Facebook Messenger as a platform? It’s a gamble

Facebook’s Messenger app has traditionally been used for keeping in touch with friends. Now people can also use it to send each other money. In the future, it could become a platform which other apps could use, if recent rumors prove true.This Wednesday and Thursday at its F8 conference in San Francisco, Facebook will show off new tools to help third party developers build apps, deploy them on Facebook and monetize them through Facebook advertising.Among those tools might be a new service for developers to publish content or features of their own inside Messenger, according to a TechCrunch article. Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former AMD CEO Rory Read finds a home in Dell

Former AMD CEO Rory Read has seemingly stepped down the executive ladder by taking a job at Dell to lead global commercial sales, but some analysts think the move could give him a career boost.Read will be responsible for sales planning and execution as president of worldwide commercial sales and chief operating officer of the company’s Enterprise Solutions Group. He will report to Marius Haas, who is Dell’s Chief Commercial Officer and President of the Enterprise Solutions Group.Read was AMD’s CEO from August 2011 until October last year, when he stepped down and was replaced by Lisa Su. Read took aggressive steps to turn around AMD, replacing top management, revamping the product roadmap, cutting staff, and entering new markets outside PCs like custom chips. Under his leadership, AMD delivered a few quarters of profits, but remained financially unstable.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Five moves Microsoft must make to advance in mobile

At one time, people considered Microsoft a true contender in the mobile space. Just four years ago, some analysts predicted that Windows Phone would leapfrog BlackBerry and iOS to claim the number two spot behind Android. Some researchers expected Microsoft’s market share to hit 20 percent, while others even predicted the company would edge past Android. But we all know how that turned out.Now, the company must execute a comeback. Microsoft has reinvigorated interest in Windows with the upcoming Windows 10, and revealed innovative surprises like HoloLens, a nod to its vision of the future. By many accounts, today’s Microsoft feels fresher and newer than the Microsoft of old. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apigee IPO Will Seek $86 Million for DevOps Vision

The API gold rush has begun.

Holy smoke! The new MacBook Pro literally is twice as fast

When Apple launched the new MacBook Pro earlier this month, the company claimed its performance would be double that of the previous model.As it turns out, that wasn't an exaggeration.Benchmark tests with Blackmagic software on a new 13-in. MacBook Pro with Retina display revealed it can pin the needle at more than 1,400MBps for writes and more than 1,300MBps for reads. The machine that Computerworld tested had a 512GB PCIe M.2 form-factor flash module ($1,799) and an Intel dual-core i7 2.9GHz processor, 8GB of (1866MHz LPDDR3) RAM, and was running OS X 10.10.2 (Yosemite).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung will add Microsoft services and let users remove bloatware

Samsung both giveth and (allows users to) taketh away.The South Korean device maker is, for the first time, giving its customers access to Microsoft services and apps in its newest smartphones and tablets. At the same time, Samsung is allowing customers to strip away apps and bloatware they don't want on the company's newest phones.Recent posts on the XDA Developers Forum indicate that many pre-installed apps on the upcoming Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones can be removed legally and easily. These apps include Gmail, Google + and YouTube; Samsung's own S Voice and S Health software; and Microsoft's OneNote, OneDrive and Skype, as reported by Forbes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Integrating our Integrations: Getting WHMCS and cPanel Talking

CloudFlare provides integrations for several of the most popular hosting control panels and billing systems such as WHMCS, cPanel, and Plesk. Each of these integrations provide a simple interface for our partners’ customers to sign-up for CloudFlare and start adding domains almost immediately.

But what about partners that use more than one system? The best experience occurs when we can get our integrations talking to each other, as our recently updated WHMCS and cPanel plugins do.

Integration Basics

All of our hosting integrations speak directly to CloudFlare through our host API. With just a single click, the integration passes the necessary information for CloudFlare to create an account and provision the domain. We respond when the provisioning completes, and the integration finishes the setup by making the necessary changes locally (adding and adjusting several DNS records) to route traffic to the domain through CloudFlare.

This makes signing up through a hosting partner integration even easier than signing up directly with CloudFlare. These proven systems make DNS changes accurately in order to save a lot of headaches.

Where do I integrate CloudFlare?

Many hosting companies expose two different applications to their customers: a billing system and a hosting control panel. The Continue reading

The trajectory of Open Daylight

When the Open Daylight project started, it was clear that the intent on the part of IBM and RedHat was to replicate the success of Linux.

Linux is today a de-facto monopoly on server operating systems. It is monetized by Redhat (and in smaller part by Canonical) and it essentially allowed the traditional I.T. companies such as IBM, Oracle, HP to neutralize Sun microsystems which was in the late 90s, early naughts, the platform of choice for Web application deployment.

Whether the initial target of these companies was Sun or Microsoft, the fact is that, by coming together in support of a open source project that had previously been an hobby of university students they inaugurated the era of corporate open source.

This was followed by a set of successful startup companies that used open source as a way to both create a much deeper engagement with their customers and of marketing their products. By originating and curating an open source project, a startup can achieve a much greater reach than before. The open source product becomes a free trial license, later monetized in
production deployments that typically need support. Open source also provides a way to engage with Continue reading

Cisco, Microsoft part of optics consortium directing data center standards

A group of big name vendors including Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, Intel, Broadcom, Juniper and Arista Networks this week created a consortium to address switch faceplate bandwidth density and airflow constraints caused by increasing networking speeds.The Consortium for On-Board Optics (COBO) is promoting collaboration in defining industry standards that permit relocating the optical module from the faceplate to inside the networking equipment where economic and environmental benefits can be achieved.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco, Microsoft part of optics consortium directing data center standards

A group of big name vendors including Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, Intel, Broadcom, Juniper and Arista Networks this week created a consortium to address switch faceplate bandwidth density and airflow constraints caused by increasing networking speeds.The Consortium for On-Board Optics (COBO) is promoting collaboration in defining industry standards that permit relocating the optical module from the faceplate to inside the networking equipment where economic and environmental benefits can be achieved.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Case that could overturn EU-US data exchange deal to be heard by top EU court

U.S. companies’ ability to process personal information from European Union citizens will be challenged in the European Union’s highest court on Tuesday.At stake is the Safe Harbor Framework allowing U.S. companies to self-certify that they meet tough EU rules on the processing of personal information.A decision to revoke the deal could have serious consequences for U.S. companies that process EU citizens’ data in the U.S. Earlier this month, Twitter warned that a revocation of the deal could seriously hurt its business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New malware program PoSeidon targets point-of-sale systems

Retailers beware: A new Trojan program targets point-of-sale (PoS) terminals, stealing payment card data that can then be abused by cybercriminals.The new malware program has been dubbed PoSeidon by researchers from Cisco’s Security Solutions (CSS) team and, like most point-of-sale Trojans, it scans the RAM of infected terminals for unencrypted strings that match credit card information—a technique known as memory scraping.This sensitive information is available in plain text in the memory of a PoS system while it’s being processed by the specialized merchant software running on the terminal.Security experts have long called for the use of end-to-end encryption technology to protect payment card data from the card reader all the way to the payment service provider, but the number of systems with this capability remains low.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CALIENT Technologies Featured Interview: Pod Architecture & Cloud Data Centers with LightConnect Fabric

In this featured interview with Atiq Raza, chairman and CEO of Calient, we learn about the new challenges driving the future of data center design and how the growing popularity of POD architecture simplifies the need for managing operations.

sFlow Creator Peter Phaal On Taming The Wilds Of SDN & Virtual Networking

InMon president Peter Phaal shares his thoughts on the power of Open Switching Platforms and the Software Defined Data Center.

10 reasons Amazon’s drone delivery plan still won’t fly

Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration awarded Amazon an "experimental airworthiness certificate" to test its plans to use drones to deliver purchases to customers. The certificate allows drone use only within line-of-sight of a certified pilot, but that's not the only problem with the concept.See also: FAA deems Amazon delivery drones 'airworthy,' with heavy regulations In fact, the quest for FAA approval is just a sideshow. The real problems with drone deliveries are practical, not regulatory. Don't believe me? Let's think about it for a moment (you won't need much more time than that…I came up with this list in just a few minutes, with only marginal help from a Google search):To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Amazon’s drone ‘win’ will prove fleeting

Late last week the FAA gave Amazon permission to move ahead with its experiments to develop a drone-driven package-delivery system.Bottom line first: I believe this whole concept is ludicrous – which is an upgrade from my initial reaction: publicity stunt -- and that nothing like it will be an important package-delivery mechanism for Amazon or anyone else in our lifetimes. (Everything happens eventually.)But just to play along, it would appear that the FAA’s biggest stipulations – the experimental drones must be operated by licensed pilots who must maintain line of sight contact with their craft – are deal killers if they prove permanent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lab: iBGP and OSPF Traffic Engineering

Click to enlarge

Here’s the scenario: An enterprise network with an MPLS core and two branch locations connected to their own Provider Edge (PE) router. In addition to the MPLS link, the PEs are also connected via a DMVPN tunnel. The PEs are peering via iBGP (of course) and are also OSPF neighbors on the DMVPN. Both Customer Edge (CE) routers at the branch are OSPF neighbors with their local PE.

Task: Use the high speed MPLS network as the primary path between the CE routers and only use the DMVPN network if the MPLS network becomes unavailable.

Question: Is the solution as simple as adjusting the Admin Distance (AD) so that the iBGP routes are more preferred?

Default State

The obvious first issue is the default AD for iBGP (200) is higher than the default AD of OSPF (110) which means the OSPF path over the DMVPN is going to be preferred. This is confirmed if we do a traceroute from R5 to R6:

R5#traceroute 6.6.6.6 source lo5
 1 10.0.45.4 2 msec 0 msec 1 msec
 2 10.10.10.7 17 msec 17 msec 17 msec
 3 10.0.67.6 18  Continue reading

Here are the components that will power your next smartphone

The last couple of months haven seen the launch of a clutch of new smartphones—and also new chipsets that aim to make the next generation of smartphones more powerful and simpler to recharge.Competition between chip makers is increasing, with companies spurring each other to improve smartphone performance. Here are some of the components and technologies that will help make it happen:Qualcomm’s next-generation processorsThe Snapdragon 820 will be the first processor to use Qualcomm’s homegrown ARM-based Kryo architecture—and also the first to use the company’s new Zeroth platform for adding machine learning capabilities. The company plans to make samples available to phone manufacturers in the second half of the year. Qualcomm will need to have the chips ready for mass production in the first half of 2016 to catch the next wave of high-end smartphone launches, or manufacturers may look elsewhere—as Samsung Electronics did this year, choosing to use one of its own Exynos processors for its Galaxy S6.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Problem with Peanuts

I was hungry. Perhaps that’s a good excuse, or perhaps not. Either way, I sat down after ordering, took a peanut, broke the nuts out of the shell, and ate them.

After eating the peanut, I felt less hungry. So I picked up another one and ate it, as well. Soon enough, long before I order came out in fact, I wasn’t really hungry any longer. I still ate, of course, because I’d bought the burger, and it was a good burger. The fries were pretty good, too. The sweet tea wasn’t shabby, either.

But I thought about the peanut it all started with as I ate the burger. You see, a peanut solved my hunger problem. So it one peanut solves my hunger, why couldn’t a pile of peanuts solve world hunger? So I took a pile of peanuts and put them on the table, considering something I’d never thought about before — I could solve world hunger. Right here, right now, in this place, I could actually solve a major problem the world has been struggling with for thousands of years.

Okay, but then where would I get these peanuts? The place I was in had boxes stacked Continue reading

Retiring the Rockstar: A Counterpoint

“You’re a rockstar!” Chances are, you’ve either a) been told this as a compliment for some work you’d done; b) heard this told to someone else for some work they’d done; or c) told someone this for some work they’d done. If you said this to someone else—I just told someone this quite recently—chances are also very likely that you had nothing but positive intentions behind this statement and your goal was to compliment them on what you saw as outstanding work. But is “rockstar” the wrong term to use? And if so, what is the right term?

Recently, Tyler Britten (a very talented professional and a former colleague when I worked as an EMC vSpecialist) posted an article titled “Time to Retire the Rockstar,” in which he draws a connection between the use of terms like “rockstar,” “superstar,” “genius,” or “guru” and the myth of the lone genius. I see his point, and don’t necessarily disagree with it. Something can be said that calling someone a rockstar (or any of the other terms listed) isn’t automatically encouraging them to “eschew teams and communities and to work alone”, but that isn’t the point of this post. Here I’d rather Continue reading