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:
For Big-Data Scientists, ‘Janitor Work’ Is Key Hurdle to Insights
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/technology/for-big-data-scientists-hurdle-to-insights-is-janitor-work.html?_r=0
The field known as “big data” offers a contemporary case study. The catchphrase stands for the modern abundance of digital data from many sources — the web, sensors, smartphones and corporate databases — that can be mined with clever software for discoveries and insights. Its promise is smarter, data-driven decision-making in every field. That is why data scientist is the economy’s hot new job.
Yet far too much handcrafted work — what data scientists call “data wrangling,” “data munging” and “data janitor work” — is still required. Data scientists, according to interviews and expert estimates, spend from 50 percent to 80 percent of their time mired in this more mundane labor of collecting and preparing unruly digital data, before it can be explored for useful nuggets.
“Data wrangling is a huge — and surprisingly so — part of the job,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup Sees Enterprise Op for TLC NAND
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323580&
A startup that has come out of stealth mode sees opportunities for technology that puts computational tasks closer to where data resides while also seeing a role for triple-level cell (TLC) NAND in the enterprise as “cold storage.”
NxGnData recently came out at the Flash Memory Summit after a year in operation.
Fife says NxGnData is targeting hyperscale computing customers (the Googles and Amazons of the world) with a low-power controller that has a small footprint — the M.2 form factor — while also being able to address high-capacity storage, as much as 64 TBytes.
In some uses cases, Fife says, the company will employ lower-cost TLC NAND, particularly for what has been dubbed cold storage of data, and that the company’s variable code rate LDPC-based error-correcting code (ECC) memory can address endurance concerns. However, he believes, multi-level cell (MLC) is still the best option for hyperscale applications.
Social networking giant Facebook has been vocal about wanting a low-cost flash technology, saying at last year’s Flash Summit that a relatively low-endurance, poor-performance chip would better serve its need to store some 350 million new photos a day. Not long after, Jim Handy, principal analyst at Objective Analysis, concluded that Facebook would have to settle for a hierarchy of DRAM-flash-HDD for the foreseeable future. TLC might be cheaper and viable for cold storage, but not as cheap as Facebook would like, he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup Cracks MultiCore, Thread Programming Problem
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323553&
SVIRAL, a young Silicon Valley company working on programming and computing issues, appears to have cracked one of the toughest problems in computing today — that of creating software programs that can effectively use multiple processing cores and threads without requiring programmers to have PhDs in computer science.
The solution was to deploy multiple processor cores on a chip and/or multiple multi-core processor chips in the system. The end result is a plethora of processors. For example, some of today’s mobile devices may boast 70+ processor cores, and this number is increasing as we speak.
The problem comes when we try to write software that can use these processors effectively.
One technique is to partition the software into multiple threads
a few “embarrassingly parallel” applications that can take full advantage of multiple threads
he vast majority of programs do not fall into this category.
In the case of the majority of programs, the use of threads ends up being something of a nightmare. A very common problem, for example, is non-determinism.
Another problem is the inefficiencies caused by using threads.
Even programming heroes find these problems almost impossible to surmount.
The bottom line is that there are estimated to be around 25 million programmers in the world (don’t ask me where I got this number from — if you think differently, please post a comment below). Out of all these programmers, I would guess that only a fraction of a percent have attended some sort of “multi-core programming class,” and only a fraction of a fraction of a percent are actually creating software applications that take (or attempt to take) any real advantage of multiple cores and multiple threads.
And thus we come to the team at SVIRAL, who claim they have made a major breakthrough in this area.
they’ve come up with a lock-less, event-driven technique that is ridiculously easy to implement and that results in fully deterministic implementations of applications that can run on as many cores and threads as are available to them.
Is this too good to be true?
What SVIRAL has determined to do is really rather clever. First of all, they’ve decided to focus on two areas that affect the vast majority of us: mobile and cloud-based applications. Next, they are focusing on the fact that our glittering Internet-based world is a much weirder place than most people think.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ballmer’s exit from Microsoft’s board expected, boosts Nadella’s standing, analysts say
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9250496/Ballmer_39_s_exit_from_Microsoft_39_s_board_expected_boosts_Nadella_39_s_standing_analysts_say
The former CEO cited a busy schedule, particularly involving his LA Clippers basketball team, for the board resignation
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Made 890 Improvements To Search Over The Past Year
Google’s head of search shares the ten biggest changes in search over the past ten years at Google.
http://searchengineland.com/google-made-890-improvements-search-past-year-201065
Tomi Engdahl says:
Creaky PC? SanDisk gives users a NAND with speedy ’3-bitter’ SSD
Tart it up with a TLC retrofit
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/20/sandisk_intros_tlc_nand_ultra_2_ssd_for_pc/
SanDisk has pushed out an Ultra II SSD for retrofitting to PCs that uses lower cost 3-bits-per-cell NAND technology.
TLC or 3 bits per cell flash stores 50 per cent more information in each cell than MLC (2 bits per cell) and is cheaper to make on a cost/bit basis. But the number of times TLC flash can be rewritten, the P/E cycle count, is lower than MLC, typically being measured in the hundreds of cycles instead of thousands. This has restricted its use in business flash applications.
SanDisk appears to have been able to lengthen this TLC product’s endurance because it is offering a three-year warranty. There is a 1.75 million hour MTBF rating but no number for total TB written or full drive writes over the life of the drive, and this leads El Reg to think endurance may be inferior to MLC SSDs, although we could not confirm this.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How farsighted is Microsoft’s Azure RemoteApp?
Preview offers a glimpse
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/19/enterprise_mobility/
Microsoft is stepping on more vendor toes. At the TechEd North America 2014 keynote in May, the company announced the preview release of Azure RemoteApp, which appears to be a direct competitor – at least in part – to Citrix’s virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution.
Running an application on any device sounds like it should be easy to accomplish, but it requires an all-encompassing solution from a reliable vendor, as well as rapidly deploying ways for all devices to access them.
There have been a few attempts to solve this problem. Many vendors saw dollar signs and created specialist apps for each device: iOS (potentially having both an iPhone and then a more expensive iPad version), then Android and now Windows Phone. Add BlackBerry if you are still clinging to it.
If the applications had no direct cost, you would often instead be slugged for a mobility licence, as well as having to build more servers for remote access.
The other method was VDI. Citrix is a leader in this area and eventually created apps to remotely connect to servers for iOS, Android and Windows Phone to match the original desktop connector.
The VDI method is an easier solution overall for IT departments because users have a similar experience regardless of device and very little device configuration is required.
One of the bigger negatives of this is the requirement to have all the resource power centralised, which means either more servers or beefier ones.
Not all platforms are supported yet. Windows is supported via the Microsoft RemoteApp app, and iOS/Android devices have received an update to the Remote Desktop app. Mac, Windows Phone and Windows RT apps are still to be released.
During this preview time, Azure RemoteApp is free to try (for up to 20 users), with full licensing details still to come from Microsoft.
Tomi Engdahl says:
El Reg’s virtualisation desk pulls out the VMworld crystal ball
MARVIN musings and other Gelsinger Gang guessing games
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/15/el_regs_virtualisation_desk_pulls_out_the_vmworld_crystal_ball/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The agony and ecstasy of SteamOS: WHERE ARE MY GAMES?
And yes it does need a fat HDD (or SSD, it’s cool with either)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/20/game_theory_steamos_beta_review/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The anti-Facebook: one in four American neighborhoods are now using this private social network
Neighborhood gossip and community policing thrive on Nextdoor
http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/18/6030393/nextdoor-private-social-network-40000-neighborhoods
“It was like living in an Amish community, and somebody had rung a bell, ‘cause people just came out of the woodwork to help,” remembers Totten. While similar cries for help had been posted to services like Twitter and Facebook, it was the Nextdoor message that brought real humans to his door. “Most social media is people you know, sure, but it’s not the people around you, living in your town. Being able to make that connection is a really powerful thing.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Operating Systems Still Matter In a Containerized World
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/08/19/2348251/operating-systems-still-matter-in-a-containerized-world
With the rise of Docker containers as an alternative for deploying complex server-based applications, one might wonder, does the operating system even matter anymore?
Gordon Haff makes the argument on Opensource.com that the operating system is still very much alive and kicking,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why the operating system matters in a containerized world
http://opensource.com/business/14/8/why-operating-systems-matter
Applications running in Linux containers are isolated within a single copy of the operating system running on a physical server. This approach stands in contrast to hypervisor-based virtualization in which each application is bound to a complete copy of a guest operating system and communicates with the hardware through the intervening hypervisor. As a result, containers consume very few system resources such as memory and impose essentially no performance overhead on the application.
One of the implications of using containers is that the operating system copies running in a given environment tend to be relatively homogeneous because they are essentially acting as a sort of common shared substrate for all the applications running above. Specific dependencies can be packaged with the application (within an isolated process in userspace), but the kernel is shared among the containers running on a system.
The operating system is therefore not being configured, tuned, integrated, and ultimately married to a single application as was the historic norm, but it’s no less important for that change. In fact, because the operating system provides the framework and support for all the containers sitting above it, it plays an even greater role than in the case of hardware server virtualization where that host was a hypervisor.
All the security hardening, performance tuning, reliability engineering, and certifications that apply to the virtualized world still apply in the containerized one. And, in fact, the operating system shoulders a greater responsibility for providing security and resource isolation than in the case where a hypervisor is handling some of those tasks.
Yes, there is absolutely an ongoing abstraction of the operating system; we’re moving away from the handcrafted and hardcoded operating instances that accompanied each application instance—just as we previously moved away from operating system instances lovingly crafted for each individual server. And, yes, applications that depend on this sort of extensive operating system customization to work are not a good match for a containerized environment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How CIOs Can Survive and Thrive in a Swirl of Change
http://www.cio.com/article/2465697/cio-role/how-cios-can-survive-and-thrive-in-a-swirl-of-change.html
Today’s CIO has to be able to successfully collaborate across departments, connect corporate silos, be customer-focused, get agile and tap the power of data analytics.
CIOs face unrelenting change as part of the job description. Today they must deal with change coming at them from all fronts. More than ever before, CIOs now have to knock down walls, connect corporate silos, keep customers in their sights, be willing to fail fast and pivot to a more successful strategy — one that usually involves wielding the power of data analytics.
“You need to be out and ahead of this issue,”
Analytics 3.0 — fast, pervasive impact in the age of smart machines.
Start with basic data management and analytics capabilities, a data-driven culture.
Add some unstructured, large-volume data.
Throw some productive-service innovation into the mix
Add a dash of Hadoop, a pinch of NoSQL
Cook up some data in a high-heat convection oven
Train your sous chefs in big data and analytics
Tomi Engdahl says:
Qt Upgrades From LGPLv2.1 to LGPLv3
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/08/20/1446240/qt-upgrades-from-lgplv21-to-lgplv3
Digia has announced that existing Qt modules will now be covered under the LGPLv3 in addition to the LGPLv2.1, GPLv3, and the enterprise (proprietary) license. New modules will be dropping LGPLv2.1 and GPLv3+ and be released under the LGPLv3 and GPLv2+ instead. This should be a good move: new Qt modules will be Apache license compatible
The KDE Free Qt Foundation is on board.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hands-on with the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook
http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/20/hands-on-with-the-galaxy-tab-4-nook/
The Nook tablets were seriously underappreciated. And while Samsung certainly makes some nice devices, there’s something a little sad about seeing the Nook name slapped on a rather generic-looking slate from the Korean manufacturer.
But it was inevitable, I suppose. After years of hemorrhaging cash as the market for physical books dried up, Barnes & Noble had to find ways to save money, and outsourcing the manufacturing of its slow-selling slates to a third party made perfect sense. The first device to result from this new approach is the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook.
Samsung has gotten very good at making affordable, powerful devices with high-end features — even if the build quality doesn’t always live up to its premium aspirations. The Galaxy Tab 4 Nook is no different. Inside is a 1.2GHz quad-core processor that makes easy work of web browsing or reading — the primary function of any Nook device.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Barnes and Noble posts $119 million loss in Q4 2013, will partner with third party on future Nook tablets
http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/25/barnes-and-noble-posts-119-million-loss/
Going forward Barnes and Noble wants to significantly cut its losses on the struggling Nook business. To do that the company will be partnering with an as yet unnamed third party to manufacture and co-brand its tablet line. The Nook line of e-readers will continue to be designed and built in-house, but the retailer will be looking beyond its Manhattan office walls for help with the flailing Nook HD line.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft, Google link arms on browser vid chat
ORTC: Skype without, ummm, Skype?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/21/microsoft_google_link_arms_on_browser_vid_chat/
A standard proposal to get voice/video chats into standard browsers has brought Microsoft and Google onto the same side of the table.
The “Object RTC (ORTC) API for WebRTC” provides a framework to embed Skype-like voice and video over IP directly into browsers (instead of having them rely on mutually-incompatible third-party plugins).
By using JavaScript as the basis for real-time communications, the spec would also make it easier to do fully-open voice/video chats between desktop/laptop browsers, tablets, and phones, and as this post by Doug Mahugh notes, it should also be easy for Website developers to implement.
A key aim of the spec is to avoid dependency on the IETF’s Session Description Protocol (SDP, RFC 4566) or the offer/answer state machine, which Microsoft told Cnet has been “challenging to get truly interoperable in browsers”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hi-ho EVO: VMware eyes TWO new hardware-flavored trademarks
‘EVO’ and ‘EVO: RAIL’ filed in early August – just in time for…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/20/vmware_seeks_two_new_hardwarerelated_trademarks/
VMware is keeping a tight lid on its plans ahead of the opening of VMworld 2014 in San Francisco, California, next week.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux Foundation says many Linux admins and engineers are certifiable
Floats exam program to help IT employers lock up talent
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/20/linux_foundation_certification/
The Linux Foundation on Wednesday introduced two new certification programs aimed at connecting employers with qualified Linux administrators and engineers.
“The supply of labor has been far outpaced by the demand for Linux,” said Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, addressing the audience at the annual LinuxCon conference in Chicago. “Linux is growing faster than any platform in the history of computing – has been for many, many years – and the supply of labor just isn’t keeping up with it.”
Zemlin pointed to a recent study commissioned by the Linux Foundation in which 93 per cent of IT managers said they were looking for Linux talent, yet 90 per cent said it was hard to find qualified hires.
The certification exams require an internet connection, a web browser, a microphone, and a webcam, but they are entirely performance-based. Rather than solving multiple-choice problems or answering “trick questions,” as Zemlin put it, test-takers are asked to complete real-world tasks with a time limit.
Those who pass the exams will be issued a graphical emblem to display on their CVs, websites, LinkedIn pages, or other job-search tools.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux Certification
http://training.linuxfoundation.org/certification
About Linux Foundation Linux Certification
Linux Foundation certifications give you the a way to differentiate yourself in a job market that’s hungry for your skills. We’ve taken a new, innovative approach to Linux certification that allows you to showcase your skills in a way that other sysadmins will respect and employers will trust.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linus Torvalds: ‘I Still Want the Desktop’
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/08/20/1825221/linus-torvalds-i-still-want-the-desktop
Tomi Engdahl says:
Plug Facebook Into Skype For a News Feed Firehose
http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/plug-facebook-into-skype-for-a-news-feed-firehose-1600243986
We know that our Facebook news feeds go through a complicated filtering process, affected both by Facebook’s internal algorithms and our own efforts to hide or show particular friends. However, not all third-party apps are so complex, and Skype will pull in your Facebook news feed pretty much as it’s published.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Counters Google Chromebook
HP Stream is sub-$200 Windows notebook
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323603&
Microsoft is gearing up in its fight to bring Windows to the lower end of the laptop market. The company earlier announced it would sell sub-$200 versions of its Lumia smartphone, and will target this price range again with Windows OS laptops for $199 and $249.
During Microsoft’s Worldwide Partners Conference, COO Kevin Turner announced that the firm has partnered with Acer, Toshiba, and HP to produce a Google Chromebook alternative.
“The appeal of Chromebook is hours of battery, lighter in price because of the solid state memory… All this enabled sub-netbook pricing, and for some very sensitive markets it’s great.”
About one in six Chromebooks are returned due to customer dissatisfaction, Doherty estimated, citing concerns about connectivity and issues trying to save documents to the notebook rather than the cloud. Chromebooks are approximately 20% cheaper than a netbook or whitebox notebook, mostly due to the absence of a hard disk drive.
Google and Microsoft will also rely on different processors, with the HP Stream running AMD’s quad-core Mullins SoC while the two Chromebooks support dual core Intel Atom chips. Low power consumption on HP Stream, at 4.5 Watts, may also allow the laptop to run without a fan.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s ALIVE: Unstructured data upstart whips out data-AWARE array
I know what you stored last summer
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/21/datagravity_unstructured_data_array/
Stealth exit startup DataGravity has introduced a hybrid flash/disk array with rich metadata recording and reporting functions for file creation, keyword content, content change and access, as well as data protection functions and collaboration help.
The intelligence node maintains high-availability and point-in-time DiscoveryPoints as well as a searchable index of content and metadata. Data writes are mirrored “between the primary node and the intelligence node. Write data is maintained until the primary node commits the writes to disk and passes mirrored write data to the intelligence node.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
These giants are the pioneers in analytics
The new analytics torchbearers, among others, Cisco, Ford, General Electric, Merck, Monsanto, NCR’s, Procter & Gamble and Wells Fargo’s like a global operating companies.
These large companies are not using analytics to only the internal decision-making basis and director.
GE markets industrial customers view the Internet (industrial internet), in which the company built aircraft engines serviced predictive analytics using data collected through.
Well-known are the efforts of the Ford vehicles between post links and related cameras and sensors with.
Fertilizer manufacturer, Monsanto, in turn, is developing a technology that farmers are able to predict more accurately their sowing.
“We have raised the business intelligence (bi, business intelligence) to a new level.”
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/cio/nama+jatit+ovat+analytiikan+pioneereja/a1005338
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pioneering Companies Enter a New Data Analytics Phase
http://www.cio.com/article/2466780/cio100/pioneering-companies-enter-a-new-data-analytics-phase.html
Companies such as Ford, General Electric are entering the next phase of data analytics. Analytics 3.0 will go beyond internal use and become a driver of external products and services.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Identify Soft Skills in IT Job Candidates
http://www.cio.com/article/2466088/hiring/how-to-identify-soft-skills-in-it-job-candidates.html
As IT departments are called upon to play larger, more public roles in today’s businesses, the skill set of the ideal IT employee has changed. How can companies identify whether a job candidate has the ‘soft skills’ to bridge the gap between IT and the rest of the business?
“IT is no longer in the back room with the lights off writing code,” says John Reed, senior executive director at Robert Half Technology, an international technology recruiting and staffing company. “IT is in the room with the business leaders when decisions are made.”
“The heads-down IT person who’s just programming is becoming less and less attractive to employers, because you have to be able to communicate with your business partners or their customers,” Browning says.
Browning says she looks for candidates who can act almost like consultants – people who “can really coach non-IT people on how to articulate their needs.” She wants people who can reverse engineer a solution to a problem for someone, or even change the mindset of a person who says she needs A but would really do better using Z – even if Z hasn’t been created yet.
“In IT, it’s important to go to the non-IT people who don’t understand what technology can actually do,” Browning says. That’s where soft skills in an IT person come into play.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TELEPORTABLE storage? Atlantis Computing’s PR bods jump the shark
USX to be VMware storage abstraction layer
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/21/atlantis_computing_teleport_storage/
Altantis Computing has come up with a rather neat marketing hook for its new USX device. Fancy getting your hands on teleport-enabled storage?
In Atlantis’ latest vision of the storage world you would teleport your VM storage between DAS, NAS, SAN and the cloud, with VVOL support covering all storage.
With Atlantis USX you trade off virtualised server DRAM capacity for much faster storage IO which, Atlantis claims, makes your apps run faster, even with the DRAM app resource limited.
USX 2.0 continues USX’s killer feature of using server memory as a storage tier to accelerate applications faster than flash, and adds new capabilities.
Atlantis says Teleport is the vMotion of the storage world. With its deduplication “reducing the data teleported between data centres and the cloud, [customers] significantly reduce capacity-based fees charged by cloud storage providers.”
Atlantis says its so-called “HyperDup Content-Aware data services include data reduction, IO acceleration, provisioning, data mobility, security and business continuity.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle reveals 32-core, 10 BEEELLION-transistor SPARC M7
New chip scales to 1024 cores, 8192 threads 64 TB RAM, at speeds over 3.6GHz
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/18/oracle_reveals_32core_10_beeellion_transistor_sparc_m7/
Oracle has revealed details of its next-generation SPARC CPU, the M7.
Under the hood of the CPU, as depicted in the shot of its die below, are eight “core clusters”. Each cluster contains four cores apiece to reach the 32-core total.
Extensibility is provided by “7 coherence links” per M7, which allows “8 of these chips to be connected together gluelessly.” There’s more: Oracle says “32 of these chips can be connected in an SMP configuration. A potential system with 32 chips will have 1024 cores and 8192 threads and 64 TB of RAM.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Return of BSOD: Does ANYONE trust Microsoft patches?
Sysadmins, you’re either fighting fires or seen as incompetents now
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/18/microsoft_security_sanity_buster/
Patch early and patch often is the advice of security professionals when it comes to software updates.
After all, who needs to be left wide open to hackers and malware writers when the solution is delivered by the software’s maker?
Yet sysadmins will be increasingly leery of applying such an approach to Windows systems following Microsoft’s latest botch job.
Susan Bradley, a Microsoft “valued professional community moderator”, shot back:
“They do test, they just missed something here. Would you mind emailing me so we can get this officially investigated? The more samples/cases we have the faster we can get to the bottom of it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP Still Touting Windows 7 PCs, Two Years After Windows 8 Debut
August 20, 2014, 12:06 PM PDT
http://recode.net/2014/08/20/hp-still-touting-windows-7-pcs-two-years-after-windows-8-debut/
While Microsoft continues to update Windows 8 to address its critics, some computer makers have a different way to please fans of classic Windows: Just keep selling computers with the old software.
In an email newsletter Wednesday, HP led its sales pitch with the line “Windows 7 PCs on sale, just in time for school,” adding that Windows 7 is still available preinstalled on select notebooks and desktops. From HP’s website, more than a dozen laptops and desktop models running Windows 7 are still offered for sale.
HP is not alone in continuing to sell Windows 7 PCs to consumers. Dell still offers a number of consumer PCs running Windows 7, as do other computer makers.
While not unheard of — PC makers clung to Windows XP after Vista flopped — it does show that the industry still sees Windows 8 as a drawback, at least for some PC buyers.
It has been nearly two years since Windows 8 went on sale. Though the update was pitched as the future of Windows, Microsoft has spent the last couple of years finding ways to make the new Windows look more like the old one. With Windows 8.1, released last year, Microsoft added the ability to boot to the old-style desktop.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vexed in the city: Starved for tech talent and yet nobody to hire?
http://www.cnet.com/news/vexed-in-the-city-starved-for-tech-talent-and-yet-nobody-to-hire/
As the H-1B debate continues, the tech industry faces an odd contradiction: a skills shortage along with an applicant surplus.
The San Francisco Bay Area — home to star tech companies including Google, Apple, Facebook, and hundreds of startups — should be interested in experienced, mid-career engineers like Wedel. After all, tech companies often describe themselves as meritocracies, where skills are the only thing that matters.
But here’s the rub: While tech companies are flooded with resumes, only a fraction of the applicants for these lucrative spots wind up with jobs in Silicon Valley. All the while, the industry complains it’s struggling to find the right people with the right skills.
What’s going on? Some say tech companies are being exceptionally picky.
“Today’s startups are being founded by twenty-somethings,” says Mike Mickiewicz, co-founder and CEO of recruiting startup Hired. “And for the most part they’re trying to hire people that look and act like them.”
“We have shortages and we have a flood at the same time,”
“If you look at Silicon Valley, these companies are indeed starved for talent,” Wadhwa says. “If you go to some parts of US where economies are in a slump, where you have big companies like IBM that are dominant no longer, you’ll find workers there who are unemployed.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Minecraft players build working hard drives
http://www.cnet.com/news/minecraft-players-build-working-hard-drives/
Players of the pixelated building block game have taken its virtual simulation tools to an unprecedented level: building functioning hard drives that can read and write data.
Players of the popular open-world building game Minecraft, created by Markus “Notch” Persson in 2009, continue to push the game beyond any reasonable realm of everyday understanding. These players have built working components of computers within simulations running on computers.
Two such users have now revealed functioning hard drives built inside Minecraft that can read and write data. The first, created by Reddit and Imgur user smellystring can store 1KB of data, while a second, larger unit created by The0JJ can store 4KB of data.
redstone is used to power pistons that simulate the true and false values of binary
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft: We plan to CLEAN UP this here Windows Store town
Paid-for apps that provide free downloads? Really
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/21/windows_store_scamware_problems/
Microsoft has promised to crack down on rogue apps in its Windows Store following criticisms that the marketplace is littered with “scam” software.
Windows Store – which debuted with Windows 8 – is littered with misleading apps. Typical problems include knock-off “unofficial” packages of free apps such as the VLC media player. These apps charge you for downloads while offering little or no added functionality, How to Geek reports.
The consumer technology site argues that Redmond has brought this unsightly mess on itself by offering to pay developers $100 for each app they submitted to the Windows Store or Windows Phone Store as part of a discontinued promotion that began in March.
The majority of the problems arise with third-party apps, Hot Hardware adds.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Get ready: The top-bracket young coders of the 2020s will be mostly GIRLS
Teen boys eclipsed in A* GCSE Computing rankings
By Jasper Hamill, 21 Aug 2014
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/21/gcse_results_2014_girls_do_well_but_very_few_did_computing/
The latest GCSE results have shown that more girls are getting top marks at computing – while fewer boys are getting an A*.
Boys, on the other hand, have flopped since last year, with six per cent getting A* compared to 6.5 per cent last year.
Compared to computing, ICT is a relatively simple subject at GCSE, focusing on how society uses computing, along with the much-derided concept of digital literacy. Students of computing can expect to learn about programming and algorithms, making for a much more difficult course.
Tomi Engdahl says:
€ 26 tablets: a new low-cost tablet wave beaching
Soon Chinese un-branded flat screen computers with a valid performance may be less than 35 bucks, or even less than 26 euros.
Dumped prices to allow Chinese Allwinnerin new quad-core A33 chip, which will cost the manufacturer only four dollars. The chip supports the screen resolution to 1280 x 800. A33 is based on ARM’s Cortex-A7.
According to the news service Idgns a new generation of low-cost tablet prototypes have already been built and chip production started.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/uutisia/26+euron+tabletteja+uusi+halpatablettien+aalto+rantautumassa/a1005553
Tomi Engdahl says:
ARM Stressed in Server Bid
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323582&
ARM-based servers are coming, but even more slowly and perhaps more narrowly than once thought, according to companies that expect to build and use them.
“There will definitely be [ARM] server products shipping this year and a reasonable number next year, but it won’t really begin to ramp until 2016,” Forrest Norrod, general manager of Dell Inc.’s server group, told EE Times.
There’s still plenty of work ahead to bring to ARM the wealth of server software that exists for the Intel x86, said Norrod and Wu Peng, a chief technologist for the datacenter group at the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. For example, Microsoft has yet to commit to supporting ARM with Windows Server.
ARM servers “need a lot of software preparation and lack system integration support,” Wu said in an impromptu interview after a talk at the recent Flash Memory Summit. The 32-bit versions of ARM lack data management capabilities, but ARM’s 64-bit performance “looks impressive.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Lobby Denies the State of Chile Access To Free Software
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/14/08/21/1751235/microsoft-lobby-denies-the-state-of-chile-access-to-free-software
Fresh on the heels of the entire Munich and Linux debacle, another story involving Microsoft and free software has popped up across the world, in Chile. A prolific magazine from the South American country says that the powerful Microsoft lobby managed to turn around a law that would allow the authorities to use free software.
The new bill is even more egregious, because it aggressively pushes for the adoption of proprietary software.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Obama’s healthcare.gov savior says: ‘No suits please, we’re techies’
Mikey Dickerson plans change in move from Google to running government IT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/21/obamas_new_national_it_admin_says_no_suits_please_were_techies/
The incoming head of the newly formed US Digital Service – a crack sysadmin force to fix government IT systems – has said his team are focused less on looking smart and more on serious coding.
“What we saw during Healthcare.gov with folks like Mikey and others was how a fairly concentrated group of innovators, as long as they had clear direction from the White House, could transform something,” said President Obama in a video depicting Dickerson’s first day on the job.
“Being too down in the weeds at the technical level could actually be a little bit of a distraction,” Daniel told the Information Security Media Group.
“You can get enamored with the very detailed aspects of some of the technical solutions,” Daniel said. “And, particularly here at the White House … the real issue is to look at the broad, strategic picture and the impact that technology will have.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Citrix and Google partner to bring native enterprise features to Chromebooks
http://www.zdnet.com/citrix-and-google-partner-to-bring-native-enterprise-features-to-chromebooks-7000032798/
Summary: Enterprise capabilities of Chromebooks just got a lot better with new software by Citrix.
Chromebooks are making inroads into the education sector, and a push is coming for the enterprise with new native Chrome capabilities from Citrix. Google and Citrix have announced Citrix Receiver for Chrome, a native app for the Chromebook which has direct access to the system resources, including printing, audio, and video.
To provide the security needed for the enterprise, the new Citrix app assigns a unique Receiver ID to each device for monitoring, seamless Clipboard integration across remote and local applications, end user experience monitoring with HDX Insight, and direct SSL connections.
Google and Citrix have partnered to bring Chromebooks with the Citrix software to 20 global enterprises over the coming months.
Citrix technology is one of the top remote communications solutions for the enterprise. Major corporations use Citrix to allow workers to remotely access computing environments back at the office, and have secure access to files. App and desktop virtualization are key features of the Citrix solution.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft gets now NoSQL strain
Microsoft has launched its first own NoSQL-databases of the Azure cloud. Azure DocumentDB is intended in particular for organizations and growth of businesses that need a database to a mobile or web application in the background.
NoSQL databases have been available in the past for Azure from third parties: MonoDB, MongoLabs, Nodejitsu, Redis, and RavenHQ.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/kaikki_uutiset/microsoftiltakin+saa+nyt+nosqlkannan/a1005815
Tomi Engdahl says:
Next java is a modular
Oracle announced the Java environment, the eighth version release will not be until spring 2015 (two years late).
Now, the database giant has announced its first list of the forthcoming Java 9′s new features.
The biggest change in Java will be the fact that the source becomes a modular concept. This feature has been developed for Jigsaw project and modularity originally supposed to be already part of Java 8.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1683:seuraava-java-on-modulaarinen&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Now, out of slacking off during work hours: Big Data to became a Big Brother
Australia Line specializes in analytics VoloMetrix is bringing to the market to monitor employees referred to in the big data solution.
Big data has traditionally been used to analyze customers’ operations in enterprises. VoloMetrix is the first big data tool that turns inward to analyze the organization’s own activities.
The system is designed to reduce the inefficiencies in the workplace, the company says.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/kaikki_uutiset/nyt+loppui+laiskottelu+tyoaikana+big+datasta+tuli+big+brother/a1005787
Tomi Engdahl says:
The C in CIO Isn’t for Celebrity
The best IT leaders have a powerful but rarely discussed trait: humility.
http://www.cio.com/article/2465800/leadership-management/the-c-in-cio-isn-t-for-celebrity.html
Longtime CIO Steve Bandrowczak has accomplished a lot in his career: He’s run large global organizations, spoken on the biggest stages and driven impressive results. But he still sets aside 30 minutes each day to learn something new.
Studies have found humility to be a valuable executive asset.
There are easy ways to spot a humble leader. For one, they talk openly and honestly about failure.
The humble CIO will also emphasize his people’s importance more than his own.
Humble leaders also know they need to lean on others for advice and counsel.
But the most striking evidence of a humble leader? When their organizations succeed, these CIOs talk about “we” and “our.” When something goes wrong, they talk about “I” and “my.”
Will you embrace lifelong learning? Will you speak openly and confidently about your failures? Will you seek advice from your network—and give advice without expecting something in return?
Those are just a few of the questions current and aspiring leaders must ask themselves
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft parts Azure cloud, reveals NoSQL doc database
We’re not in a relational world anymore, Dorothy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/22/microsoft_nosql_documentdb/
Microsoft has slipped out DocumentDB for Windows Azure, the company’s first-ever non-relational database – and its first new database product in a decade.
DocumentDB is a complete departure from Microsoft’s relational roots, being a schema-free, NoSQL offering built entirely for consumption as a service on its cloud.
Microsoft said it’s going NoSQL to enable “new scenarios” on Windows Azure – meaning mobile and web.
DocumentDB now running on Windows Azure that are hundreds of terabytes in size and processing millions of complex queries per day
DocumentDB throws a curve ball to the document-oriented, non-relational stores Microsoft had lured into running on Windows Azure to make it more interesting and relevant.
MongoDB has been available on Windows Azure since December 2011
Microsoft is bowling its own document-oriented NoSQL at both the diehard Windows shops going web and mobile and the previously wouldn’t-touch-Microsoft-with-a-10-foot-pole types deep into open technologies.
Companies like MongoDB and Couchbase, backing CouchDB, are tiny compared to Microsoft but have proven customers – the kinds of big names Microsoft likes.
Mongo claims a long list in various sectors with a strong showing in media, while Couchbase claims eBay, Orbitz and Salesforce as customers.
“DocumentDB has made a significant bet on ubiquitous formats like JSON, HTTP and REST – which makes it easy to start taking advantage of from any web of mobile applications.”
Unveiling DocumentDB, Guthrie also bowled out development kits for .NET, Node.js, JavaScript and Python and a new Windows Azure Search service and API Management REST API.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What’s After Big Data? Niche Analytics, Data Wrangling, Smart Storage
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2014/08/21/whats-after-big-data-niche-analytics-data-wrangling-smart-storage/?single_page=true
Big data is a “hackneyed term,” said Michael Stonebraker. “I try hard not to use it.”
In hindsight, his remark was a clear sign that the marketing hype around “big data” had peaked. Everyone was using the term, and no one seemed to know what it really meant—or how it could benefit mainstream businesses and reward data-savvy entrepreneurs.
The premise of big data, at least, is easy to grasp: more and more information is being collected, stored, and analyzed, from click streams to sales records to mobile-device locations. What hasn’t been easy is translating all that data into insights that help organizations make better decisions. That goes for retail, finance, healthcare, marketing, wireless, Internet commerce—name the industry and you’ll hear the lament that corporations aren’t fully capitalizing on their digital assets.
There’s no magic button, only myriad software techniques that may or may not work for problems specific to particular industries.
Which leads us to one more big trend in data, and perhaps an unexpected one: storage is hot again. Not the commodity storage systems—disks, flash drives, appliances—though those are still a huge business. Rather, a number of well-funded startups are pursuing new kinds of storage software that give corporate users more intelligence about their data.
But once the data is cleaned up and shared, how do companies actually make sense of it all? That’s a separate story, and it lies in the domain of analytics.
A particularly hot sector has matured around Hadoop, an open-source analytics software platform. Many tech companies are writing software to make Hadoop industrial strength and integrate it with new and existing types of databases.
“Enterprise companies need to take a page from Internet companies,” Palmer says. “They need to get more analytical.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Virtual Machine Brings X86 Linux Apps To ARMv7 Devices
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/08/23/0010241/virtual-machine-brings-x86-linux-apps-to-armv7-devices
Eltechs announced a virtual machine that runs 32-bit x86 Linux applications on ARMv7 hardware. The ExaGear VM implements a virtual x86 Linux container on ARMv7 computers and is claimed to be 4.5 times faster than QEMU, according to Eltechs. The VM is based on binary translation technology and requires ARMv7, which means it should run on mini-PCs and SBCs based on Cortex-A8, A7, A9, and A15 processors — but sadly, it won’t run on the ARM11 (ARMv6) SoC found on the Raspberry Pi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emulator brings x86 Linux apps to ARM devices
Aug 22, 2014 | Eric Brown
http://linuxgizmos.com/emulator-brings-x86-linux-apps-to-arm-devices/
Eltechs announced a virtual machine that runs 32-bit x86 Linux applications on ARMv7 SBCs and mini-PCs, and is claimed to be 4.5 times faster than QEMU.
The open source QEMU emulator has long been the go-to app for providing virtual machines (VMs) that mimic target hardware during development or otherwise run software in alien territory. Every now and then, someone comes up with software that claims to perform all or part of QEMU’s feature-set more effectively. In this case, Eltechs has launched its Eltechs “ExaGear Desktop,” a VM that implements a virtual x86 Linux container on ARMv7 computers and is claimed to be 4.5 times faster than QEMU. Despite its “desktop” naming, we can imagine many non-desktop possibilities fpr ExaGear in embedded and IoT applications.
ExaGear is based on binary translation technology, and requires ARMv7, which means that it should run on mini-PCs and SBCs that use Cortex-A8, A7, A9, and A15 system-on-chips. However, it won’t run on the ARM11 (ARMv6) SoC found on the Raspberry Pi. It also does not support applications that require kernel modules. It currently requires Ubuntu (v12.04 or higher), but will soon support another, unnamed Linux distro.
Eltechs already offers an ExaGear Mobile product designed to bring desktop PC games to Android devices.
A third app, ExaGear Strategies, is an emulator that lets you “run old-school PC strategy games,” says Eltech.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ditching Linux for Windows? The truth isn’t that simple, says Munich
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/no-munich-isnt-about-to-ditch-free-software-and-move-back-to-windows/
Munich city council says a review of its IT has not been triggered by staff dissatisfaction after moving from Windows to Linux on the desktop, in spite of reports to the contrary.
Munich city council demonstrated to the world that an organisation employing thousands could ditch Windows and move to Linux and free software.
When the project finished late last year about 15,000 staff at the German authority had been migrated to using Limux, a custom-version of Ubuntu, and OpenOffice.
But is the council’s move to open source about to be scrapped in favour or returning to Microsoft?
No says the council, in spite of numerous reports to the contrary. Suggestions the council has decided to back away from Linux are wrong
“The new mayor has asked the administration to gather the facts so we can decide and make a proposal for the city council how to proceed in future,” he said.
No decision has been taken with regards to the future of Limux and free software at the council, he said, or will be taken, until the review is complete.
hoping to ease some of these problems by moving all its OpenOffice users to LibreOffice and by funding updates to LibreOffice that improve interoperability with Microsoft’s Office suite.
Free software was ruled the better choice by Munich’s ruling body, principally because it would free the council from dependence on major proprietary software suppliers and put in place open protocols, interfaces and data formats.
The council had previously said that the move to Limux had saved it more than €10m, avoiding Microsoft licensing costs and extending the lifespan of its PCs. In August 2013 Munich said it had cost €23m to shift to LiMux and OpenOffice. Munich says this is far less than the estimated €34m it said it would have cost to upgrade to Windows 7 and newer versions of Microsoft Office.
Tomi Engdahl says:
9 Things Microsoft Could Do To Fix Windows 8.1
http://www.pcdoctor-community.com/blog/posts/2013/10/22/9-Things-Microsoft-Could-Do-To-Fix-Windows-8.1/
Let’s face it. Windows 8 and its refresh 8.1 have failed to reinvigorate the PC space. Not only are few users moving away from other touch-based platforms, but Microsoft has also alienated a large number of existing Windows users by making the OS less friendly to those who like their mouse and keyboard as the primary human-to-computer interfaces. Here are a few thing Microsoft could do to fix Windows 8.