4 employee benefits that will improve retention

Most businesses offer no shortage of benefits to employees, but what happens when your employees aren't aware most of those benefits exist? While free lunch and snacks in the break room are easy enough to spot, and appreciate, there are plenty of overlooked benefits hiding in your onboarding handbook.Dean Aloise, global HR consulting leader at Xerox HR Services, a division of Xerox focused on HR consulting, says that businesses are looking for more "value" in their benefits beyond flashy perks that get people in the door. But what employees value is going to vary depending on factors like age, demographic and personal view point. Aloise says the only way to understand what most your employees want from their benefits package, is to ask them and then communicate those benefits regularly to the workforce.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 DevOps Experts You Should Follow

Five things AIs can do better than us

For millennia, we surpassed the other intelligent species with which we share our planet -- dolphins, porpoises, orangutans, and the like -- in almost all skills, bar swimming and tree-climbing.In recent years, though, our species has created new forms of intelligence, able to outperform us in other ways. One of the most famous of these artificial intelligences (AIs) is AlphaGo, developed by Deepmind. In just a few years, it has learned to play the 4,000-year-old strategy game, Go, beating two of the world's strongest players.Other software developed by Deepmind has learned to play classic eight-bit video games, notably Breakout, in which players must use a bat to hit a ball at a wall, knocking bricks out of it. CEO Demis Hassabis is fond of saying that the software figured out how to beat the game purely from the pixels on the screen, often glossing over the fact that the company first taught it how to count and how to read the on-screen score, and gave it the explicit goal of maximizing that score. Even the smartest AIs need a few hints about our social mores. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Welcome to the 11th Gibbs Golden Turkey Awards

Back for 11th helpings?Image by Mark Gibbs / psdblast.comWelcome, once again, to the Gibbs Golden Turkey Awards. It’s been a few years since our last effort to point the digit of disdain at those individuals, companies or entities that don't, won't or can't come to grips with reality, maturity, ethical behavior and/or social responsibility because of their blindness, self-imposed ignorance, thinly veiled political agenda, rapaciousness and greed, or their blatant desire to return us to the Dark Ages. Or all of those sins combined. But that lapse aside, with loins girded anew with cheap girders, we undertake again the traditional annual roasting of those who deserve a damn good basting. Without further ado, here in reverse order, are the top 10 Golden Turkeys for 2016 …To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Welcome to the 11th Gibbs Golden Turkey Awards

Back for 11th helpings?Image by Mark Gibbs / psdblast.comWelcome, once again, to the Gibbs Golden Turkey Awards. It’s been a few years since our last effort to point the digit of disdain at those individuals, companies or entities that don't, won't or can't come to grips with reality, maturity, ethical behavior and/or social responsibility because of their blindness, self-imposed ignorance, thinly veiled political agenda, rapaciousness and greed, or their blatant desire to return us to the Dark Ages. Or all of those sins combined. But that lapse aside, with loins girded anew with cheap girders, we undertake again the traditional annual roasting of those who deserve a damn good basting. Without further ado, here in reverse order, are the top 10 Golden Turkeys for 2016 …To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Best Android Black Friday 2016 deals on tablets, phones and more

Android EverywhereThat little green Android elf is everywhere this Black Friday 2016 shopping season to help retailers slash the price of tablets, phones and more running Google’s mobile operating system based on the Linux kernel.Here’s where to look if you want to compare Android products to those from Apple or running Windows.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Automation Course for Environments Using $Vendor Platform

One of my readers wondered whether it makes sense to attend my Building Network Automation Solution course even if they plan to deploy a $Vendor platform.

It depends, this time on how fast and how far you want to proceed with network automation.

Laid-off IT workers fight University of California outsourcing

Audrey Hatten-Milholin has worked at the University of California, San Francisco for 17 years. But come February, her job in the IT department as a system architect will be taken over by a worker from India. Even worse, Hatten-Milholin has been asked to train her replacement. “It’s horrible. Really horrible,” she said on Tuesday. “You want to treat people decently. But on the other hand, I’m pretty ticked off I have to do this.” Hatten-Milholin was among about 80 laid-off IT workers who held a rally on Tuesday, calling for an end to the university's outsourcing program. The IT department workers, including permanent staff and contract employees, will be replaced by workers from an India-based IT services firm called HCL.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Leveraging MPLS with Cloud Services

Many enterprises rely on multi-protocol label switching VPNs for high-performance, critical communications. Now those services can be enhanced with new virtualized, cloud services for on demand access.Because it is by definition multiprotocol, MPLS can handle multiple types of data streams, including IP, ATM and frame relay, making it the predominant option for large enterprises.MPLS utilizes a communication service provider’s (CSP) infrastructure to deliver a segregated wide area network (WAN), avoiding the cost and complexity of an enterprise having to maintain private lines for its WAN. As it is under the control of a single operator and supports traffic policy enforcement, MPLS offers greater reliability and performance for enterprise WANs and VPNs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Akamai: Look for IoT devices to attack during Thanksgiving, Christmas

The annual holiday uptick in denial of service attacks will likely continue this year only this time with a new devastating weapon: Internet of Things (IoT) devices, according to Akamai.In its quarterly State of the Internet/Security Report, the company says certain types of DDoS attacks are on the rise compared to the third quarter last year, both in size and number. That doesn’t bode well for users of the internet starting next week.“Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the holiday season in general have long been characterized by a rise in the threat of DDoS attacks,” the report says. “Malicious actors have new tools — IoT botnets — that will almost certainly be used in the coming quarter.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Akamai: Look for IoT devices to attack during Thanksgiving, Christmas

The annual holiday uptick in denial of service attacks will likely continue this year only this time with a new devastating weapon: Internet of Things (IoT) devices, according to Akamai.In its quarterly State of the Internet/Security Report, the company says certain types of DDoS attacks are on the rise compared to the third quarter last year, both in size and number. That doesn’t bode well for users of the internet starting next week.“Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the holiday season in general have long been characterized by a rise in the threat of DDoS attacks,” the report says. “Malicious actors have new tools — IoT botnets — that will almost certainly be used in the coming quarter.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EVPN vs PBB-EVPN

The is the next in a series of technical posts relating to EVPN – in particular PBB-EVPN (Provider backbone bridging, Ethernet VPN) and attempts to explain the basic setup, application and problems solved within a very large layer-2 environment. Readers new to EVPN may wish to start with my first post which gives examples of the most basic implementation of regular EVPN;

EVPN – the basics

Regular EVPN without a doubt is the future of MPLS based multi-point layer-2 VPN connectivity, it adds the highly scalable BGP based control-plane, that’s been used to good effect in Layer-3 VPNs for over a decade. It has much better mechanisms for handling BUM (broadcast unknown multicast) traffic and can properly do active-active layer-2 forwarding, and because EVPN PE’s all synchronise their ARP tables with one another – you can design large layer-2/layer-3 networks that stretch across numerous data centres or POPs,  and move machines around at layer-2 or layer-3 without having to re-address or re-provision – you can learn how to do this here;

EVPN Inter-VLAN routing + mobility

But like any technology it can never be perfect from day one, EVPN contains more layer-2 and layer-3 functionality than just about any single protocol developed Continue reading

NFD13 Forecast – Cloudy With a Chance of Software

Well, this week is a week of firsts — or at least, firsts in a while. It’s my first time actually posting something new on the blog in a while, and it will also be my first Tech Field Day event in a while.

I’m honored to have been invited back to NFD13, happening on Thursday, 11/17 and Friday, 11/18. I’m very excited to be joining the TFD team for another event! The delegate panel includes some of the most experienced and well respected names in the networking industry (myself excluded, obviously), and the sponsor list is really quite exciting. I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends, and making some new ones along the way.

I really like when NFD events have a mix of focuses (foci?). It keeps the conversation varied and interesting for both the delegates and the audience. For NFD 13, I see several big themes for the sponsor list:

Data Center Fabric/Automation/Orchestration

Network Testing/Modeling/Audit/Management

Software Defined WAN

Note: I could be mis-classifying a couple of Continue reading

Planetary scientists push for unique asteroid deflection mission

Planetary scientists got together this week in Berlin express support for the future European/NASA asteroid redirect mission to develop technology that one day might prevent the Earth from being smacked by a destructive asteroid.+More on Network World: How to protect Earth from asteroid destruction+Proponents are trying to garner worldwide support for the mission pointing to the European Space Administration ministerial conference in Luzern next month where the decision will be made whether or not to fund the ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM). AIM is part of an over-arching collaborative effort with NASA known as theAsteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Planetary scientists push for unique asteroid deflection mission

Planetary scientists got together this week in Berlin express support for the future European/NASA asteroid redirect mission to develop technology that one day might prevent the Earth from being smacked by a destructive asteroid.+More on Network World: How to protect Earth from asteroid destruction+Proponents are trying to garner worldwide support for the mission pointing to the European Space Administration ministerial conference in Luzern next month where the decision will be made whether or not to fund the ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM). AIM is part of an over-arching collaborative effort with NASA known as theAsteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Indian Conglomerate Embarks on IoT Journey with Cisco Jasper

Reliance & Cisco launch Unlimit, targeting enterprise IoT.

47% off CyberPower CSP600WSU Surge Protector 6-AC Outlet Swivel with 2 USB (2.1A) Charging Ports – Deal Alert

The CyberPower Professional Series CSP600WSU Surge Protector is ideal for Home/ Office protection with 1200 joules, 6 swivel outlets, 2 USB charge ports (2.1 Amp shared), and a convenient wall tap design. The surge protector is ideal for protecting personal computers, phones/ fax/ modems, printers, stereos, and other electronics. Its two USB are perfect for keeping tablets, smart phones, and other rechargeable electronics ready to use.  With Amazon's current discount of 47% you can buy it now for $9.86 (See it on Amazon). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

23% off MagicFiber Microfiber Cleaning Cloths For Screens and Other Delicate Surfaces, 30 Pack – Deal Alert

This extremely soft, high-quality 6x7 microfiber cloth from MagicFiber absorbs and safely removes dust, oil smudges, fingerprints, and dirt from eyeglasses, camera lenses, computer screens, televisions, and other delicate surfaces without any harsh chemicals. It's machine or hand washable, and is built to last. The cloths are highly rated on Amazon, where it currently averages 4.8 out of 5 stars from over 8,300 people (90% rate 5 stars: read recent reviews). Its typical list price of $29.99 has been reduced 23% to $22.99 for a pack of 30 individually wrapped, so you may decide to toss one in everybody's stocking this holiday season. See the discounted 30-pack of microfiber cleaning cloths now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Siemplify Raises $10M for Its Security Platform

The company has raised $14M since its launch in February.

Reprisals against Apple in a U.S.-China trade war would be indirect

If the Chinese government retaliated against tariff increases by the United States, it would not take direct aim at Apple, an economist argued today."For China, the best target is Boeing," said Caroline Freund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.Freund was responding to questions after Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party-supported newspaper, warned of reprisals if President-elect Donald Trump follows through on a campaign pledge to dramatically increase tariffs on goods imported into the United States.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here