IDG Contributor Network: One to watch: GE and Pivotal invest in SnappyData

Investments happen all the time. And usually a modest(!) sub $4 million series A round wouldn't raise much attention. After all, Silicon Valley is built on a high cadence of startup founding, investments and eventual exit out the other end (be it successful or otherwise).But this one is interesting in part because of those investing in the company, and also because of who is involved in the founding of this particular startup.SnappyData is building an in-memory transactional analytics database that is built on top of the Apache Spark open-source initiative. Nothing too exciting there, right? Well, an added twist is that the SnappyData leadership team—Richard Lamb, Jags Ramnarayanan and Sudhir Menon—previously built GemFire into one of most widely adopted in-memory data grid products in the market. Oh, and that little company, GemFire, was eventually acquired by VMware. And for those unaccustomed to the slight incestuousness that occurs in the technology industry, VMware went on to create, and eventually spin out, the Pivotal organization, headline investors today in SnappyData.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Telcos Dial Up OpenStack And Mainstream It

OpenStack was born at the nexus of high performance computing at NASA and the cloud at Rackspace Hosting, but it might be the phone companies of the world that help it go mainstream.

It is safe to say that most of us probably think that our data plans and voice services for our mobile phones are way too expensive, and as it turns out, that is exactly how our mobile phone operators feel about the racks and rows and datacenters that they have full of essentially proprietary network equipment that comprises their wired and wireless networks. And so, all of

Telcos Dial Up OpenStack And Mainstream It was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

MPLS Design Question

MPLS Design Question – MPLS is one of the most commonly used encapsulation method today. Especially on Wide Area Networks of the Service Providers, Large Enterprises and some datacenters. Service Providers sell MPLS services to customers for decades. When customers want to have Service Provider redundancy so two MPLS circuit from different Service Providers, Inter AS […]

The post MPLS Design Question appeared first on Cisco Network Design and Architecture | CCDE Bootcamp | orhanergun.net.

OpenStack users talk benefits, challenges of open source clouds

A couple of years ago tech executives at FICO wanted to update their infrastructure. “OpenStack seems to be the wave of the future, so we gave it a run,” says Donald Talton, senior manager of platform operations and cloud engineering at the credit rating agency. SolidFire Donald Talton FICO considered using VMware, but felt that the “momentum” of OpenStack was stronger, Talton says. And so began FICO’s use of OpenStack’s IaaS open source private cloud software. Talton says it’s been great, though that doesn’t mean it’s been easy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM lines up all-flash storage to help power cognitive computing

IBM is expanding its flash storage lineup to power cloud data centers that carry out so-called cognitive computing.The company’s newest FlashSystem arrays, introduced Wednesday, combine its fast and relatively affordable FlashCore technology with a scale-out architecture designed to be easy to expand.Cognitive computing, which IBM defines as real-time data analysis for immediate, automated decision-making, is at the heart of much of IBM’s current technology push for enterprises and service providers. Its Watson technology is the star of the show but only the most visible part of what the company is doing in this space. An example of cognitive computing is a mobile operator analyzing information about phone call quality to make decisions on the fly about changes in the network, said Andy Walls, an IBM Fellow and CTO for flash systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple stumbles in the world’s biggest smartphone market

Last year, Apple was on a gravy train in China. Sales of the iPhone were booming, and the country looked poised to overtake the U.S. in its contribution to Apple’s business. Suddenly, things don't look so rosy.Apple reported Tuesday that its first quarter revenue from Greater China declined 26 percent from the same period in 2015, a turnaround that contributed to Apple's first year-over-year revenue decline in more than a decade.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple’s quarterly revenue drops for the first time since 2003

Apple earlier today released its Q2 2016 earnings and the results might leave investors a bit wary. When the dust settled, Apple reported $10.5 billion in profits on the back of $50.6 billion in revenue. And while those figures are certainly impressive, they are markedly lower than what Apple reported during the company's second fiscal quarter in 2015 when it posted $58 billion in revenue.Notably, this marks the first time that Apple's quarterly revenue experienced a year over year decline since 2003.Product wise, Apple sold 51.2 million iPhones, a significant drop-off from the 61.17 million iPhones Apple sold during the same quarter a year-ago. In fact, Apple's most recent quarter represents the first time that quarterly iPhone sales have dropped off. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

My next scan

So starting next week, running for a week, I plan on scanning for ports 0-65535 (TCP). Each probe will be completely random selection of IP+port. The purpose is to answer the question about the most common open ports.

This would take a couple years to scan for all ports, so I'm not going to do that. But, scanning for a week should give me a good statistical sampling of 1% of the total possible combinations.

Specifically, the scan will open a connection and wait a few seconds for a banner. Protocols like FTP, SSH, and VNC reply first with data, before you send requests. Doing this should find such things lurking at odd ports. We know that port 22 is the most common for SSH, but what is the second most common?

Then, if I get no banner in response, I'll send an SSL "Hello" message. We know that port 443 is the most common SSL port, but what is the second most common?

In other words, by waiting for SSH, then sending SSL, I'll find SSH even it's on the (wrong) port of 443, and I'll find SSL even if it's on port 22. And all other ports, too.

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Can AI beat you at Foosball? Yes. Yes it can

AI has already proved its prowess in chess, Jeopardy and the ancient game of Go, but it's now come out victorious in yet another arena: the classic game of Foosball.A group of computer engineering students at Brigham Young University have spent the past semester creating a robotic, computer-controlled Foosball table with the goal of beating human players. The table is constructed so that a camera mounted above can track the movement of the ball, while an algorithm controls the rods on which the plastic players are attached.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Up to 30% off Amazon Kindle and Fire Tablets – Deal Alert

Through May 7th, in honor of Mother's Day, Amazon has discounted various models of Kindle and Fire Tablets, some up to 30% off their regular list price. Use the links below to learn more and explore buying options. Save $30 on the Fire HD 6 Save $50 on the Fire HD 10 Save $50 on Fire HD 6 Kids Edition, 6" HD Display, Wi-Fi, 16 GB $20 Off Kindle Paperwhite -- Amazon's best-selling Kindle. $20 Off Kindle -- small, light, and perfect for reading. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell partners up to address the networking needs of the digital enterprise

Dell has made a tremendous amount of noise in the media over the past few months caused by the ripple effect of its acquisition of EMC. Whether one thinks the merger is a good idea or not, it’s a fact that the merger will have a significant impact on the storage and server industries.Today, Dell announced plans that will bolster its position in networking. The move to become a digital organization is a trend that’s now being felt across almost all companies in every vertical. The building blocks of digital are technologies such as cloud, mobile, big data and analytics. What do these have in common? They’re all network-centric, meaning the network plays a key role in the shift to a digital enterprise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell partners up to address the networking needs of the digital enterprise

Dell has made a tremendous amount of noise in the media over the past few months caused by the ripple effect of its acquisition of EMC. Whether one thinks the merger is a good idea or not, it’s a fact that the merger will have a significant impact on the storage and server industries.Today, Dell announced plans that will bolster its position in networking. The move to become a digital organization is a trend that’s now being felt across almost all companies in every vertical. The building blocks of digital are technologies such as cloud, mobile, big data and analytics. What do these have in common? They’re all network-centric, meaning the network plays a key role in the shift to a digital enterprise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here