Here is my collection of trends and predictions for year 2014:
It seems that PC market is not recovering in 2014. IDC is forecasting that the technology channel will buy in around 34 million fewer PCs this year than last. It seem that things aren’t going to improve any time soon (down, down, down until 2017?). There will be no let-up on any front, with desktops and portables predicted to decline in both the mature and emerging markets. Perhaps the chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system: PC usage has not moved significantly beyond consumption and productivity tasks to differentiate PCs from other devices. As a result, PC lifespan continue to increase. Death of the Desktop article says that sadly for the traditional desktop, this is only a matter of time before its purpose expires and that it would be inevitable it will happen within this decade. (I expect that it will not completely disappear).
When the PC business is slowly decreasing, smartphone and table business will increase quickly. Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone: the mobile business is much bigger than the computer industry. There are now perhaps 3.5-4 billion mobile phones, replaced every two years, versus 1.7-1.8 billion PCs replaced every 5 years. Smartphones broke down that wall between those industries few years ago – suddenly tech companies could sell to an industry with $1.2 trillion annual revenue. Now you can sell more phones in a quarter than the PC industry sells in a year.
After some years we will end up with somewhere over 3bn smartphones in use on earth, almost double the number of PCs. There are perhaps 900m consumer PCs on earth, and maybe 800m corporate PCs. The consumer PCs are mostly shared and the corporate PCs locked down, and neither are really mobile. Those 3 billion smartphones will all be personal, and all mobile. Mobile browsing is set to overtake traditional desktop browsing in 2015. The smartphone revolution is changing how consumers use the Internet. This will influence web design.
The only PC sector that seems to have some growth is server side. Microservers & Cloud Computing to Drive Server Growth article says that increased demand for cloud computing and high-density microserver systems has brought the server market back from a state of decline. We’re seeing fairly significant change in the server market. According to the 2014 IC Market Drivers report, server unit shipment growth will increase in the next several years, thanks to purchases of new, cheaper microservers. The total server IC market is projected to rise by 3% in 2014 to $14.4 billion: multicore MPU segment for microservers and NAND flash memories for solid state drives are expected to see better numbers.
Spinning rust and tape are DEAD. The future’s flash, cache and cloud article tells that the flash is the tier for primary data; the stuff christened tier 0. Data that needs to be written out to a slower response store goes across a local network link to a cloud storage gateway and that holds the tier 1 nearline data in its cache. Never mind software-defined HYPE, 2014 will be the year of storage FRANKENPLIANCES article tells that more hype around Software-Defined-Everything will keep the marketeers and the marchitecture specialists well employed for the next twelve months but don’t expect anything radical. The only innovation is going to be around pricing and consumption models as vendors try to maintain margins. FCoE will continue to be a side-show and FC, like tape, will soldier on happily. NAS will continue to eat away at the block storage market and perhaps 2014 will be the year that object storage finally takes off.
IT managers are increasingly replacing servers with SaaS article says that cloud providers take on a bigger share of the servers as overall market starts declining. An in-house system is no longer the default for many companies. IT managers want to cut the number of servers they manage, or at least slow the growth, and they may be succeeding. IDC expects that anywhere from 25% to 30% of all the servers shipped next year will be delivered to cloud services providers. In three years, 2017, nearly 45% of all the servers leaving manufacturers will be bought by cloud providers. The shift will slow the purchase of server sales to enterprise IT. Big cloud providers are more and more using their own designs instead of servers from big manufacturers. Data center consolidations are eliminating servers as well. For sure, IT managers are going to be managing physical servers for years to come. But, the number will be declining.
I hope that the IT business will start to grow this year as predicted. Information technology spends to increase next financial year according to N Chandrasekaran, chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information technology (IT) services company. IDC predicts that IT consumption will increase next year to 5 per cent worldwide to $ 2.14 trillion. It is expected that the biggest opportunity will lie in the digital space: social, mobility, cloud and analytics. The gradual recovery of the economy in Europe will restore faith in business. Companies are re-imaging their business, keeping in mind changing digital trends.
The death of Windows XP will be on the new many times on the spring. There will be companies try to cash in with death of Windows XP: Microsoft’s plan for Windows XP support to end next spring, has received IT services providers as well as competitors to invest in their own services marketing. HP is peddling their customers Connected Backup 8.8 service to prevent data loss during migration. VMware is selling cloud desktop service. Google is wooing users to switch to ChromeOS system by making Chrome’s user interface familiar to wider audiences. The most effective way XP exploiting is the European defense giant EADS subsidiary of Arkoon, which promises support for XP users who do not want to or can not upgrade their systems.
There will be talk on what will be coming from Microsoft next year. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a series of updates in 2015 that could see major revisions for the Windows, Xbox, and Windows RT platforms. Microsoft’s wave of spring 2015 updates to its various Windows-based platforms has a codename: Threshold. If all goes according to early plans, Threshold will include updates to all three OS platforms (Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone).
Amateur programmers are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the IT landscape. A new IDC study has found that of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million (roughly 40 percent) are “hobbyist developers,” which is what IDC calls people who write code even though it is not their primary occupation. The boom in hobbyist programmers should cheer computer literacy advocates.IDC estimates there are almost 29 million ICT-skilled workers in the world as we enter 2014, including 11 million professional developers.
The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability will be more and more talked. Interfacing between languages will be increasingly important. You can no longer expect a nontrivial application to be written in a single language. With software becoming ever more complex and hardware less homogeneous, the likelihood of a single language being the correct tool for an entire program is lower than ever. The trend toward increased complexity in software shows no sign of abating, and modern hardware creates new challenges. Now, mobile phones are starting to appear with eight cores with the same ISA (instruction set architecture) but different speeds, some other streaming processors optimized for different workloads (DSPs, GPUs), and other specialized cores.
Just another new USB connector type will be pushed to market. Lightning strikes USB bosses: Next-gen ‘type C’ jacks will be reversible article tells that USB is to get a new, smaller connector that, like Apple’s proprietary Lightning jack, will be reversible. Designed to support both USB 3.1 and USB 2.0, the new connector, dubbed “Type C”, will be the same size as an existing micro USB 2.0 plug.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Standards Group Adds Adaptive-Sync To DisplayPort
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/05/13/014250/standards-group-adds-adaptive-sync-to-displayport
“Over the past nine months, we’ve seen the beginnings of a revolution in how video games are displayed. First, Nvidia demoed G-Sync, its proprietary technology for ensuring smooth frame delivery. Then AMD demoed its own free standard, dubbed FreeSync, that showed a similar technology. Now, VESA (Video Electronics Standard Association) has announced support for “Adaptive Sync,” as an addition to DisplayPort. The new capability will debut with DisplayPort 1.2a. The goal of these technologies is to synchronize output from the GPU and the display to ensure smooth output.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
VESA Standards Group Adds ‘Adaptive-Sync’ DisplayPort Video Standard
Read more: http://hothardware.com/News/VESA-Standards-Group-Adds-AdaptiveSync-DisplayPort-Video-Standard/#ixzz31ZxntDEG
Tomi Engdahl says:
NO, Microsoft hasn’t given up on .Net, and YES it’s all about cloud
.Net vNext, ASP.Net vNext want to be cloud’s ‘first framework’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/13/dot_net_vnext_aims_for_cloud/
Developers who were worried that Microsoft was retreating from .Net can breathe easier, as the software giant had a host of .Net-related announcements to make at its annual TechEd North America conference this week.
Recent Build developer conferences have been light on .Net content, between Microsoft pushing JavaScript and web technologies for Windows Store apps, and its renewed emphasis on C++ for the desktop.
“On the cloud and on servers, the future of .Net is about the modern web,”
“Our goal is for the next version of .Net to be the first and only framework designed for the cloud, helping you to create on-premises applications and move them to the cloud with no changes and at the same time leveraging all the power of the cloud.”
Collectively, these efforts are being lumped under the name “.Net vNext”, a multi-pronged initiative that will take the platform in several new directions at once.
At last: truly cross-platform .Net?
n a surprising but welcome move, Redmond says it is taking steps to make sure all of this works on more platforms than just Windows. Although .Net is a managed-code platform, much like Java, in the past Microsoft has never gone in for Java’s “write once, run anywhere” ethos. For .Net vNext, however, it has been working with Xamarin to make sure its .Net packages run on OS X and Linux, via the open source Mono project.
Finally, Microsoft says it has committed to releasing all of the .Net vNext technologies as open source software via its newly inaugurated .Net Foundation
Tomi Engdahl says:
Research in India suggests Google search results can influence an election
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/12/research-in-india-suggests-google-search-results-can-influence-an-election/
Google long ago went from being a mere directory of the Internet to a shaper of online reality, helping determine what we see and how. But what power does Google have over the “real” world – and especially the volatile one of closely contested elections?
Psychologist Robert Epstein has been researching this question and says he is alarmed at what he has discovered. His most recent experiment, whose findings were released Monday, found that search engines have the potential to profoundly influence voters without them noticing the impact. Epstein has coined a term for this power: Search Engine Manipulation Effect, with the acronym SEME.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Office for iPad apps notch 27M downloads in 46 days
http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/05/12/microsofts-office-for-ipad-apps-notch-27m-downloads-in-46-days
After a highly anticipated launch in late March, Microsoft’s Office for iPad suite of productivity apps is still going strong in the iOS App Store after having accumulated some 27 million downloads as of Monday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows XP die-hards can slash attack risk by dumping IE
Microsoft’s patch stats support advice to switch to another browser
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248277/Windows_XP_die_hards_can_slash_attack_risk_by_dumping_IE?taxonomyId=125&pageNumber=1
By switching to a non-Microsoft browser, Windows XP users can halve the number of vulnerabilities that apply to the OS, according to a survey of flaws Microsoft fixed in the second half of 2013.
The statistics support the advice from security professionals, who have recommended users run a rival browser to avoid some of the attacks aimed at their unprotected PCs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
4 words to avoid when negotiating the use of open source at your job
http://opensource.com/business/14/5/negotiate-open-source-on-the-job
By choosing my words carefully and avoiding these four words, I successfully brought open source to our team.
Open source
Free
Contribute
Development
So, I started talking about “agility” and explained that, “open source would speed our ability to respond to feature requests from our staff and administration.”
I reinforced this with simple demonstrations of the flexibility of the software. One useful trick was showing management how I could change the entire look and feel of a whole website by simply clicking on a theme. If you work in the technology world, that’s no big deal, but to others, it can be pure magic.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Old saying. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft. Nobody ever got fired for buying SAP. It’s a simple cover-your-ass game.
Managers, unless they have a very special bond with the company (like, say, they built it from the ground up) don’t give a shit about the company. They care about their ass.
And when the question is whether to blow a million of company money for software they don’t know jack about but has a big name behind it, or to save the company a million bucks using software they don’t know jack about but has no name to it, they blow them money.
Because they needn’t explain why they did it. It’s IBM/MS/SAP, how should he have imagined that it’s no good?
Source: http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/05/12/2159234/how-to-approve-the-use-of-open-source-on-the-job
Tomi Engdahl says:
VESA Adds Adaptive-Sync to DisplayPort 1.2a Standard; Variable Refresh Monitors Move Forward
by Ryan Smith on May 12, 2014 8:50 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8008/vesa-adds-adaptivesync-to-displayport-12a-standard-variable-refresh-monitors-move-forward
Tomi Engdahl says:
USB SuperSpeed will relegate Thunderbolt to a niche
The new USB spec is expected to eventually scale throughput beyond 40Gbps
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9248291/USB_SuperSpeed_will_relegate_Thunderbolt_to_a_niche?taxonomyName=Network+Hardware&taxonomyId=140
The USB SuperSpeed specification and accompanying hardware are about to undergo a number of major evolutionary makeovers that will leave little room for the Thunderbolt hardware interface to expand in the market.
Both USB SuperSpeed and Thunderbolt have recently undergone version upgrades – USB moved to v3.1 (SuperSpeed+) and Thunderbolt to v2. And both upgrades double the maximum throughput speed — USB 3.1 to 10Gbps and Thunderbolt 2 to 20Gbps.
But, the USB SuperSpeed specification has a lot of elasticity built into it.
“This tech will scale well beyond 10Gbps,” said Rahman Ismail, a USB 3.0 senior architect at Intel. “We believe we already have a protocol that will scale well past 40Gbps.”
Other than speed, Thunderbolt 2 has another advantage over USB 3.1 – 10 watts of power compared with USB SuperSpeed’s 4.5 watts.
But, the USB connector specification is also getting long-awaited improvements that will give users a reversible plug orientation and the opportunity for a more robust cable offering up to 100 watts of power. Again, like Thunderbolt, the new USB Type-C Connector means both the cable and the connector plug are symmetrical and the technology will eventually offer 10 times the power of Thunderbolt 2.
The new USB Type-C Connector specification is expected to be completed in July. A more robust version of the cables, capable of supporting 100 watts of power, are expected later next year.
A USB SuperSpeed+ cable certified for 100 watt power transfer could support an external hard drive and an Ultra-High Definition (UHD) 4K television display, according to Jeff Ravencraft, president of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Red Hat burps out cloudy OpenStack beta distribution
Brings in Foreman to calm cloud wrangler concerns over install and administration
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/13/red_hat_openstack_distro/
OpenStack Summit Red Hat has released a beta of a new OpenStack distribution that gives customers greater choice over the types of networking systems they pair with the project’s troubled Neutron component.
The availability of Red Hat’s snappily named Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5.0 (RHELOP5, for those who have a fetish for abbreviations) was announced by the company on Tuesday at the OpenStack Summit in Atlanta, Georgia.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Canonical teams up with Tranquil PC to deliver Ubuntu cluster-in-a-box
Instant OpenStack that fits on a desk
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/14/canonical_orange_box/
OpenStack Summit Canonical is getting into the hardware business – albeit in a very limited way – to help customers who aren’t ready to build out their own clusters start experimenting with private clouds based on Ubuntu and OpenStack.
Announced at the OpenStack Summit in Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday, the Orange Box is a turnkey mobile cluster with ten nodes, all enclosed in a single ruggedized case about the size of a breadbox and weighing a total of 32kg (70.5lbs).
Each node is based on an Intel Next Unit of Computing (NUC) D53427RKE microserver, with a Core i5-3427U processor clocked at 1.8GHz with Intel HD Graphics 4000, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, and 120GB of SSD storage for a total of 1.2TB (which canonical calls “generous”).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Disks with Ethernet ports? Throw in some flash and you’ve got yourself a HGST p-a-r-t-y
Accepts net-drives are coming, follows Seagate
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/08/hgst_accepts_ethernet_drives_are_coming/
Western Digital Corp subsidiary HGST is developing Ethernet-connected drives for OpenStack users – and they won’t require any application software changes, apparently.
The architecture of such a product will be demonstrated by HGST at the OpenStack Summit, to take place between 12 and 16 May in Atlanta, GA.
In contrast to Seagate’s Ethernet drives HGST says software such as OpenStack Object Storage (code-named Swift), Ceph and Red Hat Storage Server (aka Gluster), can run without modification.
Seagate’s Ethernet drives, branded Kinetic, have a direct network interface and object style API access to replace the existing application-to-drive storage stack.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple plans to match Microsoft Surface with split-screen iPad multitasking in iOS 8
http://9to5mac.com/2014/05/13/apple-plans-to-match-microsoft-surface-with-split-screen-ipad-multitasking-in-ios-8/
iOS 8 is likely to supercharge the functionality of Apple’s iPad with a new split-screen multitasking feature, according to sources with knowledge of the enhancement in development. These people say that the feature will allow iPad users to run and interact with two iPad applications at once. Up until now, each iPad application either developed by Apple or available on the App Store is only usable individually in a full-screen view.
The ability to use multiple applications simultaneously on a tablet’s display takes a page out of Microsoft’s playbook. Microsoft’s Surface line of tablets has a popular “snap” multitasking feature that allows customers to snap multiple apps onto the screen for simultaneous usage. The feature is popular in the enterprise and in environments where users need to handle multiple tasks at the same time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle horns in on Red Hat’s OpenStack party with own distro
Ellison’s RHEL lookalike, now with cloud software, too
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/13/oracle_openstack_preview/
Never one to be outdone by rival Red Hat, Oracle has unveiled its own distribution of the OpenStack cloud control freak on the same day that Shadowman opened its latest beta distribution to the public.
Oracle’s OpenStack distro is currently classified as a technology preview, and it installs over the latest version of Oracle Linux and the early-access beta release of Oracle VM 3.3. The individual packages that provide the various OpenStack services are available from Oracle’s public beta YUM repository.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Thanks, Amazon – we’ll take it from here: SAP muscles in on cloud subscriptions
Throwing the business sink at Salesforce and Workday
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/15/sap_biz_suite_subscriptions/
SAP is putting its entire business applications suite online and selling the lot through subscription.
The on-premise giant last week announced SAP Business Suite via the SAP Hana Enterprise Cloud service.
Underpinning the service is Hana, SAP’s in-memory database technology.
Subscriptions are a huge deal for SAP. The world’s largest maker of business software became a multi-billion dollar business by charging customers hefty licence fees to buy its software and then to receive ongoing maintenance and periodic updates.
The new breed of cloud subscriptions – as typified by the Salesforce model – completely undermine SAP’s original business model and income streams. They charge relatively small amounts using a clear, per-seat basis for a set monthly or annual fee.
Certified versions of SAP’s Business Suite, HANA, Business Objects and other apps have been available in “hosted mode” via AWS for some time.
SAP was relatively successful on Amazon, claiming 950 customers on Hana One on AWS. SAP also put its bets on Amazon when it killed its Business ByDesign hosted enterprise resource planning service in favour of services running on its HANA systems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hard Drive Temperature – Does It Matter?
Brian Beach May 12, 2014
http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/05/12/hard-drive-temperature-does-it-matter/
How much does operating temperature affect the failure rates of disk drives? Not much.
The unlimited online backup service provided by Backblaze requires a lot of storage. In fact, we recently passed the 100-petabyte mark in our data center. This means we use disk drives. A lot of disk drives.
The Backblaze Storage Pod is designed to provide good airflow over the disk drives, so they don’t get too hot. Still, different locations inside a pod, and different locations within a data center will have different temperatures, and we wondered whether that was a problem for the drives.
What Other People Say
Google and Microsoft have both done studies on disk drive temperature in their data centers. Google found that temperature was not a good predictor of failure, while Microsoft and the University of Virginia found that there was a significant correlation.
Disk drive manufacturers tell Backblaze that in general, it’s a good idea to keep disks cooler so they will last longer.
All Drives: No Correlation
After looking at data on over 34,000 drives, I found that overall there is no correlation between temperature and failure rate.
Overall, there is not a correlation between operating temperature and failure rates. The one exception is the Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drives, which fail slightly more when they run warmer.
As long as you run drives well within their allowed range of operating temperatures, keeping them cooler doesn’t matter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Database down! DBA ninjas to the rescue
Handy 101 guide for Oracle administrators
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/14/oracle_dba_workshop_data_restoration/
First things first
Ideally, you’ll want to avoid your database going down in the first place.
Oracle further divides unplanned downtime into two areas: data failures, and computer failures. DBAs will be most interested in data failures – the four main categories are:
Storage error
Human error
Corruption
Site failure
DBAs have some control over storage error and human error, at least.
While you can protect against some of these things, DBAs still haven’t worked out how to control fire, flooding and other acts of god
There are three things to back up in an Oracle database
The server parameters file (SPFILE)
The Control file
The data files themselves (generally considered quite important).
There are two broad kinds of backup: a cold backup, and a hot one. Cold (offline) backups are the easiest to do.
Hot backups are good for recovering databases on the fly, rather than complete restoration from scratch.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Corporate boards and CEOs are supposed to believe that the CIO’s gender does not matter.
Female and male CIOs ‘ views on the role of CIO has a lot of similarities. This can be concluded The Agenda 2014 Gartner survey results .
Men and women have , inter alia, the same priorities , and they will see the technical challenges faced by organizations in the same way.
This is good news . That’s why corporate boards and CEOs should not believe that the CIO’s gender does not matter in relation to , for example, whether a person is a strategically focused.
The results indicate that women adopt some of the trends in the digital age in the same way or in some cases even better than their male colleagues .
Women also rely a little more on theur organization’s ability to exploit the digitalization opportunities .
Nevertheless, the female -CIO accounted for has remained the same since 2004.
One difference between the research reveals is that the female CIOs tell men significantly more growing IT budgets.
Women -CIO expect budgets to increase by 2.5 per cent , while the average growth rate is only 0.2 per cent.
Source: http://summa.talentum.fi/article/tv/uusimmat/63149
Tomi Engdahl says:
Red Hat dismisses claim of OpenStack favoritism
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2155320/red-hat-dismisses-claim-of-openstack-favoritism.html
Red Hat said it provides commercial support for its Linux distribution regardless of which version of OpenStack its customers are using, rejecting a report to the contrary from earlier Wednesday.
“To be clear, users are free to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux with any OpenStack offering, and there is no requirement to use our OpenStack technologies to get a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription,” Paul Cormier, Red Hat president for products and technologies, said in a blog post.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Convergence as a new new thing
The only way performance can go is up, says Dave Cartwright
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/15/enterprise_it_convergence_feature/
When we were talking about CTI convergence in the 1990s it was primarily about bringing telephony into a world where it communicated using the same networks (primarily Ethernet) and protocols (generally IP) as data systems, thus eliminating the need for complex gateways and expensive software that translated between two separate worlds. These days IP is ubiquitous and so there’s a far lesser need for gateway devices and inter-protocol translation.
The problem is, though, that a standard such as Ethernet and IP is merely a lowest-common-denominator means of making A communicate with B.
In our 1990s example we were concerned with connecting two devices together and making them communicate with each other. Those devices were, however, pretty much stand-alone entities.
Taking a typical server in a virtualised infrastructure we have:
An operating system running on a virtual server.
A virtual server, running in a hypervisor such as Hyper-V or ESX.
A virtual network switch, running on the same hypervisor.
A set of physical network adaptors to which the virtual switches connect.
A physical server hosting the network adaptors.
A Storage Area Network (SAN) connecting the server to external storage media in a SAN – either iSCSI via the abovementioned LAN or Fibre Channel via its own switching fabric.
A SAN controller front-ending a set of disk arrays.
The disk arrays providing the storage.
A LAN connecting the server to other devices in the organisation.
The path from OS to disk is, therefore, considerably longer than it was in the days before virtualisation. Every inter-layer interface introduces a delay of some sort – no matter how minuscule these are on their own, they can add up to something significant and unacceptable.
It’s highly likely that we can’t make the communication between the layers any more efficient, so perhaps we could make the process more efficient by short-cutting the communications somehow and cutting out one or more layers in some of our transactions.
Convergence – cutting out layers
Convergence in today’s language is, therefore, enabling systems and applications to communicate without having to go through all of the layers in the system. There are two ways to do this: to move between two distant layers without passing through the ones in between; and to ignore big chunks of the model altogether.
Summing up
And this is the point of convergence in 2014. It’s no longer a case of making disparate systems talk to each other: that was achieved when the world saw the light and standardised on IP networking. Today’s convergence is all about taking a multi-layer infrastructure that exists for perfectly good reasons and:
Acknowledging that the layers all have to exist, and that we’re unlikely to make any of the individual inter-layer boundaries any more efficient.
Taking and maximising its efficiency by breaking down the barriers between the layers and allowing them to communicate other than with their neighbouring layers.
Enabling all the layers, from the top level applications down to the physical network cables and disks, to influence each other and collaborate to reconfigure the overall infrastructure dynamically for improved performance.
By converging systems in this way, the only way performance can go is up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why consensus-decision making is better for open source projects
http://iquaid.org/2014/04/21/why-consensus-decision-making-is-better-for-open-source-projects/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Game Industry Fights Rising Development Costs
http://games.slashdot.org/story/14/05/14/217217/game-industry-fights-rising-development-costs
“Video game development budgets have been rising for years, and the recent launch of a new generation of consoles has only made it worse. Developers of AAA titles are now fighting to keep costs manageable while providing the technological advances gamers have come to expect. Just a few years ago, budgets ranging above $100 million were considered absurd, but now Activision is committing $500 million to a new IP from the studio that created Halo.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Game of Thrones Author George R R Martin Writes with WordStar on DOS
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/05/14/2019225/game-of-thrones-author-george-r-r-martin-writes-with-wordstar-on-dos
” ‘I actually have two computers,’ Martin continued. ‘I have a computer I browse the Internet with and I get my email on, and I do my taxes on. And then I have my writing computer, which is a DOS machine, not connected to the Internet.’”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sony Forecasts Surprise Loss on PC Exit, Restructuring
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-14/sony-unexpectedly-forecasts-loss-amid-restructuring-costs-tvs.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
San Diego’s SAP system has tripled some employees’ workloads
SAP’s software systems ‘work exactly as designed,’ a spokesman says
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247885/San_Diego_39_s_SAP_system_has_tripled_some_employees_workloads?taxonomyId=72
San Diego’s $50 million SAP system has ended up tripling employees’ workloads for certain types of tasks, but the city has also failed to devote enough attention to training, according to a consultant’s report released earlier this month.
Overall, purchasing and contracting department employees’ workloads “increased as much as three times post-SAP implementation compared to the old system,” the report states.
Also, the fact that San Diego “memorialized” inefficient processes into the SAP system rather than take the opportunity to refine them will require it to “repeat this core implementation step,” Krigsman added.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why faff with a piddly microSD when there’s this 2TB vault tempting your selfie-stuffed mobe?
Plus more new gear from storage world
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/15/super_storage_roundup/
Seagate’s Wireless Plus devices for mobile gadgets now have three capacity points: 500GB, 1TB and 2TB – there was just a 1TB model before.
These drives are meant to store media files for smartphones and tablets over Wi-Fi to avoid cables, or USB 3.0 if you insist. The bundled software provides “a new option to save content and files to the drive through the updated Seagate Media app as well as the ability to migrate files to cloud services such as Dropbox and Google Drive”.
Seagate, under its Samsung Hard Drive brand, is flogging a 1.5TB external hard drive that devices connect to wirelessly: it can handle up to five devices at a time over Wi-Fi, and is positioned as a smartphone and tablet accessory.
Tomi Engdahl says:
US College Students Still Aren’t All That Interested In Computer Science
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/05/14/2210209/us-college-students-still-arent-all-that-interested-in-computer-science
“Despite the hot job market and competitive salaries, the share of Computer Science degrees as a percentage of BA degrees has remained essentially unchanged since 1981″
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flash Storage Firms Scramble to Find, Hire Engineers
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1322383&
The solid-state drive (SSD) business has literally exploded in the past year, and that trend has companies clamoring to recruit and hire more engineering talent.
It is not proving easy.
“We are seeing persistently more open positions than qualified candidates to fill them,” says Jon Haswell, senior director of firmware development at Micron Technology. “At Micron, we are aggressively recruiting top talent at our own events, industry conferences, and through social media.”
IHS reports that SSD shipments climbed 82% last year. That increase — coupled with the 50% rise IHS forecasts for this year — is fueling an insatiable demand for even more talent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ultra-Slim Fanless Box PC
http://www.eeweb.com/news/ultra-slim-fanless-box-pc
AAEON® announced the release of the AEC-6402 ultra-slim fanless Box PC with extensive I/O capabilities such as the energy efficient Intel® Atom™ N2600 1.60 GHz processor and the Intel® NM10 Chipset. The brushed aluminum elegant enclosure design brings a revolution art concept to new era for industrial and automation markets.
System integrators specializing in factory/machine automation, transportation, home automation, in-vehicle, law enforcement and environmental surveillance will appreciate the AEC-6402 fanless box PC highly efficient design, allowing up to 2GB of DDR3 1066 SDRAM and a 12V DC power input. I/O capabilities include two USB 2.0 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, two RS-232/422/485 serial ports with RJ-45 connectors, and one CAN bus connector, making this an ideal solution for a variety of home automation, factory automation and in- vehicle applications. In addition, there is an option for wireless network connectivity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Don’t Be a Server Hugger! (Video)
http://slashdot.org/story/14/05/15/1912232/dont-be-a-server-hugger-video
Curtis Peterson says admins who hang onto their servers instead of moving into the cloud are ‘Server Huggers,’ a term he makes sound like ‘Horse Huggers,’ a phrase that once might have been used to describe hackney drivers who didn’t want to give up their horse-pulled carriages in favor of gasoline-powered automobiles.
Comment:
I don’t think most admins are worried about losing their job, I think they are worried about cloud services going down or disappearing and having nothing they can do about it, let alone information security and other factors.
Alicia says:
Right now it seems like BlogEngine is the preferred blogging
platform available right now. (from what I’ve read) Is that what you are
using on your blog?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud computing, or ‘The future is trying to KILL YOU’
The brutal tech truth that links the problems of Rackspace, Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle, SAP, others
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/17/cloud_computing_doom_analysis/
What do all ailing enterprise IT companies have in common? Trouble in their core businesses due to the rise of cloud computing.
Just how serious are the effects?
Tech tectonics reshape the landscape
The reason why this is all happening is that during the past ten years there have been a series of advances within the technology landscape that make cloud computing’s rise inevitable – even with the NSA revelations.
The cycle of change spins ever faster
We can see the acceleration of this cycle in types of technology as well. VMware, for instance, was founded in 1998, but by many accounts its virtualization approach didn’t have a serious effect on the industry until a decade later. Hadoop, by comparison, was created in 2005 and started to cause change in the marketplace by 2012 or so, though its revenue has lagged VMware.
NoSQL databases are on an even shorter trajectory to interesting uptake (and, later, money), with MongoDB – founded in 2007 – and other NoSQL databases already having an effect on the industry and causing incumbents such as Oracle to look closely at the new genre of databases.
The intervals between invention of new technologies and significant changes in the industry appear to be shortening, which means that if you are either a slow-moving organization or a hardware specialist, things are tricky.
This is why we have the troubled OpenStack project, a cross-industry open source software scheme to design software that can run at the scale of these consumer internet giants. OpenStack has been enthusiastically adopted by incumbents such as IBM, HP, Oracle, and others, to help them make tech to defeat their younger rivals.
HP, Cisco, IBM, Oracle, Dell, and other big incumbents should be extremely worried: every trend in technology points to a future that has no bias toward their current profit-generating businesses. The growth days are over and winter has arrived, forcing these companies to battle each other to maintain margins and shipments, and distracting them from the threats coming from below.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I am an IT generalist. Am I doomed to low pay forever?
Help your fellow reader sell his skills to future employers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/17/readers_corner_it_generalist_career_path_advice/
I’m an IT generalist. I know a bit of everything – I can behave appropriately up to Cxx level both internally and with clients, and I’m happy to crawl under a desk to plug in network cables.
I know a little bit about how nearly everything works – enough to fill in the gaps quickly
Sounds like the makings of a fine project manager to me. What do you suggest?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Grace Hopper, UNIVAC, and the First Programming Language
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/05/18/1215257/grace-hopper-univac-and-the-first-programming-language
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ye olde code: Grace Hopper and UNIVAC
http://www.linuxvoice.com/history-of-computing-part-2/?pk_campaign=sl
In the days before cheap silicon chips, valves ruled the roost – and it took a special kind of brain to handle these magnificent beasts. Learn all about UNIVAC, the first commercial general-purpose computer, and its fascinating instruction set.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UHS-II SD Cards Await Capable Devices
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1322384&
The UHS-II bus interface for secure digital (SD) memory cards is gaining traction, but it will take some time for manufacturers to bring products to market that take advantage of the new standard. SD card vendors, meanwhile, have unveiled cards with the UHS-II interface. Last month, Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC) debuted what it said is the first microSD memory card to comply with the UHS-II standard, the ultra high speed serial bus interface defined in the SD Memory Card Standard Ver. 4.20.
the new 32GB microSD cards have a maximum read speed of 145 MB/s and maximum write speed of 130 MB/s, which is an 8x write speed improvement and 2.7x read speed improvement when compared to Toshiba’s current UHS-I equivalent cards.
UHS-I cards, which were specified in SD Version 3.01, can transfer anywhere from 50 MB/s to 104 m/s depending on their clock frequency and transfer mode. UHS-II raises the data transfer rate to a theoretical maximum of 312 MB/s using an additional row of pins. The new interface was first announced in early 2011.
Doug Wong, senior member of technical staff for TAEC, said UHS-II is the first introduction of a high-speed serial interface to the SD card, which traditionally had a 4-bit wide parallel interface with its own clock. “It was a legacy holdover interface that has existed for some time,” he said. “All high speed interfaces of the future are serialized – maybe multi-lane serialized.”
The technology is available to 128GB or higher, but the focus has been delivering SD cards at a price point the market will support. There also other features that can be added to cards, including WiFi capability, micro payment applications for smartphones, and of course the security features offered by “secure digital” cards. “Very few people have used the features of the secure digital card,”
Anonymous says:
An intriguing discussion is worth comment.
I think that you ought to publish more about this subject, it may not be a taboo subject but generally people do
not discuss these issues. To the next! Best wishes!!
Tomi Engdahl says:
While Intel waits for manufacturers to adopt its Education kit ideas, it’s already managed to get its RealSense technology built into a bunch of PCs.
Rather than bulky Kinect-style clip-on cameras of before, on show were some Asus laptops, due in the coming months, equipped with built-in dual cameras that track movements to enable gesture control and “depth sensing”. On screen, the software being demo’d would show a ripple effect as you moved closer and crossed the proximity threshold, enabling touch control from thin air.
At the moment, the RealSense apps are little more than fairy dust; however, taking the idea a step further was a curious black box that appeared to project a screen into thin air.
Powered by a laptop and using a RealSense camera array from Creative Labs, the Intel Floating display can also show you what the camera sees in Depth Mode, drawing a surreal image of a person interacting with it.
Behind the illusion is a special piece of glass that refracts light and features multiples layers of mirrors within it
Intel is keen to encourage development and consequently the RealSense software is free. To get going you just need Windows 8., and it will work with AMD processors too, although the chap on the stand quickly added that you wouldn’t benefit from certain “Intel optimisations”, as it is rather processor intensive.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/19/intel_future_tech_showcase_realsense_and_personal_vehicle_experience/
Tomi Engdahl says:
PEAK ARRAY: Cold fingers of Death stroke Big Biz disk boxes
CIOs and CTOs mull cloud and hybrid caches as trad gear sales slip
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/19/storage_trio_downturn/
IT depts are spending less on enterprise storage arrays, and instead considering shifting to the cloud – and away from arrays in their data centres.
Or so we’re told. These two changes were pointed out by Aaron Rakers, managing director of equity research outfit Stifel Nicolaus. He’s plotted the combined EMC, Hitachi, and IBM storage financial results over time, and his chart shows a revenue decline since 2010
53 per cent of surveyed CIOs and CTOs view cloud computing as the most disruptive tech to their data centre, followed by software-defined storage and converged compute-storage (32 per cent), and flash storage (15 per cent).
59 per cent expect to evaluate a software-defined storage solution in the next 12 to 18 months; 60 per cent view server SAN software as the most attractive.
So … enterprise storage array buyers are buying fewer traditional arrays because they are substituting hybrid and all-flash flash arrays for performance and cost-efficiency, and looking to the cloud and software-defined storage for simplicity and continued cost efficiency.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux Live CDs, the One Feature Microsoft and Apple Haven’t Copied Yet
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Linux-Live-CDs-the-One-Feature-that-Microsoft-and-Apple-Haven-t-Copied-Yet-442048.shtml
There is a silent battle going on behind the curtains between the major operating systems. When it comes to gaming, for example, Windows is still the leader. If we’re talking about Linux, then everyone knows that it owns the server market. Mac OS X looks pretty and has a few applications that are still making the system a tool for media production. When it comes to Live systems, neither Windows nor Mac OS X can hold a candle to Linux.
The companies that build these systems didn’t shy away from “borrowing” features they liked from Linux, so why aren’t they also taking the idea of a Live CD?
Linux operating systems (and BSD-based) have been around forever and most of the distributions you can download today will provide this option, with the exception of servers, firewalls, and a few others.
The hybrid Live image allows users to make modifications to the operating system that survive the restart.
So, what is happening with Microsoft and Apple? Why aren’t any Live system out there officially built by the companies? I understand that there are some issues with licenses, but that can be easily solved. Microsoft can release a Windows 8 Live version, very limited in its function
Tomi Engdahl says:
The post-Oculus boom: Survios raises $4M for free-moving virtual reality
http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/19/the-post-oculus-boom-survios-raises-4m-round-for-free-moving-virtual-reality/
Oculus VR, the virtual-reality startup that Facebook bought for $2 billion, has some new company. Survios, a younger VR startup that is following in the wake of Oculus, has raised $4 million in funding so that it can fulfill its dream of building the ultimate VR system with both proprietary software and off-the-shelf hardware.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The brutal change coming to the IT sector?
Cisco’s John Chambers predicts that a large part of the current IT suppliers will no longer be involved in ten years. “The IT sector will be seen as a brutal , brutal consolidation ,” Chambers said.
He means the consolidation of the practice that the current editors disappear from the market , either acquisitions or mergers. Consolidations will take place also in many other industries, and companies need to reinvent itself.
He sees , however, that , for example, HP and IBM’s relatively low sales growth indicates that these tech giants are fading .
Cisco’s John Chambers promised to return to a growth path. This is not the case , however, the sale of larger quantities of switches and routers . Instead, Cisco plans to build complete systems architectures for companies and organizations.
Source: http://summa.talentum.fi/article/tv/uutiset/65067
Tomi Engdahl says:
China bans use of Microsoft’s Windows 8 on government computers
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/20/us-microsoft-china-idUSBREA4J07Q20140520
The Central Government Procurement Center issued the ban on installing Windows 8 on government computers as part of a notice on the use of energy-saving products, posted on its website last week.
The official Xinhua news agency said the ban was to ensure computer security after Microsoft ended support for its Windows XP operating system, which was widely used in China.
“China’s decision to ban Windows 8 from public procurement hampers Microsoft’s push of the OS to replace XP, which makes up 50 percent of China’s desktop market,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paper is better than poor IT
UK prosecutors do their job rather than on paper in a digital format , the National Audit Office report said. The paper favored because of the tasks it takes to “significantly more ” when used in the Ministry of Justice poorly compatible IT systems.
There have been problems such as data transfer rates of different legal systems, which has resulted in the transfer of paper documents back and forth or sending e-mail.
Documents due to the slow movement of up to a quarter oikeukäsittelyistä is canceled or postponed , the report said .
Ministry of Justice, in addition to the problems is the UK’s police forces , which operate a total of 2,000 separate IT system , Audit report reveals.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/paperikin+on+parempi+kuin+huono+it/a988966
opportunities says:
I am really impressed with your writing skills
and also with the layout on your weblog. Is this a paid theme
or did you customize it yourself? Anyway keep up
the nice quality writing, it is rare to see a nice blog like this one these days.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Inside Story of Oculus Rift and How Virtual Reality Became Reality
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/oculus-rift-4/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech sector still loves its slaves: study
Fewer than half of kit-makers can trace their supply chain properly
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/21/tech_sector_still_loves_its_slaves_study/
They avoid paying tax at the top, and avoid paying workers at the bottom: a new study into the supply practises of the tech sector finds most participants don’t know where their materials come from and don’t really seem to care.
That’s what emerges from a Baptist World Aid report that scored 39 kit suppliers – covering all manner of products, from smartphones to servers, satnavs to switches, thumb-drives to games – on the basis of their supply chains’ worker practises and exploitation of conflict minerals.
Of all the companies examined in the study, only Nokia cared enough about its lofty PR statements about fair trade to actually collect the data needed to verify that it pays workers a decent wage in countries like India and China.
Only 18 per cent of companies could manage even partial visibility through their supply chain to the sources of their raw materials, the study claims. While just over one-third of tech companies acknowledged their workers’ rights to collective bargaining, only one company – Nokia again – had gone so far as to actually put collective bargaining agreements in place.
Chinese vendors performed poorly, with HTC, Huawei and Lenovo among the producers that scored D or below, but they’re hardly alone: Fujitsu, Amazon, Nintendo and Oracle were also in the bottom half of the scores.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Beats Apple in List of World’s Most Valuable Brands
Brand value highlights tech sector growth By Lauren Johnson
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/google-beats-apple-list-world-s-most-valuable-brands-157868
Google, Apple, IBM and Microsoft are the companies that rank the highest in terms of brand value, according to a new study commissioned by WPP and conducted by Millward Brown. McDonald’s is the only non-tech brand within the top five, highlighting the growth of the digital vertical in recent years and more trust among consumers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quantum Computing Playground
http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/quantum-computing-playground/
Quantum Computing Playground is a browser-based WebGL Chrome Experiment. It features a GPU-accelerated quantum computer with a simple IDE interface, and its own scripting language with debugging and 3D quantum state visualization features. Quantum Playground can efficiently simulate quantum registers up to 22 qubits, run Grover’s and Shor’s algorithms, and has a variety of quantum gates built into the scripting language itself.
Technology: WebGL, JavaScript, HTML5, AngularJS, Bootstrap