In case you aren’t suitably impressed by the scale of Amazon Web Services

Although the video has been up for awhile, if you haven’t had the chance to watch Amazon Web Service’s VP & Distinguished Engineer James Hamilton spell out AWS facts at the re:Invent conference last November, do yourself a favor and pull up a chair. Fascinating stuff that gives you some insight into the rapidly evolving world of cloud computing.The video is embedded below (or you can watch it on YouTube here, but here are some facts to whet your appetite: AWS has more than 1 million users AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) usage is growing 132% year over year AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is growing 99% year over year Every day AWS adds as much new server capacity as Amazon used to support its $7 billion business back in 2004 Networking only represents 8% of monthly AWS operating costs, Hamilton says, but the “cost of networking is escalating relative to the cost of all the other equipment.” That is very “anti-Moore,” he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Linux in the Air: Drone systems go open-source

Look up in the sky, it is LinuxImage by PixabayNot only is spring in the air, so is Linux. But this wasn’t always the case. Early drones relied on either proprietary OSes or simple Arduino-based controllers such as the ArduPilot. While both of these approaches to drone control have been successful, they implicitly limit innovation -- the former because they are closed systems, and the latter because of limited computing power. The recent introduction of Linux-based drones will stimulate the UAV (Unpiloted Aerial Vehicle) market by creating more flexible, open platforms. Here’s how Linux takes off … literally.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Raytheon forms defense-grade security unit with $1.9 billion Websense buy

Ever since its acquisition of Q1 Labs back in 2011, IBM has been selling its QRadar security event management software in the traditional way, whereby customers pay a price and download the version they want.On Tuesday, however, the company launched two new services that make the technology available through a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) model instead.IBM Security Intelligence on Cloud, for instance, is designed to help organizations determine whether security-related events are simple anomalies or potential threats. Built as a cloud service using IBM QRadar, the tool lets enterprises correlate security-event data with threat information from more than 500 supported data sources for devices, systems and applications. More than 1,500 predefined reports are also available for a variety of use cases.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Raytheon forms defense-grade security unit with $1.9 billion Websense buy

Defense contractor Raytheon is purchasing Websense, which it plans to combine  with its own security unit to create a new, separately operated business to  battle criminal networks and state-funded espionage.Today's Internet attacks "are becoming increasingly more sophisticated and are  being perpetuated by state sponsored groups, criminal organizations,  hacktivists and insiders," said David Wajsgras, president of Raytheon  intelligence, information and services business, in a conference call Monday  announcing the acquisition. "Our goal is to provide defense-grade solutions  that allow our customers defend against [attacks], detect them early, decide  how to counter and defeat such attacks in real-time."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Poor WordPress documentation trips developers, yields plug-ins with XSS flaw

Ambiguous WordPress documentation led many plug-in and theme developers to make an error that exposed websites to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.Such attacks involve tricking a site’s users into clicking on specially crafted URLs that execute rogue JavaScript code in their browsers in the context of that website.The impact depends on the user’s role on the website. For example, if victims have administrative privileges, attackers could trigger rogue administrative actions. If victims are regular users, attackers could steal their authentication cookies and hijack their accounts.The vulnerability stems from insecure use of two WordPress functions called add_query_arg and remove_query_arg and was discovered recently by researchers from code auditing company Scrutinizer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Centrify adds extra protection for sensitive accounts with new cloud service

For CIOs worried about access to shared resources in the cloud and the data center, Centrify has launched an identity-management service that aims to improve protection for IT management accountsAs enterprises embrace cloud-based apps, access to privileged accounts used to manage the most sensitive parts of the supporting infrastructure increasingly lie outside the corporate perimeter. In addition, the accounts are frequently shared by both internal IT and third parties such as contractors. The entire scenario makes important accounts more vulnerable to attacks, according to Centrify.To address this issue the company on Tuesday launched CPS (Centrify Privilege Service), a cloud-based identity management offering that can be used to manage access to cloud and on-site systems by remote employees and third parties. It can be used to protect access to shared servers in the data center or in the cloud, along with routers, switches and social media accounts, for example.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Alcatel-Lucent grows switching and virtual networking portfolio

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise this week rolled out a new switch and software enhancements designed to simplify network operations through automation and design flexibility.Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise became independent from Alcatel-Lucent last fall. Alcatel-Lucent is being acquired by Nokia for over $16 billion, but Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is not part of the deal.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Eyes turn to Ericsson, Juniper+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Alcatel-Lucent grows switching and virtual networking portfolio

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise this week rolled out a new switch and software enhancements designed to simplify network operations through automation and design flexibility.Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise became independent from Alcatel-Lucent last fall. Alcatel-Lucent is being acquired by Nokia for over $16 billion, but Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is not part of the deal.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Eyes turn to Ericsson, Juniper+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Alcatel-Lucent grows switching and virtual networking portfolio

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise this week rolled out a new switch and software enhancements designed to simplify network operations through automation and design flexibility.Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise became independent from Alcatel-Lucent last fall. Alcatel-Lucent is being acquired by Nokia for over $16 billion, but Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is not part of the deal.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Eyes turn to Ericsson, Juniper+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

As Nokia buy awaits, Alcatel-Lucent grows switching and virtual networking portfolio

As it awaits to be swallowed up by Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent continues to expand its switching and virtual networking portfolio.The company this week rolled out a new switch and software enhancements designed to simplify network operations through automation and design flexibility. This follows last week’s announcement that Nokia would acquire Alcatel-Lucent for over $16 billion to strengthen its presence in fixed and wireless networking.+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Eyes turn to Ericsson, Juniper +The new switch is the OmniSwitch 6900-Q32, a campus core and data center top-of-rack device for companies requiring a low latency scalable and programmable fabric.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Coming soon: The app store for virtualization

The constant push to increase productivity and profit has historically led commercial enterprises to drive some of our world's most significant technology advances. It was the enterprise push for further development of desktop computer processing that changed the personal computer from a hobbyist activity to a mission-critical tool. Commercial organizations deployed fiber for dedicated computer networks while the rest of us were just getting used to DSL. And the cellphone? It began its life as tool to keep business sales teams and execs more productive.But something happened during the smartphone revolution. What made the smartphone the critical invention of the 21st century was the ease of application use. Applications became "apps," and with them came their own marketplace, or "app store."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Coming soon: The app store for virtualization

The constant push to increase productivity and profit has historically led commercial enterprises to drive some of our world's most significant technology advances. It was the enterprise push for further development of desktop computer processing that changed the personal computer from a hobbyist activity to a mission-critical tool. Commercial organizations deployed fiber for dedicated computer networks while the rest of us were just getting used to DSL. And the cellphone? It began its life as tool to keep business sales teams and execs more productive.But something happened during the smartphone revolution. What made the smartphone the critical invention of the 21st century was the ease of application use. Applications became "apps," and with them came their own marketplace, or "app store."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Betting On The Right Horse

HobbyHorse

The annoucement of the merger of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia was a pretty big discussion last week. One of the quotes that kept being brought up in several articles was from John Chambers of Cisco. Chambers has said the IT industry is in for a big round of “brutal consolidation” spurred by “missed market transitions”, which is a favorite term for Chambers. While I agree that consolidation is coming in the industry, I don’t think market transitions are the driver. Instead, it helps to think of it more like a day at the races.

Tricky Ponies

Startups in the networking industry have to find a hook to get traction with investors and customers. Since you can’t boil the ocean, you have to stand out. You need to find an application that gives you the capability to sell into a market. That is much easier to do with SDN than hardware-based innovation. The time-to-market for software is much lower than the barriers to ramp up production of actual devices.

Being a one-trick pony isn’t a bad thing when it comes to SDN startups. If you pour all your talent into one project, you get the best you can build. If Continue reading

7 troubling similarities between the Apple Watch and Google Glass

Call it heresy, but now that I've had the chance to actually get my hands on the Apple Watch, I keep being struck by the parallels with the much-maligned Google Glass. That doesn't necessarily mean the Apple Watch will fail spectacularly the way Glass did, just that it will face many of the same challenges. Let's take a look at a few of them.(Note that I tried the Apple Watch only at the Apple Store. Actual deliveries don't begin until Friday, April 24. I have spent much more time with Google Glass… just not in public).They're both too expensiveThe Apple Watch starts at $350, but the "nice" ones start at twice that price and soar well into five freaking figures! Even more annoying, if you just want to upgrade the aluminum sport model with a slightly less-cheesy leather band, it'll cost you another $250. Really? $250 for a leather watchband?! In comparison, the $1,500 price tag on Google Glass no longer seems so outrageous.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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