenting the most algorithms the past five years, 33 are Chinese businesses and universities – IBM is the only western tech company on the list at No. 10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft Helps Cloud Customers Thwart Patent Trolls

Azure customers get a bit of indemnity.

Microsoft launches new Azure intellectual property protections

Microsoft wants to help its cloud customers feel better protected from intellectual property lawsuit threats. To that end, the company is launching a new feature that’s designed to give them additional shielding.The Azure IP Advantage program (the IP stands for intellectual property) provides a trio of benefits. First, Microsoft will indemnify all Azure customers from intellectual property infringement claims resulting from their use of Azure products, including open source components.Second, the company will allow customers that meet a set of criteria access to a "patent pick" program, which will allow them to transfer one Microsoft patent from a list of 10,000 to help them with defending against an infringement suit.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: IPv6 for the Home Network Nerd

For the more tech savvy, IPv6 does indeed bring fifteen bajillion addresses, so to speak. And while that doesn’t seem like a big deal, it is. For example, most of us at home have gear obscured by NAT. This makes us feel more secure — all these addresses hidden behind a single address feels like a bit of anonymity, and we like that. But private address space and network address translation are features that were created because the Internet was quickly running out of address space. Not because the powers that were felt that a layer of indirection was required to make us more secure. —Ethan Banks

The post Worth Reading: IPv6 for the Home Network Nerd appeared first on 'net work.

Intel repeats Obama-era pledge to invest billions in a new factory

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich's meeting with new U.S. president Donald Trump was followed by a big announcement: The company will invest US$7 billion over the next three to four years to complete a factory to make 7-nanometer chips.The completion of Fab 42 -- where the chips will be made -- will create about 3,000 jobs in the Chandler, Arizona, area, Intel said. The chipmaker expects to help create 10,000 jobs tied to supporting the activities of Fab 42.Trump has been pushing for more jobs in the U.S. and for bringing manufacturing back to the country. Making the announcement after meeting with Trump amplifies Intel's efforts to promote itself as a jobs creator.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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