ARM processor becomes more and more popular during year 2012. Power and Integration—ARM Making More Inroads into More Designs. It’s about power—low power; almost no power. A huge and burgeoning market is opening for devices that are handheld and mobile, have rich graphics, deliver 32-bit multicore compute power, include Wi-Fi, web and often 4G connectivity, and that can last up to ten hours on a battery charge.The most obvious among these are smartphones and tablets, but there is also an increasing number of industrial and military devices that fall into this category.
The rivalry between ARM and Intel in this arena is predictably intense because try as it will, Intel has not been able to bring the power consumption of its Atom CPUs down to the level of ARM-based designs (Atom typically in 1-4 watt range and a single ARM Cortex-A9 core in the 250 mW range). ARM’s East unimpressed with Medfield, design wins article tells that Warren East, CEO of processor technology licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England), is unimpressed by the announcements made by chip giant Intel about the low-power Medfield system-chip and its design wins. On the other hand Android will run better on our chips, says Intel. Look out what happens in this competition.
Windows-on-ARM Spells End of Wintel article tells that Brokerage house Nomura Equity Research forecasts that the emerging partnership between Microsoft and ARM will likely end the Windows-Intel duopoly. The long-term consequences for the world’s largest chip maker will likely be an exit from the tablet market as ARM makes inroads in notebook computers. As ARM is surely going to keep pointing out to everyone, they don’t have to beat Intel’s raw performance to make a big splash in this market, because for these kinds of devices, speed isn’t everything, and their promised power consumption advantage will surely be a major selling point.
Windows 8 Release Expected in 2012 article says that Windows 8 will be with us in 2012, according to Microsoft roadmaps. Microsoft still hinting at October Windows 8 release date. It will be seen what are the ramifications of Windows 8, which is supposed to run on either the x86 or ARM architectures. Windows on ARM will not be terribly successful says analyst but it is left to be seen is he right. ARM-based chip vendors that Microsoft is working with (TI, Nvidia, Qualcomm) are now focused on mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.) because this is where the biggest perceived advantages of ARM-based chips lie, and do not seem to be actively working on PC designs.
Engineering Windows 8 for mobile networks is going on. Windows 8 Mobile Broadband Enhancements Detailed article tells that using mobile broadband in Windows 8 will no longer require specific drivers and third-party software. This is thanks to the new Mobile Broadband Interface Model (MBIM) standard, which hardware makers are reportedly already beginning to adopt, and a generic driver in Windows 8 that can interface with any chip supporting that standard. Windows will automatically detect which carrier it’s associated with and download any available mobile broadband app from the Windows store. MBIM 1.0 is a USB-based protocol for host and device connectivity for desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. The specification supports multiple generations of GSM and CDMA-based 3G and 4G packet data services including the recent LTE technology.
Consumerization of IT is a hot trend that continues at year 2012. Uh-oh, PC: Half of computing device sales are mobile. Mobile App Usage Further Dominates Web, Spurred by Facebook article tells that the era of mobile computing, catalyzed by Apple and Google, is driving among the largest shifts in consumer behavior over the last forty years. Impressively, its rate of adoption is outpacing both the PC revolution of the 1980s and the Internet Boom of the 1990s. By the end of 2012, Flurry estimates that the cumulative number of iOS and Android devices activated will surge past 1 billion, making the rate of iOS and Android smart device adoption more than four times faster than that of personal computers (over 800 million PCs were sold between 1981 and 2000). Smartphones and tablets come with broadband connectivity out-of-the-box. Bring-your-own-device becoming accepted business practice.
Mobile UIs: It’s developers vs. users article tells that increased emphasis on distinctive smartphone UIs means even more headaches for cross-platform mobile developers. Whose UI will be a winner? Native apps trump the mobile Web.The increased emphasis on specialized mobile user interface guidelines casts new light on the debate over Web apps versus native development, too.
The Cloud is Not Just for Techies Anymore tells that cloud computing achieves mainstream status. So we demand more from it. That’s because our needs and expectations for a mainstream technology and an experimental technology differ. Once we depend on a technology to run our businesses, we demand minute-by-minute reliability and performance.
Cloud security is no oxymoron article is estimated that in 2013 over $148 billion will be spent on cloud computing. Companies large and small are using the cloud to conduct business and store critical information. The cloud is now mainstream. The paradigm of cloud computing requires cloud consumers to extend their trust boundaries outside their current network and infrastructure to encompass a cloud provider. There are three primary areas of cloud security that relate to almost any cloud implementation: authentication, encryption, and network access control. If you are dealing with those issues and software design, read Rugged Software Manifesto and Rugged Software Development presentation.
Enterprise IT’s power shift threatens server-huggers article tells that as more developers take on the task of building, deploying, and running applications on infrastructure outsourced to Amazon and others, traditional roles of system administration and IT operations will morph considerably or evaporate.
Explosion in “Big Data” Causing Data Center Crunch article tells that global business has been caught off-guard by the recent explosion in data volumes and is trying to cope with short-term fixes such as buying in data centre capacity. Oracle also found that the number of businesses looking to build new data centres within the next two years has risen. Data centre capacity and data volumes should be expected to go up – this drives data centre capacity building. Data centre capacity and data volumes should be expected to go up – this drives data centre capacity building. Most players active on “Big Data” field seems to plan to use Apache Hadoop framework for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers. At least EMC, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Informatica, HP, Dell and Cloudera are using Hadoop.
Cloud storage has been very popular topic lately to handle large amount of data storage. The benefits have been told very much, but now we can also see risks of that to realize. Did the Feds Just Kill the Cloud Storage Model? article claims that Megaupload Type Shutdowns and Patriot Act are killing interest to Cloud Storage. Many innocent Megaupload users have had their data taken away from them. The MegaUpload seizure shows how personal files hosted on remote servers operated by a third party can easily be caught up in a government raid targeted at digital pirates. In the wake of Megaupload crackdown, fear forces similar sites to shutter sharing services?. If you use any of these cloud storage sites to store or distribute your own non-infringing files, you are wise to have backups elsewhere, because they may be next on the DOJ’s copyright hit list.
Did the Feds Just Kill the Cloud Storage Model? article tells that worries have been steadily growing among European IT leaders that the USA Patriot Act would give the U.S. government unfettered access to their data if stored on the cloud servers of American providers. Escaping the grasp of the Patriot Act may be more difficult than the marketing suggests. “You have to fence yourself off and make sure that neither you or your cloud service provider has any operations in the United States”, “otherwise you’re vulnerable to U.S. jurisdiction.” And the cloud computing model is built on the argument data can and should reside anywhere around the world, freely passing between borders.
Data centers to cut LAN cord? article mentions that 60GHz wireless links are tested in data centers to ease east-west traffic jams. According to a recent article in The New York Times, data center and networking techies are playing around with 60GHz wireless networking for short-haul links to give rack-to-rack communications some extra bandwidth for when the east-west traffic goes a bit wild. The University of Washington and Microsoft Research published a paper at the Association of Computing Machinery’s SIGCOMM 2011 conference late last year about their tests of 60GHz wireless links in the data center. Their research used prototype links that bear some resemblance to the point-to-point, high bandwidth technology known as WiGig (Wireless Gigabit), which among other things is being proposed as a means to support wireless links between Blu-ray DVD players and TVs, replacing HDMI cables (Wilocity Demonstrates 60 GHz WiGig (Draft 802.11ad) Chipset at CES). 60 GHz band is suitable for indoor, high-bandwidth use in information technology.. There are still many places for physical wires. The wired connections used in a data center are highly reliable, so “why introduce variability in a mission-critical situation?”
820 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Hewlett-Packard is returning to tablets with a new unit that aims to make consumer devices under the leadership of former Nokia executive Alberto Torres.”
The newly founded HP Mobility will focus on consumer tablets; ‘business’ tablets (presumably running Windows 8) will remain in their current division.
Source: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/08/20/2230208/hp-hires-ex-nokia-exec-spins-off-webos-reportedly-returning-to-tablets
Tomi Engdahl says:
Global survey employees maintain their own IT equipment on better than is available in the workplace.
Almost half of the Accenture global survey respondents workers feel their home computer systems are more useful that ones at work.
In many cases, employees feel that the solutions offered by companies fell like cumbersome and rigid. Accenture’s conclusion is that the results will encourage companies to be aware of and recognize the extent of the phenomenon.
“Employees are increasingly raise awareness and to make bold decisions independently of the type of technology used. They keep their own devices and applications more flexible and easier than the corporate IT solutions, “says Accenture’s chief technology officer Tomas Nyström.
Many companies are struggling with the trend, in which households are have recent technology than the information technology companies. Some organizations have banned the authoritarian approach, the non-use of technology at work. Some have left the matter entirely.
“While this is a challenge for companies, the opposition is not an option,”
According to the survey 27 percent of employees take advantage of on a regular basis outside the company downloaded applications for coping the work better.
Management team and IT management to recognize that the latest technology is a top priority for workers. 88 percent of executives said use of own equipment can be able to increase employee job satisfaction.
Source: http://www.kauppalehti.fi/etusivu/tyly+tulos+kotona+paremmat+it-valineet+kuin+toissa/201208244643?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Silicon Valley Nation: The end of Silicon Valley?
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4394354/Silicon-Valley-Nation–The-end-of-Silicon-Valley-?Ecosystem=communications-design
I’m sure you feel the same way as David Sacks, CEO of Yammer: Silicon Valley is dead. It’s the end of history. All new ideas are actually old and un-monetizable.
Or not.
Sacks raises an interesting point, for sure.
What the Internet/software Silicon Valley is going through today is what the electronics Silicon Valley went through 10-15 years ago: A restructuring. You remember those days… days in which an engineering group inside an established company couldn’t get corporate backing for a new idea so they went out on their own, got startup funding, built the widget and then, often, got acquired by their former company and made bank.
Today, more than a decade later, hardware startups are bubbling up across the country. They’re low-overhead companies, often self-funded, and almost always low-key. They’ve figured out, through clever use of software tools and supply-chain relationships to nudge their innovations to market in a way that makes economic sense for a mature market.
Sometime in the ensuing years it’ll find a balance between the high-overhead Silicon Valley that Sacks sees dying and the low-overhead, innovation belching of the apps writers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner: Hype Could Hurt Cloud Adoption
http://www.cio.com/article/713615/Gartner_Hype_Could_Hurt_Cloud_Adoption?page=1&taxonomyId=3024
The hype around cloud computing and misuse of the term by some providers creates confusion in the market and if that continues, research firm Gartner says, it could detract from the technology’s many benefits.
In its annual Hype Cycle report, the research firm says the term has become muddled in the market as vendors are “cloudwashing,” or looking to tap into the hype of the term by calling themselves a cloud vendor when they are not. Such miscommunication could ultimately detract end users from the efficiencies cloud computing can bring.
“Confusion remains the norm,” Gartner’s report states about the cloud computing industry. “Many misconceptions exist around potential benefits, pitfalls and, of course, cost savings. Cloud is often part of cost-cutting discussions, even though its ability to cut costs is not a given. There are also many reasons to talk about the capabilities enabled by cloud computing: agility, speed and innovation. These are the potential benefits that can be overlooked if hype fatigue sets in.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Taiwan market: Tablets outsell notebooks in May-June
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120817PD208.html
In the Taiwan market, nearly 70,000 tablet PCs were sold in both May and June, more than the corresponding sales of notebooks, according to local retail channels. Of tablet PCs sold in May and June, 60% were iPads and 40% were Android-based models.
Research firm NPD DisplaySearch has also recently estimated that total global tablet PC shipments will reach 416 million units by 2016, surpassing global shipments of notebooks at a volume of around 393 million units.
Although notebook players are hoping that Windows 8 can trigger a new wave of notebook replacement
Tomi Engdahl says:
Last week’s news of how tens of thousands of Indians have been forced to flee because of violence in Mumbai, took to think about.
A couple of weeks before India was in news very because large blackouts. In fact, they are quite common there, as land is a continuous effort to shortage of electricity. The aging power grid when not enough to ensure the current demand.
It does not sound very good land which the IT companies want to bite off more and more pieces of the global outsourcing market.
Blackouts and other disasters do not necessarily inspire confidence in Western IT customers. But would not do so much violence and other social unrest.
University of Michigan Ross School of Business made a little over a year ago a study which showed that the domestic IT labor productivity is on average 2.9 times better than the outsourced IT services abroad.
Cost of wages rise in Asia all the time.
At long last some companies begin to realize that the software applications require a deep understanding. Many of those in need of so much interaction with the customer, not the foreign service provider will ever do go the extra mile to such a service.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/mita+miettii+velieurooppalainen/a830776?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-22082012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Boffins zapped ’2,000 bugs’ from Curiosity’s 2 MILLION lines of code
Billion-dollar laser-firing nuke tank – what could go wrong?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/22/mars_rover_software_coverity/
With a $2.5bn price tag, a 350-million mile journey and 2 million lines of C and some C++ code, the only bugs NASA wants its Curiosity rover to find are those possibly beneath the Martian surface.
And it may not be a particularly glamorous job, but software analysis outfit Coverity was the company tasked with “ensuring that every software defect is found and fixed before launch”.
Roughly 2,000 bugs were zapped in the rover’s code, estimates Andy Chou, the chief technical officer of Coverity, although NASA is schtum on the exact figures.
“For typical software (which this clearly isn’t), it’s not unusual to find approximately 1 defect for every thousand lines of code,” Chou said. “For a project with 2 million lines of code, it would therefore not be unusual for Coverity to be able to find about 2,000 defects.”
According to the software vendor’s communications manager Chris Adlard, NASA threw all kinds of tests at the code.
The automated analysis tool was developed from research cooked up by Stanford University boffins. The tech analyses C/C++, Java and C# code bases as it is being compiled for hard-to-spot critical defects including resource leaks, memory corruptions and null pointer dereferences. It also looks at code behaviour to iron out flaws.
Rock-zapping Curiosity is the most complicated project NASA has ever launched to date, and testing was of huge importance. However a software checker can’t catch all mistakes
fkawau says:
I’ve been browsing online more than 3 hours today, yet I never found any interesting article like yours Computer technologies for 2012 Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog. It is pretty worth enough for me. In my view, if all web owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the web will be a lot more useful than ever before.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Before you implement any mobile technology program, you need to have a clear understanding of some basic facts.
What problem or need will a device, app, or service solve or fulfill? Who will use it? If there are security concerns, how will you mitigate them? What type of training and support will you offer? How will you determine if the solution is a success?
You also start with limited testing and a pilot project – even if your company is a small to mid-size firm with as little as a few dozen employees. That process helps you determine if the solution does what you bought it to do, how easy it is to use, whether it integrates with your other technology systems, and the level of support and troubleshooting you may be taking on if you move forward with a wide scale deployment.
Read more at http://www.cultofmac.com/184246/how-one-company-made-a-multi-million-dollar-blunder-in-buying-14000-ipads/?utm_source=scribol.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=scribol.com#yCtUSpLU898SBKOl.99
Tomi Engdahl says:
It-savings will be easier than you think
Chief information officer shall not be afraid of spending when legitimate investment in the future reduce IT costs.
Companies have two ways to save IT costs: IT contracts should be trimmed into shape, and have the courage to use the money for the right moment to reduce future costs.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/itsaastot+syntyvat+helpommin+kuin+luullaan/a830900?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-22082012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smart Spending: Saving on IT is Easier Than You Think
http://www.cio.com/article/714293/Smart_Spending_Saving_on_IT_is_Easier_Than_You_Think?page=1&taxonomyId=3233
Companies are always looking for new ways to cut costs, and two key strategies for saving on IT are to extract optimal value from your current contracts and to invest money now to reduce future expenses.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Record loss for HP: all indicators show a downward
Hewlett-Packard in May-July interim report, it all went down. The company made 8.9 billion dollars (7.1 billion euro) loss after a massive write-down of 13.9 billion purchased EDS’s value.
HP is still the world’s largest PC supplier in the over 15 per cent market share. The company lost 10 percent of PC sales, which reached 8.6 billion U.S. dollars. Services sales decreased three percent to $ 8.8 billion.
HP’s net sales fell by five per cent to $ 29.7 billion dollars (23.7 billion euros) from the previous year’s 31.2 billion dollars.
Source: http://www.digitoday.fi/bisnes/2012/08/23/ennatystappio-hpn-kaikki-mittarit-osoittavat-alaspain/201236221/66?rss=6
Tomi Engdahl says:
Logitech Releases Washable Keyboard
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/08/23/0043253/logitech-releases-washable-keyboard
“Logitech has released its first washable keyboard. We’re not just talking about ‘splash proof’ either — you can take the K310, immerse it in up to 30cm of water (12in), and give it a good scrub. The only limitation is you can only use standard washing up liquid”
Sticky keys begone! The Logitech K310 washable keyboard
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/134856-sticky-keys-begone-the-logitech-k310-washable-keyboard
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 7 Is the Next Windows XP
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/08/22/2341248/windows-7-is-the-next-windows-xp
‘We love Windows 7: That’s the message loud and clear from people this week at the TechMentor Conference held at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash. With Windows XP reaching end of life for support in April 2014, the plan for most organizations is to upgrade — to Windows 7,’ indicating ‘a repeat of history for what we’ve seen with Windows releases’
COMMENT:
From the “Large Enterprise” point of view the only reason “Windows 7 is the Next Windows XP” is because Microsoft is going to stop supporting Windows XP. They don’t need anything Windows 7 or 8 provides. All they care is that Windows XP keeps running the applications they need.
If Microsoft continued supporting Windows XP, those business would continue running Windows XP. No need to spend time and money to retrain staff, no need to change anything. Not every industry is like the IT industry.
Microsoft on the other hand NEEDS to keep moving the “goal posts”, they need to change things (but not too much). Why? Because if they kept the goal posts stationary for too long someone could come up with a “Windows XP” compatible OS (you can see some already trying with ReactOS, I doubt they’ll succeed but Microsoft really has to move).
If there are viable “Windows compatible” operating systems, Windows would end up like the IBM PC BIOS, with competing BIOS software.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Canonical to release Ubuntu 12.04.1 with Calxeda ARM support
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2200583/canonical-to-release-ubuntu-12041-with-calxeda-arm-support
LINUX VENDOR Canonical will release Ubuntu 12.04.1, introducing support for Calxeda’s ARM based system-on-chip (SoC).
Canonical’s release of Ubuntu 12.04 Long Term Support (LTS) earlier this year marked the Linux outfit’s latest push into the enterprise with an increased emphasis on servers. Now the firm has released a rare point release dubbed 12.04.1 LTS that brings support for Calxeda’s ARM SoC and the upcoming Folsom release of Openstack software.
While Canonical is keen to tout the server capabilities of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and now 12.04.1 LTS
Tomi Engdahl says:
PCs still slowing, and Windows 8 won’t change that soon, says IDC
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57499556-92/pcs-still-slowing-and-windows-8-wont-change-that-soon-says-idc/
Can Windows 8 save the traditional PC and spur growth again? Maybe — but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen this year, a market-research firm suggests.
The traditional PC market is in dire need of some hot new products to drive growth. Too bad that’s probably not going to happen soon, according to market researcher IDC.
While citing the usual macroeconomic culprits — slowness in Asia and mature markets — the report said consumers are “considering spending on other products like media tablets and smartphones” while waiting for Windows 8.
If, that is, consumers actually are waiting for Windows 8. There’s no shortage of Windows 8 critics these days. And IDC had some words of caution too.
Windows 8 “faces some initial hurdles; chief of which is that buyers must acclimate themselves to an operating system that is a dramatic departure from existing PC paradigms. The PC ecosystem faces some work to properly educate the market,” wrote Jay Chou, an IDC analyst.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It is a buggy system that is the money-maker for supplier
When the computer system fails to properly correct – that is, the result is hundreds or thousands of users frustrated – and headlines on media.
A layman may be difficult to understand how non-functional software can not even dispose of the customer, the supplier would think the only recipient of a bad reputation. A charge of conversion work to correct mistakes, however, are an important part of the business, a professional working in the field claims.
Supplier does not want too good testing: the supplier would not have wanted to correct errors in the hanging features the same money.
Since the correction of errors, are expensive, they thrashed the matter of liability, which in turn would pay. “In half an hour repairable error may fight three to four days,”
It is common practice that the customer unnoticed defects will be corrected within six months of the project cost. Journalists, however, are accustomed to the fact that customers acceptance testing is cheaper than my final testing, so often a lot of responsibility poured specifically for the customer’s shoulders.
It is also normal for the maximum of the corrections discussed changes, which are invoiced at the hourly rate. This project’s final price is often quite different than what the tender could have been expected.
“When the project is delayed in the implementation phase, the testing period for threatening a shortened life span because of the introduction to press on,”
“Fixed price requires a good and thorough definitions, and even then may lead to double or even ten times the price compared to what the hourly rate would go through when things are progressing according to plan. Public procurement legislation compelling addition to major projects, which are more likely to fail than smaller ones. ”
“I read as a basis of cases it seems to me that the suppliers of morality is worse than average when the customer is a public organization, a small business or a company with poor management.”
“The problem is the business realities: the projects have to be covered, and somehow manage to keep the risks,” he says. Competitive bidding among suppliers is fierce, and margins are low.
The buyer’s problem is often that it is not known what you want to – or can not be all to know
Many years long mammoth projects are worst since the post-operational phase of a backlog of error can not be unreasonable.
Agile projects are in this sense, secure and predictable.
Reward money based on number of errors can acts as an incentive for good delivery system.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/buginen+jarjestelma+on+ittoimittajalle+rahasampo/a831331?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-24082012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dell, HP and the folly of the consumer PC business
http://www.zdnet.com/dell-hp-and-the-folly-of-the-consumer-pc-business-7000003072/
Summary: Dell clings to the consumer PC business in the name of the bring your own device movement, but the operating profits are just north of nil. HP is defending its No. 1 spot, but the profit and revenue lines are headed in the wrong direction.
Dell and HP still play in the consumer PC market, but you have to wonder if it’s really worth staying in the game.
Dell has decided to focus on mid- to high-end systems and has stepped away from the high volume low margin PCs that happen to sell well in emerging markets.
In theory, Dell’s move to preserve profit margins in the consumer PC business makes total sense. However, Dell is focused on margins and still not generating much profit
For HP, the decision to stay in the consumer PC business has already been decided. HP decided to ditch consumer PCs and then keep it for supply chain and other reasons. However, HP is seeing the same pricing competition as Dell. In fact, HP is facing bloated inventory levels because PCs and printers aren’t flying off the shelves.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP’s EDS write-off hides deeper problems
Analysis Servers, networking and even ink sales are down
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/2200679/hps-eds-writeoff-hides-deeper-problems
HP HAS TRADITIONALLY made a pretty penny from flogging expensive printer ink, but even its vast inkwell wasn’t enough to hide a very worrying set of financial results.
HP reported a loss of $8.9bn for its third quarter
HP’s write-down of EDS might have resulted in just a paper loss – the firm didn’t actually lose $9bn in cash – but it provides an insight into how a decade of mismanagement has left HP in a bad situation.
The fact is that HP cannot lay the blame on diminishing PC sales because its enterprise business, printing and services divisions all reported losses, too.
As for HP’s PC business, which reported a 10 percent drop in revenue, there seems to be an acceptance that just because growth in the PC industry has stalled it is perfectly acceptable to see revenues fall.
The fact is that Lenovo has shown up rivals such as Acer, Dell and HP by producing quality products and has not relied on cheap and nasty designs and low prices to flog units, and thus is set to overtake HP as the largest PC vendor while posting impressive profits.
For HP, the only ray of light was its software business, to which Apotheker added the British based Autonomy. Given that many thought that HP had overpaid for Autonomy when it shelled out over $10bn last year for a company that barely makes $250m in profit a year, there could well be another write-down in the future unless HP does a better job of integrating the firm than it did with EDS.
Tomi Engdahl says:
8 IT Lessons Learned From the 2012 Summer Olympics
http://www.cio.com/article/713626/8_IT_Lessons_Learned_From_the_2012_Summer_Olympics
The 2012 London Olympics weren’t just about athletic prowess. This year’s games saw more data leave Olympic Park and move around the world than ever before. The applications, infrastructure and technical know-how required to pull this off offers valuable lessons for CIOs as they plan IT projects.
1. Business Intelligence Can Expose Data in New Ways
2. Keep an Eye on Networks During Online Broadcasts
3. Social Networking Can Cripple GPS Services
4. Stress-test Your Website With the Cloud
5. Plan for Mass Deployments and Training
6. Protect Lost or Stolen Devices
7. Avoid Potential High-Profile Scams
8. Beef Up Data Center Capacity
Tomi Engdahl says:
Early Success of Windows-Based Tablets has Everything to do with Price
http://www.abiresearch.com/press/early-success-of-windows-based-tablets-has-everyth
Media tablets powered by new Microsoft operating systems Windows 8 and Windows RT will have an impact on the overall market; just not this year, according to market intelligence firm ABI Research. Windows-based tablets will commence shipments at the end of October and capture an estimated 1.5% of total tablet shipments for 2012.
Pricing for Windows tablets will be a key consideration for end-user adoption. If priced aggressively towards current Android tablets, Windows tablets could see 2013 shipments increase 10-fold year-over-year; however if priced like Apples iPad offerings, Windows tablets may only double or triple shipments in 2013. Growth in the total available market is expected to come from businesses adopting tablets, which is expected to be a strong area for Windows 8.
One area that Windows 8 might be embraced with open arms is in the enterprise. Neither of the leading tablet OS platforms has squarely addressed the needs of IT organizations and business users, notes enterprise mobility practice director Dan Shey.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC Lowers PC Outlook As Shipments Decline In Second Quarter Ahead Of Fall Product Updates
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23660312
The worldwide PC market is now expected to grow just 0.9% in 2012, as mid-year shipments slow. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, 367 million PCs will ship into the market this year, up just a fraction of a percent from 2011 and marking the second consecutive year of growth below 2%.
Slowing growth in Asia/Pacific has reduced the impact of emerging market growth, while more mature regions like the United States have seen volume decline. Consumers have been hit by weak economic conditions, but are also waiting to see what Windows 8 and Ultrabook products will look like while considering spending on other products like media tablets and smartphones.
“IDC remains optimistic that PC penetration opportunities in emerging markets will form the bulwark of the market and help sustain double-digit Portable PC growth in the long run.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner Says Application Development Is a $9 Billion Industry
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/08/26/0735228/gartner-says-application-development-is-a-9-billion-industry
“Although not as lucrative as video games or movies, Gartner projects the software application development industry will pass the US$9 Billion mark this year.”
“Also in the report is a projection that ‘mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4:1 by 2015.’”
Application Development Now Worth More Than $9 Billion Globally
http://www.drdobbs.com/cloud/application-development-now-worth-more-t/240006233
Analyst firm Gartner has identified the technology industry’s usual suspects as key drivers underpinning a worldwide application development (AD) software market projected to reach more than US$9 billion in 2012.
An increase of 1.8 percent over 2011′s market size, Gartner says that evolving software delivery models, new development methodologies, emerging mobile application development, and open source software will drive IT spending.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing
http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html
Even if we win the right to own and control our computers, a dilemma remains: what rights do owners owe users?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/08/26/1732239/doctorow-on-the-war-on-general-purpose-computing
“He neatly crystallizes the problem with certain types of (widely called-for) regulation of devices and the software they run — and they all run software. The ability to stop a general purpose computer from doing nearly anything (running code without permission from the mothership, or requiring an authorities-only engine kill switch, or preventing a car from speeding away), he says boils down to a demand: “Make me a general-purpose computer that runs all programs except for one program that freaks me out.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony to leave disc drive market, nears end of restructuring
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/economy/business/AJ201208250067
Sony Corp. will abandon the optical disc drive business, nearly completing a restructuring of money-losing divisions it initiated after suffering huge losses in fiscal 2011.
Sony Optiarc Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary that produces CD and DVD drives used in personal computers, will cease operations by March, sources said Aug. 24.
Most of the 400 or so employees at home and abroad will be let go through an early retirement program.
The withdrawal from the optical disc drive business is one of the final steps in the latest round of restructuring efforts.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Broadcom launches Trident II switch chip
Blasting over 100 10GE ports into the clouds
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/27/broadcom_trident_ii_switch_asic/
All of those apps you run on your smartphones and tablets and the surfing you do from PCs and other devices ultimately ends up whacking some data center network somewhere in the world. The appetite for bandwidth and low latency continues apace, and switch and adapter chip maker Broadcom aims to keep up with that demand with its new Strata XGS Trident II switch ASICs.
As far as John Mui, senior product line manager at Broadcom, is concerned, the prior Trident and Trident+ chips set the bar for data center switching. Fulcrum’s “Bali” ASIC is often used for switches with super-low latency and sensitivity to jitter, and many switch upstarts like Arista Networks use both Fulcrum and Broadcom chips in various parts of their lines.
Broadcom counts Intel’s Fulcrum Microsystems and Marvell as competitors. Cisco Systems and sometimes Hewlett-Packard are partners as well as customers for various switch chippery, while Dell and IBM also use Broadcom chips at the heart of some of their switches.
For switch makers and their customers who are making the transition to 10 Gigabit Ethernet in the data center and eying 40 Gigabit Ethernet for uplinks and aggregation, the Trident II is going to be a welcome building block.
The company is touting the fact that this is the first switch ASIC that can drive more than a hundred 10GE ports from a single chip, and that there is enough bandwidth in there to make a pretty fat 40GE switch, too. The prior Trident ASICs offered 640Gbps of Ethernet switching capacity, but the new Trident II will boost that to 980Gbps for some models and up to 1.28Tbps for other models.
Broadcom helped cook up the VXLAN standard along with VMware and Cisco to virtualize the Layer 3 network and separate out Layer 2 networks on the fly, and the Trident II chip has support for VXLAN etched into its circuits. Specifically, the chip has a VXLAN transit switch and gateway.
VXLAN is a Layer 2 overlay for a Layer 3 network that gives each Layer 2 segment a 24-bit segment identification called the VXLAN Network Identifier, or VNI. This 24-bit ID allows up to 16 million VXLAN segments to coexist on the same network administration domain, which is a lot more than the 4,094 VLANs supported with the current virtual LAN technology in Ethernet switches.
VXLAN is made for clouds – very large clouds – while VLAN was made for regular-sized data centers. VXLAN can support up to 8,000 separate tenants, managing network isolation and providing quality of service provisioning for them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP, Dell Problems: PC Makers In Desperate Need Of A Reboot
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/27/hp-dell-problems_n_1832344.html
Hewlett-Packard Co. used to be known as a place where innovative thinkers flocked to work on great ideas that opened new frontiers in technology. These days, HP is looking behind the times.
Coming off a five-year stretch of miscalculations, HP is in such desperate need of a reboot that many investors have written off its chances of a comeback.
HP’s revenue has declined in each of the past four quarters, compared with the same period a year earlier, and analysts expect the trend to extend into next year
The problems Whitman is trying to fix were inherited from Apotheker and Hurd.
Like HP, Dell missed the trends that have turned selling PCs into one of technology’s least profitable and slowest growing niches. As a result, Dell’s market value has also plummeted by 60 percent, to about $20 billion, since the iPhone’s release.
The handheld, touch-based computing revolution unleashed by the iPhone and Apple’s 2010 introduction of the iPad isn’t the only challenge facing HP and Dell.
They are also scrambling to catch up in two other rapidly growing fields — “cloud computing” and “Big Data.”
Both HP and Dell want a piece of the action because cloud computing and Big Data boast higher margins and growth opportunities than the PC business.
It’s not an impossible transition, as demonstrated by the once-slumping but now-thriving IBM Corp., a technology icon even older than HP. But IBM began its makeover during the 1990s under Louis Gerstner and went through its share of turmoil before selling its PC business to Lenovo Group in 2005.
The latest projections for PC sales also paint a grim picture. The research firm IDC now predicts PC shipments this year will increase by less than 1 percent, down from its earlier forecast of 5 percent.
As PC sales languish, both HP and Dell are likely to spend more on cloud computing, data storage and technology consulting.
Tomi Engdahl says:
No more VRAM: VMware abandons controversial pricing model
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/no-more-vram-vmware-abandons-controversial-pricing-model/
Just over a year ago, VMware shocked many of its longtime customers with a new pricing model that charged customers based on the amount of virtual infrastructure they used instead of the amount of physical infrastructure.
By charging customers based on use of virtual memory, or VRAM, VMware seemingly penalized customers who succeeded in deploying many virtual machines on few physical servers.
From now on, pricing will be all per-CPU, and per-socket, Gelsinger said. By moving back to a pricing model based on usage of physical infrastructure, VMware is once again encouraging users to get as many virtual servers as they can out of each physical machine, which is the point of virtualization in the first place.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
HP’s bad quarter could prove bad for America
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9230601/HP_s_bad_quarter_could_prove_bad_for_America
China on verge of being world’s top PC maker, and the PC business of HP or Dell could be headed there too
Unless Hewlett-Packard gets its act together quickly, Lenovo will soon become the world’s number one PC maker.
If that happens, it’s going to create a moment of national angst.
A Lenovo lead in the PC market would prompt widespread commentary about how the U.S. is losing its place in the world as the tech leader.
Some others in the technology chattering class could try to rationalize it, declaring that the PC is just a commodity and that we’ve entered the post-PC era.
That would be wrong. We’re no more in the post-PC era than we are in the post-car era. The PC is, and will remain, a monumentally important part of getting work done.
Gartner’s report on second quarter PC shipments, released last month, showed HP with 14.9% of the world’s PC market, and Lenovo with 14.7%. Most troubling for HP in the Gartner report were the PC growth rates — HP’s share declined by more than 12% while Lenovo’s share increased by nearly 15%.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/technology/ibm-mainframe-evolves-to-serve-the-digital-world.html
I.B.M. is introducing on Tuesday a new line of mainframe computers, adding yet another chapter to a remarkable story of technological longevity and business strategy.
The new model, the zEnterprise EC12, has strengthened the traditional mainframe’s skill of reliably and securely handling vast volumes of transactions. That is why the mainframe is still the digital workhorse for banking and telecommunications networks — and why mainframes are selling briskly in the emerging economies of Asia and Africa.
The death of the mainframe has been predicted many times over the years. But it has prevailed because it has been overhauled time and again.
Like any threatened species that survives, the mainframe evolved. It has been tweaked to master new programming languages, like Java, and new software operating systems, like Linux.
“The mainframe is the most flexible technology platform in computing,” said Rodney C. Adkins, I.B.M.’s senior vice president for systems and technology.
That flexibility is a byproduct of investment. The new I.B.M. mainframe, according to the company, represents $1 billion in research and development spending over three years.
The sale of mainframe computers accounts for only about 4 percent of I.B.M.’s revenue these days. Yet the mainframe is a vital asset to I.B.M. because of all the business that flows from it. When all the mainframe-related software, services and storage are included, mainframe technology delivers about 25 percent of I.B.M.’s revenue and more than 40 percent of its profits, estimates A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.
“Mainframes are extremely reliable,” said Ruslan Stepanenko, chief information officer of Comepay. “It keeps working even when the transaction load is very high.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Michael Dell is not worried about the post-PC era
http://www.citeworld.com/consumerization/20627/michael-dell-vmworld-consumerization
Michael Dell defied predictions of the PC’s doom, noting that PC sales have more than tripled since the term “post-PC” was first coined in 1999.
But when a poll of the audience named the rise of “post-PC” devices as the number-one trend in IT this year, outgoing VMware CEO Paul Maritz had to respond:
“I defy anyone to edit a PowerPoint presentation on a mobile phone.”
“Think about all these mobile devices and ask how you secure these mobile devices, it probably involves virtualizing the corporate client, then have it show up on any device they use.”
Dell also pointed out that 380 million PCs were sold last year. “The post-PC era has been pretty good for PCs so far.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Details on Intel’s Valleyview SoC Emerge: 22nm Atom with Ivy Bridge Graphics
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6203/details-on-intels-valleyview-soc-emerge-22nm-atom-with-ivy-bridge-graphics
Clover Trail is the dual-core 32nm Atom platform that will power the first generation of value x86 Windows 8 tablets (and go up against ARM based Windows RT designs). Clover Trail will be in ASUS’ Tablet 810 as well as Acer’s W510. The two 32nm CPU cores are based on the Saltwell design, which happens to be the same CPU core used in Intel’s Medfield platform for smartphones. The GPU core is expected to be the PowerVR SGX 544MP2, and clocked high enough to be competitive with the 543MP4 in Apple’s A5X SoC.
Cedar Trail is the 32nm netbook/nettop platform. It uses 1 – 2 Saltwell derived Atom CPU cores and a PowerVR SGX 545 GPU from Imagination.
An unintentional leak a few months ago brought the codename Valleyview to light. Take up to four 22nm next-generation Atom cores and pair them with Intel’s own Gen7 graphics (currently used in Ivy Bridge) and you’ve got Valleyview. Bay Trail is the platform name.
The combination of new architecture, more cores and higher max clock speeds should yield much better performance than Cedar Trail. Whenever this does go into a Windows 8 tablet, the performance should be quite good.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD’s Next-Gen Steamroller CPU Could Deliver Where Bulldozer Fell Short
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/08/29/013258/amds-next-gen-steamroller-cpu-could-deliver-where-bulldozer-fell-short
“Today at the Hot Chips Symposium, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster is taking the wraps off the company’s upcoming CPU core, codenamed Steamroller. Steamroller is the third iteration of AMD’s Bulldozer architecture and an extremely important part for AMD.”
“AMD expects to ship Steamroller sometime in 2013 but wouldn’t offer timing detail beyond that.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lexmark to exit inkjet printers, cut 1,700 jobs
http://www.zdnet.com/lexmark-to-exit-inkjet-printers-cut-1700-jobs-7000003303/
Lexmark on Tuesday said it will exit its inkjet printer business and cut 1,700 jobs around the world in a move to save roughly $95 million annually.
The company, a former spin-off from IBM, is stuck in a cut-throat inkjet printer market that features HP and Canon as No. 1 and No. 2 respectively.
Lexmark said that it will provide supplies, service and support to its inkjet installed base. The move allows Lexmark to focus on high-value imaging and software, the company said in a statement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel tries to wangle China crypto-standards deal
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/29/intel_tpm_tcm_interoperability/
Intel has revealed it’s working behind the scenes to strike a deal with Chinese regulators that will effectively make the country’s closed crypto standard Trusted Cryptography Module (TCM) interoperable with the rest of the world.
TCM was invented in the People’s Republic as a home-grown rival to the Trusted Computing Group’s Trusted Platform Module (TPM) – a hardware authentication standard related to chips of the same name which store cryptographic keys to uniquely authenticate host devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New quad-core Intel Atom SoCs target PCs, servers, and tablets
The Bay Trail platform is an aggressive push into ARM’s territory.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/08/new-quad-core-intel-atom-socs-targets-pcs-servers-and-tablets/
Leaked Intel documents have revealed details of the company’s next-generation Atom platform. Codenamed Bay Trail, various versions of the platform are slated to replace the Cedar Trail platform for desktops and netbooks, the Queensbay platform for embedded devices, and the Oak Trail platform for tablets when they launch at the end of 2013.
The GPU: Atom meets Ivy Bridge
Recent Atom processors have opted to use graphics processors licensed from PowerVR, the same company responsible for the GPUs in iOS devices and other smartphones and tablets. But Valleyview brings things back in-house: it will offer a seventh generation Intel-made GPU with four execution units.
Since the Bay Trail platform is replacing so many of the older Atom platforms, it has to be versatile
Bay Trail is eventually going to replace the Cedar Trail Atoms common in today’s netbooks and tiny desktops, but the platform is more important for its viability in the tablet space.
If OEMs can use Bay Trail to make true x86 Windows tablets that are comparable in cost, battery life, and performance to their ARM counterparts, Windows RT and the tablets that run it won’t have a niche left to hide in.
Intel is also faced with the task of booting ARM SoCs from market segments that they dominate—iOS and Android and all of the apps that run on those platforms are all developed for ARM first, and while Intel’s binary translator does a pretty good job of running Android applications on Intel’s processors (see AnandTech’s analysis here), there are still cases where things aren’t working quite yet.
Intel has three things in its corner: a lot of money, a lot of experience, and a clear manufacturing advantage. Intel already has a working 22nm manufacturing process while its competitors are still working predominantly with 45nm and 32nm chips, and the Silvermont CPU is already scheduled to be superseded in 2014 by the 14nm Airmont architecture.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tapping Ukraine’s IT potential
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/08/22/tapping-ukraines-it-outsourcing-potential/#axzz24vw5bXbd
Ukraine’s IT outsourcing sector has exploded
IT outsourcing is one of the perennial growth hope stories for Ukraine, drawing its inspiration from the Soviet tradition of science teaching, and the country’s plethora of scientific institutes that used to churn out rocket scientists. Under market conditions, the schools have switched to producing programmers – an estimated 16,000 new IT specialists graduate each year.
So it was symbolic that in 2011, Ukraine’s IT services export exceeded the volume of arms exports for the first time ever, clocking up $1bn. The figure marked a tenfold increase over the last 10 years
Russia and Belarus had a head start in Ukraine when their established IT companies
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Apple Killed the Linux Desktop and Why That Doesn’t Matter
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/08/osx-killed-linux/
But one thing’s for sure: OS X has been more successful than Linux, the open source operating system that has found a home on data-center servers but is still a rarity on desktops and laptops.
Miguel de Icaza — one of the original creators of GNOME – believes that a large portion of the software developers that could have taken Linux to greater heights defected to other platforms, including not only Apple OS X but — more importantly — the web.
Some might blame the slow progress of desktop Linux on the fragmentation of the desktop user interfaces used by the major Linux distributions.
Canonical announced that it would replaced the popular GNOME desktop environment with its own homegrown Unity environment in the Ubuntu distribution
Torvalds switched to Xfce
But de Icaza says the desktop wars were already lost to OS X by the time the latest shakeups started happening. And he thinks the real reason Linux lost is that developers started defecting to OS X because the developers behind the toolkits used to build graphical Linux applications didn’t do a good enough job ensuring backward compatibility between different versions of their APIs. “For many years, we broke people’s code,” he says. “OS X did a much better job of ensuring backward compatibility.”
But at the same time, development was shifting to the web. Open source on the desktop became a lot less important than open source on the server.
Open source powers the server side of the web, but there’s no guarantee of openness on the user-facing side. And that’s where open source advocates are focusing much of their efforts now, even if they have started using Macs. “Many people who were talking about Free Software are the people talking about the open web now,” de Icaza says.
Thanks to AJAX and HTML5, the web has become the dominant platform
Another big change since the early days of the Linux desktop is the rise of the mobile web. “There’s a huge portion of the world who are going to first experience the internet through the mobile devices,” Peters say.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Preps for Server Graphics Push
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/amd-preps-for-server-graphics-push/
AMD nabs a key parallel computing exec to lead its graphics unit on the eve of a notable server graphics push.
AMD’s chief technical officer, Mark Papermaster, said Aug. 29 that graphics would be AMD’s key to attacking heterogenous computing, even as the company backed up his statement by nabbing a key exec from rival Intel to lead the team.
“We look at APUs as the natural engine to start this move to heterogenous computing, to start this acceleration, of bringing a capability, an infrastructure, to support this surround-compute era. Because it is a breakthrough enabler,” Papermaster told the Hot Chips conference in Cupertino, Calif.
AMD has already shipped over 30 million APUs, he added. By 2016, IDC’s forecasts show a demand for more than 10 million servers—many, if not all of them, needing an AMD graphics chip.
Some development still needs to take place in order for that to happen, however.
In June, AMD helped form the Heterogenous System Architecture Foundation, combining AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek Inc. and Texas Instruments. The Foundation seeks to “unlock” accelerators such as GPUs to third-party software, but needs to create an API to do so. Papermaster told EETimes that the timeframe for a first draft is still months away.
In terms of raw performance, he added, “the evolution of discrete graphics has far exceeded that of the CPU, and the programmable characteristics of today’s GPUs have thrown open a door that could very well see it rival the CPU as the most critical element of computer performance in the near future.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
California court has ruled that Oracle will need to continue the software development for Itanium. Oracle has to offer Itanium-based software as long as HP sells Itanium servers.
Oracle announced the end of Itanium support last year, followed by HP sued the company to court.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/nyt+se+on+virallista+oraclen+taytyy+jatkaa+itaniumkehitysta/a833352?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-30082012&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Qt 5 Beta is here
http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2012/08/30/qt-5-beta-is-here/
The Qt 5 Beta is now available as the first major release under the new Qt Project umbrella.
With this Qt 5 beta release, I would also like to invite everybody interested to go, try, and experience this next major version of Qt.
It’s now 15 months since we announced the start of Qt 5 development, and I am really happy to see what has been achieved during this time. All of the major architectural changes that we planned for have been implemented. At the same time, the community around Qt and qt-project.org has seen a nice and healthy growth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud computing and the one deadly sin for CIOs
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/paas/cloud-deployment/4401/cloud-computing-and-one-deadly-sin-cios?page=0,0
When it comes to the seven deadly sins, there’s only one that cloud users need to worry about – but laziness can be a major concern
many organisations are sleepwalking into the cloud. Moving to the cloud may outsource the provision of the IT service, but it does not outsource the organisation’s responsibilities. There are issues that may be forgotten or ignored when adopting cloud computing strategies
Most people are aware of the concept of the seven deadly sins of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony. Of these vices one above all can lead to problems with cloud computing—sloth. Clearly, a good understanding of cloud is critical, as is effective governance over the cloud.
One of the biggest changes in opting for cloud is that the relationship with the cloud provider needs to handled carefully. This means defining and agreeing to metrics via service level agreements and then making sure that these are achieved.
Hence the need for some sort of third-party endorsement. Certification of providers by a trusted third party is a way to satisfy this need.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ethernet switch sales sizzle
Everybody needs – and is buying – bigger pipes
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/31/idc_ethernet_switch_q2_2012/
The server market may have stalled a bit as Intel, AMD, IBM, Oracle, and Fujitsu work through various stages of processor transitions, but the Ethernet switch market is going gangbusters.
According to the box counters at IDC, the worldwide market for Layer 2 and 3 switching gear that adheres to the Ethernet protocol accounted for $5.52bn in revenues in the second quarter as companies begin the transition to from Gigabit to 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching in the data center
a move toward flatter and fatter Layer 2-3 networks for many workloads rather than the tiered networks that have been common for the past two decades.
In the quarter ended in June, IDC reckons that Gigabit Ethernet switches collectively accounted for 55 million ports and revenues rose 6.5 per cent.
10GbE ports are taking off, know that shipments rose above 3 million ports in the second quarter ( up 22.9 per cent )
With the latest Intel Xeon E5 processors, server makers are also putting 10GbE ports on their motherboards, essentially making the 10GbE networking free as 100Mbit and Gigabit were ahead of them
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner’s 2012 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies “Tipping Point” Technologies That Will Unlock Long-Awaited Technology Scenarios
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=2124315
Big data, 3D printing, activity streams, Internet TV, Near Field Communication (NFC) payment, cloud computing and media tablets are some of the fastest-moving technologies identified in Gartner Inc.’s 2012 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.
Check also
http://www.3t.fi/media/gartner_hype_kayra.jpg
Tomi Engdahl says:
PCs get touchy ahead of Windows 8 launch
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/09/03/pcs_turn_touchscreen_ahead_of_windows_8/
IFA 2012 PC manufacturers have been busy unveiling their touchscreen laptops at IFA this week in hot anticipation of Microsoft’s Windows 8 release.
While several firms have opted for Windows 8 tablets which convert into laptops using peripherals
Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba continued the touchy trend with their respective PC announcements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Baidu launches mobile browser, tosses currency into clouds
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/03/baidu_mobile_browser_cloud/
China’s search-and-plenty-more giant Baidu has flagged a $US1.6 billion cloud investment. The investment, announced with a minimum of detail by CFO Li Xinzhe, will go towards building data centres and hiring staff.
The Chinese search firm also announced the launch of the Baidu Mobile Browser, which it says is designed to compete with Chrome and Safari. It claims a 20 percent performance boost over its rivals based on internal testing.
Baidu said its mobile browser can play high-definition video without plugins or extra supporting software, according to Reuters.
The company said it hopes that 80 percent of China’s handsets will run its browser by the end of the year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel may need to adjust roadmap for PC-use Atom processors
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120903PD208.html
Intel may be forced to adjust its roadmap for PC-use Atom processors as the top-2 netbook vendors – Asustek Computer and Acer – both plan to stop manufacturing related products, according to sources from notebook players.
Asustek is already set to halt its Eee PC product line and officially phase out from the IT industry after completely digesting any remaining inventory. As for Acer, so far, the company has not yet made any plans to open new netbook projects, indicating that the vendor may also plan to step out of the market.
Although Atom series processors will still be adopted by handset and embedded products, the sources believe the two product lines are unlikely to be able to fill the gap created by the absent netbook products in short term due to weak shipments.
The sources pointed out that Intel’s Atom N2800 and N2600 processors for netbooks and Atom D2700, D2500 and D2550 processors for nettops are expected to see their shipments drop close to 50% in the fourth quarter, and Atom N series CPU will only be adopted by Intel and a few vendors in 2013, while the Atom D will gradually be phased out of the market.