4 tips for tough conversations with your employees

No one likes when difficult situations at work, but when these issues do arise, it's important that your focus remains on establishing a productive conversation where everyone feels heard."When difficult conversations do arise -- such as discussions about low performance, inconsistent results, frustrated clients -- a leader can confidently assess the current situation against previously defined expectations and a focus on identifying and closing the gap," says Anthony Abbatiello, global lead, Deloitte Leadership business.When you approach tough conversations with professionalism and leadership, they can ultimately help guide the employee in their career by helping them figure out what their strengths and weaknesses are. However, it can still be just as difficult to deliver bad news at work as it is to receive it, but there are a few steps you can take to help make those tough moments at work easier on everyone.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple commits to run off 100% renewable energy

Apple announced that it has committed to running all of its data centers and corporate offices on renewable energy, joining a group of other corporations committed to the same clean energy goal.Apple said it has joined RE100, a global initiative by influential businesses committed to using 100% renewable electricity. To date, RE100 has amassed membership from 77 corporations.Other RE100 members include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, VMware, Rackspace and Wells Fargo.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple commits to run off 100% renewable energy

Apple announced that it has committed to running all of its data centers and corporate offices on renewable energy, joining a group of other corporations committed to the same clean energy goal.Apple said it has joined RE100, a global initiative by influential businesses committed to using 100% renewable electricity. To date, RE100 has amassed membership from 77 corporations.Other RE100 members include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, VMware, Rackspace and Wells Fargo.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google’s Pixel phones: 7 essential technical upgrades we want to see

Google will, if the persistent rumors are true, forego releasing “Nexus” phones this year in favor of a pair of phones under the “Pixel” banner. Is this just a re-branding, or are there material differences between the two product lineages?Well, the Nexus heritage is based on affordable hardware that runs stock Android—phones that have always been aimed at developers and enthusiasts. The Pixel brand, whether it’s the Chromebook Pixel or the Pixel C Android tablet, is more aspirational. The Pixel hardware is higher-priced and higher-quality, and brings unique features to bear. Beyond that, the Pixel devices not only compete with high-end hardware from other manufacturers, but also point the way forward for those companies. They show “what can be done” if you pull out all the stops.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How blind skills challenges can close the skills gap

Jessica Janiuk didn't set out to have a career in IT. After earning a degree in communications with a minor in web development, Janiuk started working as a video producer, but quickly found that wasn't the right fit. When offered the opportunity to work on software, Janiuk jumped at the chance, found a professional calling and has thrived in the IT industry for the last few years. But as a trans-woman, Janiuk has experienced more than the usual biases women in tech are subjected to on the journey to her current position as a front-end software engineer for global data protection firm Datto.Though Silicon Valley firms and more progressive, organizations globally are employing a number of methods to increase diversity in their talent pipelines and remove biases in their recruiting and hiring processes, it's still an uphill battle for women, the LGBTQ community and other underrepresented minorities trying to break into the IT field. One way to ensure bias isn't impacting the hiring process is through blind coding challenges to screen and qualify technical talent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco moves on from Intercloud, will focus on cloud management instead

Cisco this week released new software and services for helping organizations migrate to cloud-based infrastructure, whether it be infrastructure they run themselves or resources from public cloud providers.+More on Network World: Cisco CEO: Spin-in technologies aren’t dead at Cisco+But as part of this effort Cisco is not pointing customers to one of its own public cloud platforms as it has wound down and pivoted away from its multi-year effort to develop its once-heralded Intercloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SoftWatch Releases SaaS to Help Enterprises Migrate to Cloud

Determine which apps are most suitable to run on the cloud.

Data Deduplication: 7 Factors To Consider

This Is Why I’m Not Doing SD-WAN Webinars

One of my long-time regular readers sent me this question:

I was wondering if you have had any interest in putting together an SD-WAN overview/update similar to what you do with data center fabrics where you cover the different product offerings, differentiators, solution scorecard…

That would be a good idea. Unfortunately the SD-WAN vendors aren’t exactly helping.

Cisco CEO Robbins: Wait til you see what’s in our innovation pipeline

It’s been a little over a year since Chuck Robbins took the reins at Cisco from the venerated John Chambers. In that time, the face and pace of the IT realm has transformed -- from Dell buying EMC and HP splitting up to the swift rise of IoT and harsh impact of security challenges. Robbins has embraced this rapid change and, he says in this wide-ranging interview, moved the company forward with relentless speed to address everything from hyperconvergence to application-centric infrastructures. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

IT security: 3 things you need to know now

Computerworld, CSO and CIO surveyed 287 business and IT leaders on the state of security in their organization. Here's what they had to say (it ain't always pretty...).

Cisco CEO Robbins: Wait til you see what’s in our innovation pipeline

It’s been a little over a year since Chuck Robbins took the reins at Cisco from the venerated John Chambers. In that time, the face and pace of the IT realm has transformed -- from Dell buying EMC and HP splitting up to the swift rise of IoT and harsh impact of security challenges. Robbins has embraced this rapid change and, he says in this wide-ranging interview, moved the company forward with relentless speed to address everything from hyperconvergence to application-centric infrastructures. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Industry First Micro-segmentation Cybersecurity Benchmark Released

The VMware NSX Micro-segmentation Cybersecurity Benchmark report has been released! As previewed in part six of the Micro-segmentation Defined – NSX Securing Anywhere blog series , independent cyber risk management advisor and assessor Coalfire was sponsored by VMware to create an industry first Micro-segmentation Cybersecurity Benchmark report. Coalfire conducted an audit of the VMware NSX micro-segmentation capabilities to develop this benchmark report detailing the efficacy of NSX as a security platform through a detailed “micro-audit” process, testing NSX against simulated zero-day threats.

Testing included five different network design patterns, and demonstrated how NSX micro-segmentation can provide stateful, distributed,  policy-based protection in environments regardless of network topology. Topologies included –

• Flat L2 network segments
• L2 and L3 networks with centralized virtual or physical routers, representative of typical data center rack implementations built on hybrid physical and network virtualization platform / distributed virtual switch (dVS)
• Networks with connection to other physical servers
• Overlay-based networks using the Distributed Firewalls (DFW) and Distributed Logical Routers (DLR)
• Physical VLAN and overlay-based networks using service insertion technologies running on dedicated VMs (in our case, Palo Alto Networks NextGen FW with Panorama)

Coalfire’s examination and testing of VMware NSX technology utilized simulated exploits that depict likely malware and Continue reading

Russia has previously tried to influence US elections, says spy chief

Russia has tried to influence U.S. elections since the 1960s during the Cold War, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said Tuesday.It's not clear whether the interference, which has a long history, aims to influence the outcome of the election or tries to sow seeds of doubt about the sanctity of the process, Clapper said in an interview to The Washington Post.The remarks are the closest the U.S. spy chief has come to suggesting that Russia could be involved in recent hacks of Democratic party organizations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Russia has previously tried to influence US elections, says spy chief

Russia has tried to influence U.S. elections since the 1960s during the Cold War, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said Tuesday. It's not clear whether the interference, which has a long history, aims to influence the outcome of the election or tries to sow seeds of doubt about the sanctity of the process, Clapper said in an interview to The Washington Post. The remarks are the closest the U.S. spy chief has come to suggesting that Russia could be involved in recent hacks of Democratic party organizations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WAN Impairment/WAN Emulator with WAN Bridge

Playing in the lab and want to impair a link with delay or loss?      I use WAN Bridge – its simple and free.

So say I’m testing an SD-WAN brownout/impairment avoidance solution in my lab.  For example, Cisco’s IWAN.  I’m going to need something to impair links with delay or loss.  I like WAN Bridge.  Why?  Because its simple, easy, and free.

There has been one thing I’ve struggled with in the past year about.  Every time I needed an impairment point this burned up 2 NICs on my UCS equipment.  Why? Cause I couldn’t seem to figure out how to load one NIC on a UCS as a trunk port with multiple VLANs on it and have multiple WAN bridges with just 1 trunk on a switch.

So that meant, for a recent CPOC that I was doing, if I really wanted 6 impairment points (red circles in diagram below) I was going to need to eat up 12 NICs on my UCS.

There had to be a better way…..

My friend, David Prall, was convinced it “should” work. I was equally convinced that I had tried it before and Continue reading

Larry Ellison says Amazon is ’20 years behind’ Oracle

Larry Ellison continued his assault on Amazon during his second keynote address at Oracle OpenWorld on Tuesday."Amazon Web Services are simply not optimized for the Oracle Database. I'll go further than that: Amazon Web Services aren't optimized for their own databases either, as you will see," he said, while showing off a set of benchmarks that showed Oracle Database performing several times faster on Oracle's cloud than it does on Amazon's cloud. "It doesn't get better, it gets worse."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

14% off iHome iPL23 White Clock Radio with Lightning Dock, Support for iPhone 7/7+ – Deal Alert

iHome's iPL23 is compatible with iPhones 5, 6 and 7 (including Plus models), features premium speakers, a Lightning charging dock, FM radio, and alarm clock in one compact device. This handy radio clock charges Lightning-capable iPhone and iPod devices, while letting you wake or sleep to your favorite songs, podcasts, audio books or FM radio station. Gradual wake/sleep function slowly increases or decreases volume as you drift off, or come to. A USB port allows for simultaneous charging of your iPad or Apple Watch as well. The iPL23 in white has been discounted 14% from $69.95 to $59.95. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

D-Wave will ship a 2,000-qubit quantum computer next year

Forget PCs and servers: D-Wave Systems is looking into the future with its quantum computer, up to 1,000 times faster than an earlier model.The company will start shipping a quantum computer with 2,000 qubits, twice the size of its current 1,000-qubit D-Wave 2X. The D-Wave 2X is considered one of the most advanced computers in the world today.The 2,000-qubit quantum computer will be 500 to 1000 times faster than its predecessor, said Jeremy Hilton, senior vice president of systems at D-Wave.An even larger quantum computer based on a whole new processor design will come out two to three years after that, Hilton said.Today's PCs and servers could ultimately be replaced by a quantum computer, which has been researched for decades. Beyond D-Wave, companies like IBM are also building quantum computers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Receive alerts when your data is leaked with this tool

If you’re worried that your data might end up in the hands of a hacker, one site is offering a free service that can give you a head’s up.Baltimore-based Terbium Labs has come up with a product called Matchlight, which crawls the dark recesses of the internet, looking for stolen data that’s circulating on the black market.On Tuesday, Terbium Labs opened the product to the public. That means any user can sign up to have five of their personal records monitored for free.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here