Here are comes my long list of computer technology trends for 2015:
Digitalisation is coming to change all business sectors and through our daily work even more than before. Digitalisation also changes the IT sector: Traditional software package are moving rapidly into the cloud. Need to own or rent own IT infrastructure is dramatically reduced. Automation application for configuration and monitoring will be truly possible. Workloads software implementation projects will be reduced significantly as software is a need to adjust less. Traditional IT outsourcing is definitely threatened. The security management is one of the key factors to change as security threats are increasingly digital world. IT sector digitalisation simply means: “more cheaper and better.”
The phrase “Communications Transforming Business” is becoming the new normal. The pace of change in enterprise communications and collaboration is very fast. A new set of capabilities, empowered by the combination of Mobility, the Cloud, Video, software architectures and Unified Communications, is changing expectations for what IT can deliver.
Global Citizenship: Technology Is Rapidly Dissolving National Borders. Besides your passport, what really defines your nationality these days? Is it where you were live? Where you work? The language you speak? The currency you use? If it is, then we may see the idea of “nationality” quickly dissolve in the decades ahead. Language, currency and residency are rapidly being disrupted and dematerialized by technology. Increasingly, technological developments will allow us to live and work almost anywhere on the planet… (and even beyond). In my mind, a borderless world will be a more creative, lucrative, healthy, and frankly, exciting one. Especially for entrepreneurs.
The traditional enterprise workflow is ripe for huge change as the focus moves away from working in a single context on a single device to the workflow being portable and contextual. InfoWorld’s executive editor, Galen Gruman, has coined a phrase for this: “liquid computing.” The increase in productivity is promised be stunning, but the loss of control over data will cross an alarming threshold for many IT professionals.
Mobile will be used more and more. Currently, 49 percent of businesses across North America adopt between one and ten mobile applications, indicating a significant acceptance of these solutions. Embracing mobility promises to increase visibility and responsiveness in the supply chain when properly leveraged. Increased employee productivity and business process efficiencies are seen as key business impacts.
The Internet of things is a big, confusing field waiting to explode. Answer a call or go to a conference these days, and someone is likely trying to sell you on the concept of the Internet of things. However, the Internet of things doesn’t necessarily involve the Internet, and sometimes things aren’t actually on it, either.
The next IT revolution will come from an emerging confluence of Liquid computing plus the Internet of things. Those the two trends are connected — or should connect, at least. If we are to trust on consultants, are in sweet spot for significant change in computing that all companies and users should look forward to.
Cloud will be talked a lot and taken more into use. Cloud is the next-generation of supply chain for IT. A global survey of executives predicted a growing shift towards third party providers to supplement internal capabilities with external resources. CIOs are expected to adopt a more service-centric enterprise IT model. Global business spending for infrastructure and services related to the cloud will reach an estimated $174.2 billion in 2014 (up a 20% from $145.2 billion in 2013), and growth will continue to be fast (“By 2017, enterprise spending on the cloud will amount to a projected $235.1 billion, triple the $78.2 billion in 2011“).
The rapid growth in mobile, big data, and cloud technologies has profoundly changed market dynamics in every industry, driving the convergence of the digital and physical worlds, and changing customer behavior. It’s an evolution that IT organizations struggle to keep up with.To success in this situation there is need to combine traditional IT with agile and web-scale innovation. There is value in both the back-end operational systems and the fast-changing world of user engagement. You are now effectively operating two-speed IT (bimodal IT, two-speed IT, or traditional IT/agile IT). You need a new API-centric layer in the enterprise stack, one that enables two-speed IT.
As Robots Grow Smarter, American Workers Struggle to Keep Up. Although fears that technology will displace jobs are at least as old as the Luddites, there are signs that this time may really be different. The technological breakthroughs of recent years — allowing machines to mimic the human mind — are enabling machines to do knowledge jobs and service jobs, in addition to factory and clerical work. Automation is not only replacing manufacturing jobs, it is displacing knowledge and service workers too.
In many countries IT recruitment market is flying, having picked up to a post-recession high. Employers beware – after years of relative inactivity, job seekers are gearing up for change. Economic improvements and an increase in business confidence have led to a burgeoning jobs market and an epidemic of itchy feet.
Hopefully the IT department is increasingly being seen as a profit rather than a cost centre with IT budgets commonly split between keeping the lights on and spend on innovation and revenue-generating projects. Historically IT was about keeping the infrastructure running and there was no real understanding outside of that, but the days of IT being locked in a basement are gradually changing.CIOs and CMOs must work more closely to increase focus on customers next year or risk losing market share, Forrester Research has warned.
Good questions to ask: Where do you see the corporate IT department in five years’ time? With the consumerization of IT continuing to drive employee expectations of corporate IT, how will this potentially disrupt the way companies deliver IT? What IT process or activity is the most important in creating superior user experiences to boost user/customer satisfaction?
Windows Server 2003 goes end of life in summer 2015 (July 14 2015). There are millions of servers globally still running the 13 year-old OS with one in five customers forecast to miss the 14 July deadline when Microsoft turns off extended support. There were estimated to be 2.7 million WS2003 servers in operation in Europe some months back. This will keep the system administrators busy, because there is just around half year time and update for Windows Server 2008 or Windows 2012 to may be have difficulties. Microsoft and support companies do not seem to be interested in continuing Windows Server 2003 support, so those who need that the custom pricing can be ” incredibly expensive”. At this point is seems that many organizations have the desire for new architecture and consider one option to to move the servers to cloud.
Windows 10 is coming to PCs and Mobile devices. Just few months back Microsoft unveiled a new operating system Windows 10. The new Windows 10 OS is designed to run across a wide range of machines, including everything from tiny “internet of things” devices in business offices to phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops to computer servers. Windows 10 will have exactly the same requirements as Windows 8.1 (same minimum PC requirements that have existed since 2006: 1GHz, 32-bit chip with just 1GB of RAM). There is technical review available. Microsoft says to expect AWESOME things of Windows 10 in January. Microsoft will share more about the Windows 10 ‘consumer experience’ at an event on January 21 in Redmond and is expected to show Windows 10 mobile SKU at the event.
Microsoft is going to monetize Windows differently than earlier.Microsoft Windows has made headway in the market for low-end laptops and tablets this year by reducing the price it charges device manufacturers, charging no royalty on devices with screens of 9 inches or less. That has resulted in a new wave of Windows notebooks in the $200 price range and tablets in the $99 price range. The long-term success of the strategy against Android tablets and Chromebooks remains to be seen.
Microsoft is pushing Universal Apps concept. Microsoft has announced Universal Windows Apps, allowing a single app to run across Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 for the first time, with additional support for Xbox coming. Microsoft promotes a unified Windows Store for all Windows devices. Windows Phone Store and Windows Store would be unified with the release of Windows 10.
Under new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft realizes that, in the modern world, its software must run on more than just Windows. Microsoft has already revealed Microsoft office programs for Apple iPad and iPhone. It also has email client compatible on both iOS and Android mobile operating systems.
With Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome grabbing so much of the desktop market—and Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Google’s Android browser dominating the mobile market—Internet Explorer is no longer the force it once was. Microsoft May Soon Replace Internet Explorer With a New Web Browser article says that Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system will debut with an entirely new web browser code-named Spartan. This new browser is a departure from Internet Explorer, the Microsoft browser whose relevance has waned in recent years.
SSD capacity has always lag well behind hard disk drives (hard disks are in 6TB and 8TB territory while SSDs were primarily 256GB to 512GB). Intel and Micron will try to kill the hard drives with new flash technologies. Intel announced it will begin offering 3D NAND drives in the second half of next year as part of its joint flash venture with Micron. Later (next two years) Intel promises 10TB+ SSDs thanks to 3D Vertical NAND flash memory. Also interfaces to SSD are evolving from traditional hard disk interfaces. PCIe flash and NVDIMMs will make their way into shared storage devices more in 2015. The ULLtraDIMM™ SSD connects flash storage to the memory channel via standard DIMM slots, in order to close the gap between storage devices and system memory (less than five microseconds write latency at the DIMM level).
Hard disks will be still made in large amounts in 2015. It seems that NAND is not taking over the data centre immediately. The huge great problem is $/GB. Estimates of shipped disk and SSD capacity out to 2018 shows disk growing faster than flash. The world’s ability to make and ship SSDs is falling behind its ability to make and ship disk drives – for SSD capacity to match disk by 2018 we would need roughly eight times more flash foundry capacity than we have. New disk technologies such as shingling, TDMR and HAMR are upping areal density per platter and bringing down cost/GB faster than NAND technology can. At present solid-state drives with extreme capacities are very expensive. I expect that with 2015, the prices for SSD will will still be so much higher than hard disks, that everybody who needs to store large amounts of data wants to consider SSD + hard disk hybrid storage systems.
PC sales, and even laptops, are down, and manufacturers are pulling out of the market. The future is all about the device. We have entered the post-PC era so deeply, that even tablet market seem to be saturating as most people who want one have already one. The crazy years of huge tables sales growth are over. The tablet shipment in 2014 was already quite low (7.2% In 2014 To 235.7M units). There is no great reasons or growth or decline to be seen in tablet market in 2015, so I expect it to be stable. IDC expects that iPad Sees First-Ever Decline, and I expect that also because the market seems to be more and more taken by Android tablets that have turned to be “good enough”. Wearables, Bitcoin or messaging may underpin the next consumer computing epoch, after the PC, internet, and mobile.
There will be new tiny PC form factors coming. Intel is shrinking PCs to thumb-sized “compute sticks” that will be out next year. The stick will plug into the back of a smart TV or monitor “and bring intelligence to that”. It is likened the compute stick to similar thumb PCs that plug to HDMI port and are offered by PC makers with the Android OS and ARM processor (for example Wyse Cloud Connect and many cheap Android sticks). Such devices typically don’t have internal storage, but can be used to access files and services in the cloud. Intel expects that sticks size PC market will grow to tens of millions of devices.
We have entered the Post-Microsoft, post-PC programming: The portable REVOLUTION era. Tablets and smart phones are fine for consuming information: a great way to browse the web, check email, stay in touch with friends, and so on. But what does a post-PC world mean for creating things? If you’re writing platform-specific mobile apps in Objective C or Java then no, the iPad alone is not going to cut it. You’ll need some kind of iPad-to-server setup in which your iPad becomes a mythical thin client for the development environment running on your PC or in cloud. If, however, you’re working with scripting languages (such as Python and Ruby) or building web-based applications, the iPad or other tablet could be an useable development environment. At least worth to test.
You need prepare to learn new languages that are good for specific tasks. Attack of the one-letter programming languages: From D to R, these lesser-known languages tackle specific problems in ways worthy of a cult following. Watch out! The coder in the next cubicle might have been bitten and infected with a crazy-eyed obsession with a programming language that is not Java and goes by the mysterious one letter name. Each offers compelling ideas that could do the trick in solving a particular problem you need fixed.
HTML5′s “Dirty Little Secret”: It’s Already Everywhere, Even In Mobile. Just look under the hood. “The dirty little secret of native [app] development is that huge swaths of the UIs we interact with every day are powered by Web technologies under the hood.” When people say Web technology lags behind native development, what they’re really talking about is the distribution model. It’s not that the pace of innovation on the Web is slower, it’s just solving a problem that is an order of magnitude more challenging than how to build and distribute trusted apps for a single platform. Efforts like the Extensible Web Manifesto have been largely successful at overhauling the historically glacial pace of standardization. Vine is a great example of a modern JavaScript app. It’s lightning fast on desktop and on mobile, and shares the same codebase for ease of maintenance.
Docker, meet hype. Hype, meet Docker. Docker: Sorry, you’re just going to have to learn about it. Containers aren’t a new idea, and Docker isn’t remotely the only company working on productising containers. It is, however, the one that has captured hearts and minds. Docker containers are supported by very many Linux systems. And it is not just only Linux anymore as Docker’s app containers are coming to Windows Server, says Microsoft. Containerization lets you do is launch multiple applications that share the same OS kernel and other system resources but otherwise act as though they’re running on separate machines. Each is sandboxed off from the others so that they can’t interfere with each other. What Docker brings to the table is an easy way to package, distribute, deploy, and manage containerized applications.
Domestic Software is on rise in China. China is Planning to Purge Foreign Technology and Replace With Homegrown Suppliers. China is aiming to purge most foreign technology from banks, the military, state-owned enterprises and key government agencies by 2020, stepping up efforts to shift to Chinese suppliers, according to people familiar with the effort. In tests workers have replaced Microsoft Corp.’s Windows with a homegrown operating system called NeoKylin (FreeBSD based desktop O/S). Dell Commercial PCs to Preinstall NeoKylin in China. The plan for changes is driven by national security concerns and marks an increasingly determined move away from foreign suppliers. There are cases of replacing foreign products at all layers from application, middleware down to the infrastructure software and hardware. Foreign suppliers may be able to avoid replacement if they share their core technology or give China’s security inspectors access to their products. The campaign could have lasting consequences for U.S. companies including Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Intel Corp. (INTC) and Hewlett-Packard Co. A key government motivation is to bring China up from low-end manufacturing to the high end.
Data center markets will grow. MarketsandMarkets forecasts the data center rack server market to grow from $22.01 billion in 2014 to $40.25 billion by 2019, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.17%. North America (NA) is expected to be the largest region for the market’s growth in terms of revenues generated, but Asia-Pacific (APAC) is also expected to emerge as a high-growth market.
The rising need for virtualized data centers and incessantly increasing data traffic is considered as a strong driver for the global data center automation market. The SDDC comprises software defined storage (SDS), software defined networking (SDN) and software defined server/compute, wherein all the three components of networking are empowered by specialized controllers, which abstract the controlling plane from the underlying physical equipment. This controller virtualizes the network, server and storage capabilities of a data center, thereby giving a better visibility into data traffic routing and server utilization.
Large data center operators will be using more and more of their own custom hardware instead of standard PC from traditional computer manufacturers. Intel Betting on (Customized) Commodity Chips for Cloud Computing and it expects that Over half the chips Intel will sell to public clouds in 2015 will have custom designs. The biggest public clouds (Amazon Web Services, Google Compute, Microsoft Azure),other big players (like Facebook or China’s Baidu) and other public clouds (like Twitter and eBay) all have huge data centers that they want to run optimally. Companies like A.W.S. “are running a million servers, so floor space, power, cooling, people — you want to optimize everything”. That is why they want specialized chips. Customers are willing to pay a little more for the special run of chips. While most of Intel’s chips still go into PCs, about one-quarter of Intel’s revenue, and a much bigger share of its profits, come from semiconductors for data centers. In the first nine months of 2014, the average selling price of PC chips fell 4 percent, but the average price on data center chips was up 10 percent.
We have seen GPU acceleration taken in to wider use. Special servers and supercomputer systems have long been accelerated by moving the calculation of the graphics processors. The next step in acceleration will be adding FPGA to accelerate x86 servers. FPGAs provide a unique combination of highly parallel custom computation, relatively low manufacturing/engineering costs, and low power requirements. FPGA circuits may provide a lot more power out of a much lower power consumption, but traditionally programming then has been time consuming. But this can change with the introduction of new tools (just next step from technologies learned from GPU accelerations). Xilinx has developed a SDAccel-tools to to develop algorithms in C, C ++ – and OpenCL languages and translated it to FPGA easily. IBM and Xilinx have already demoed FPGA accelerated systems. Microsoft is also doing research on Accelerating Applications with FPGAs.
Universal Memory for Instant-On Computing will be talked about. New memory technologies promise to be strong contenders for replacing the entire memory hierarchy for instant-on operation in computers. HP is working with memristor memories that are promised to be akin to RAM but can hold data without power. The memristor is also denser than DRAM, the current RAM technology used for main memory. According to HP, it is 64 and 128 times denser, in fact. You could very well have a 512 GB memristor RAM in the near future. HP has what it calls “The Machine”, practically a researcher’s plaything for experimenting on emerging computer technologies. Hewlett-Packard’s ambitious plan to reinvent computing will begin with the release of a prototype operating system in 2015 (Linux++, in June 2015). HP must still make significant progress in both software and hardware to make its new computer a reality. A working prototype of The Machine should be ready by 2016.
Chip designs that enable everything from a 6 Gbit/s smartphone interface to the world’s smallest SRAM cell will be described at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February 2015. Intel will describe a Xeon processor packing 5.56 billion transistors, and AMD will disclose an integrated processor sporting a new x86 core, according to a just-released preview of the event. The annual ISSCC covers the waterfront of chip designs that enable faster speeds, longer battery life, more performance, more memory, and interesting new capabilities. There will be many presentations on first designs made in 16 and 14 nm FinFET processes at IBM, Samsung, and TSMC.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile first? Microsoft decides to kneecap its Android users instead
And the man responsible for doing it is now in charge of Outlook
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/29/mobile_first_microsoft_kneecaps_its_android_users/
Microsoft can often resemble a heavily armed octopus trying to shoot itself in the head. But even after 25 years of watching Redmond’s finest, it still has the capacity to astonish us with the imaginative ways it can screw things up. It gave us another example last week.
Mobile platforms are vital to Microsoft, but it doesn’t own the mobile platforms, with Windows bumping along at well under five per cent market share globally.
So, incoming CEO Satya Nadella made a brave decision: all Microsoft’s software would run on iPhone and Android, and it would be a first-class citizen.
We now have excellent versions of Office and Skype on Apple and Google platforms, but not-so-great versions on Windows. Even Cortana is here on Android and will come to the iPhone.
Garage projects like Send appear on iOS or Android first, not Microsoft’s own platforms. The justification was that if consumers were using Microsoft’s cloud services, it would remain relevant.
However, what about Microsoft’s mobile lifeline to its consumer users?
To see what SatNad’s “Mobile First” really means in practice, have a look at the other user voice suggestions.
Business users don’t get Tasks support, despite very rich Task support in Exchange. After Evernote became a hit, OneNote became the preferred Tasks “experience”, winning out the internal turf war. (Tasks isn’t even supported in the Outlook.com consumer service).
Window Phone dumps Exchange Tasks as a huge alphabetical list. The mobile clients don’t support them at all. Exchange users can find excellent third-party PIM tools on iOS and Android to access Exchange PIM services, but none from Microsoft.
At the rate Microsoft is going, there won’t be a lot of Outlook left to “engineer”
Tomi Engdahl says:
EMC/DSSD swallows Graphite Systems, begins technology digest
Patents and people could have prompted the buy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/29/emc_dssd_bought_startup_graphite_systems/
EMC’s DSSD unit bought a stealth-mode startup developing an ultra-high performance flash array in August this year.
DSSD is developing a flash array connected to servers via a high-speed NVMe fabric interconnect operating at PCIe buys speed, and with the flash logically resident in the accessing servers’ memory address space.
We knew EMC/DSSD had hired Graphite Systems’ SVP engineering, Kevin Rowett, to be its veep for hardware engineering, but not that EMC/DSSD had bought the entire startup as well.
Graphite Systems was developing a server/flash array system with low latency and high throughput using some proprietary FPGA hardware components and its own software.
It was co-founded in April 2012 by Mark Himmelstein, ex-CTO at data protection vendor Quantum, and Frederic Roy Carlson, who was its CTO. Himmelstein was veep of products and became CTO in April 2015, six months before EMC/DSSD bought it in August 2015.
The startup received just $1.5m funding in a single round in May 2012, which is not a lot by today’s standards. It applied for a couple of patents concerning multiprocessor systems with independent direct access to bulk solid state memory resources.
Ten terabytes of solid state memory is mentioned in filing number US 20140304460 A1 and “each central processing unit directly accesses solid state memory resources without swapping solid state memory contents into main memory”.
Wear-levelling is done at the system level and not the individual SSD level. This all seems to overlap quite strongly with what we know of DSSD’s technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A strong IT workforce starts with training
http://www.cio.com/article/2986405/it-skills-training/a-strong-it-workforce-starts-with-training.html
As CIOs lead the charge for developing technology acumen across the entire organization, their talent strategy must include training as a priority, in addition to recruiting new talent, writes Accenture’s Diana Bersohn.
Today’s environment places new requirements on the workforce to meet the needs of a digitally enabled business. It is notgetting any easier to recruit and retain the right talent with the right skills. According to Accenture research, nearly a third (32 percent) of business leaders say it is getting harder to compete for the best people. And a majority of executives agree that people are one of the most valuable assets to an organization — 87 percent believe that organizations that win the war on talent will have a competitive advantage. But how do you win the war when every day seems to be its own battle?
Many business and technology leaders are rethinking their overall talent strategy and recognizing that they need to use a variety of approaches to find and keep the best talent; this includes both upskilling the current workforce as well as recruiting fresh talent. In fact, 60 percent of companies we surveyed are offering training to upskill employees.
CIOs, especially, require an ever-changing mix of skills among employees in order to keep pace with a constantly evolving industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Xbox Wire:
Microsoft’s Project Spark game creator will move from microtransactions to a free and open creation model
Project Spark Transitions into Free Incubation Engine Next Week
http://news.xbox.com/2015/09/games-project-spark-transition
On October 5, Project Spark will transition from its microtransaction model to a free and open creation engine. This will automatically unlock previously paid downloadable content for new and existing Project Spark users. Microsoft will pivot from producing DLC and active feature development to encouraging more user generated content and opening the Project Spark experience.
“Project Spark’s goal has always been to empower creativity. We’ve been an incubation engine for ideas from epic to artistic and we plan to continue doing so,” said Rahul Sandil, Head of Project Spark Acquisition/Engagement. “Project Spark inspires and empowers over 200,000 creators who have shared tens of millions of custom objects, behaviors and experiences. Every day we see anywhere between 300 and 400 new games being uploaded on our platform. Our support of these creators and our communications with them will continue in an open, free and collaborative environment.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
LibreOffice Turns Five
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/09/28/1621235/libreoffice-turns-five
Italo Vignoli, founding member of The Document Foundation, reflects on the project’s five-year mark in an article on Opensource.com: “LibreOffice was launched as a fork of OpenOffice.org on September 28, 2010″
Celebrating 5 years of LibreOffice
http://opensource.com/life/15/9/libreoffice-turns-5
LibreOffice was launched as a fork of OpenOffice.org on September 28, 2010, by a tiny group of people representing the community in their capacity as community project leaders. At the time, forking the office suite was a brave—and necessary—decision, because the open source community did not expect OpenOffice.org to survive for long under Oracle stewardship.
In fact, the group of 16 founders launched an independent free software project under the stewardship of The Document Foundation, to fulfill the promise made by Sun 10 years before—with the first announcement of OpenOffice.org—of an independent free software foundation capable of pushing forward the free office suite to the next level.
After five years, LibreOffice is recognized as a major Microsoft Office contender, based on a sheer feature by feature comparison, and on the number of successful migrations. The Future of Open Source Survey 2015 (slides) even included LibreOffice in its list of seven most valuable open source projects
LibreOffice 5.0, launched in early August, has been the most successful major release ever, triggering an unprecedented 8,000 donations in 30 days.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Former Cisco CEO: China, India, UK Will Lead US In Tech Race Without Action
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/09/30/2119220/former-cisco-ceo-china-india-uk-will-lead-us-in-tech-race-without-action
Former Cisco CEO John Chambers says the US is the only major country without a proper digital agenda and laments the fact none of the prospective candidates for the US Presidential Election have made it an issue. Chambers said China, India, the UK and France were among those to recognize the benefits of the trend but the US had been slow — risking any economic gains and support for startups.
We are the last major developed country in the world without a digital agenda.
Former Cisco CEO: USA Is Only Major Country Without Proper Digital Agenda
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/cloud/cisco-john-chambers-box-government-178036
Chambers said many companies had previously looked to acquisitions to maintain growth, but the future was in partnerships. Cisco has partnered with a number of firms, including Box, and believes this is the way forward.
“Watch strategic partnerships,” he said. “Most won’t work, but the ones that do will change the industry.
“I think you’re going to see large and companies work together. Unfortunately, most of them will still fail.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
ASUS signs patent licensing deal with Microsoft, will pre-install Office suite on its Android devices — Microsoft, ASUS sign combined Android patent, Office bundling deal — Is Microsoft making Office software and services part of its Android-patent-licensing negotiation terms?
Microsoft, ASUS sign combined Android patent, Office bundling deal
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-asus-sign-combined-android-patent-office-bundling-deal/
Is Microsoft making Office software and services part of its Android-patent-licensing negotiation terms? A new deal between Microsoft and ASUS makes it seem like it might be.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Polish Surface Clone Runs Windows 10 and Is 50% Cheaper than Microsoft’s Tablet
http://news.softpedia.com/news/this-polish-surface-clone-runs-windows-10-and-is-50-cheaper-than-microsoft-s-tablet-493440.shtml
If the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 is too expensive for your budget (the top-of-the-range model costs nearly $2,000, after all) and you don’t feel like saving for the Surface Pro 4, then here’s something that might really catch your attention.
A Polish company called Kruger&Matz is building its very own Surface Pro 3 clone that costs only about $500 and comes with a similar look and feel to the real deal.
Obviously, do not expect to get the same hardware as on the Surface Pro 3, but the so-called EDGE 1161 2-in-1 device still brings pretty good value for the money.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Cuts 5% of Global Employees
Company hopes to turn around finances after several poor quarters
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327875&
Advanced Micro Devices has joined the list of large semiconductor companies handing out pink slips. A recently adopted restructuring plan to help improve poor fiscal results calls for a 5% reduction in the company’s global workforce.
AMD has 9,469 employees as of June 2015 and will cut approximately 470 positions. The restructuring plan will target “all sites, all levels, all functions,” an AMD spokesman said, adding that engineers will represent a smaller portion of layoffs. Cuts will mostly come from sales, marketing, and operations segments.
“Server remains a high priority for us. When we introduce our new CPU core Zen, that will help return us into higher performance in both the client and server space,” the spokesperson told EE Times.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alistair Barr / Wall Street Journal:
Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Becomes Alphabet’s ‘Do the Right Thing’
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/10/02/as-google-becomes-alphabet-dont-be-evil-vanishes/
“Don’t be evil” is so 2004.
Alphabet Inc. posted a new code of conduct for its employees Friday, after Google completed its transformation into a holding company. There were few substantive changes in more than 20 documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission; the Alphabet code of conduct, posted on its website, is among them.
Google’s code of conduct, of course, is best-known for its first line, which was also included in Google’s 2004 filing for its initial public offering: “Don’t be evil.”
Alphabet’s code doesn’t include that phrase. Instead, it says employees of Alphabet and its subsidiaries “should do the right thing – follow the law, act honorably, and treat each other with respect.”
“Don’t be evil” marked Google’s aspiration to be a different company. But the phrase also has been held up by critics who say Google has not always lived up to it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft gobbles Chipzilla’s Havok 3D physics unit in cloud gaming play
Don’t worry – it promises to play nice with others
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/03/microsoft_buys_havok/
Top physics engine for 3D gaming Havoc has been scooped up by Microsoft, which has inked a deal with Intel to buy the outfit for an undisclosed sum.
“Havok is an amazing technology supplier in the games industry and the leading real-time physics creator,” Microsoft crowed in a blog post announcing the purchase.
It added: “We saw an opportunity to acquire Havok to deliver great experiences for our fans.”
Microsoft uses Havok in its popular Halo series of games, but many other leading games companies have also licensed Havok’s software over the years – including Activision, EA, Nintendo, Sony, and Ubisoft, among others – and the Havok engine has provided physics for hundreds of game titles.
Microsoft said it still planned to license Havok to these and other customers, even as it brings development and maintenance of the software under its own roof.
Havok was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Chipzilla acquired the firm in 2007
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ubuntu 15.10: More kitten than beast – but beware the claws
Wily Werewolf ‘transforms’ into similar creature WITH NEW SCROLLBARS
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/05/ubunty_15_10_beta_two_review/
The second beta of Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf has arrived and there’s not much to see here.
Oh sure, there’s some revamped scrollbars, Unity 7.3.2 that has some welcome bug fixes and Ubuntu’s version of the 4.2.1 Linux kernel, but this is no lycanthropic beast of great transformation as the name might suggest. You won’t find any major changes to Unity in this beta or, for that matter, the final release later this month.
Frankly, Ubuntu 14.04, a Long-Term Support release, had more changes than this.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computer Learns to Hack Chess
http://hackaday.com/2015/10/02/computer-learns-to-hack-chess/
A lot of computers can play chess. [Matthew Lui’s] Giraffe is a chess playing computer, but unlike other common chess programs, Giraffe taught itself to play. It apparently learned pretty well, too, since it is rated as an International Master on the FIDE scale (putting it in the top 2.2% of players. The top chess playing computers clock in at super grandmaster level but they are not self-taught).
[Matthew’s] neural network trains by starting from real board positions (modified from a database of moves) and playing both sides of the game. Over many iterations, the C++ neural network develops its own set of rules. This requires examining over 350 features of each position (for example, is castling permitted, or how far sliding pieces can move).
Giraffe: Using Deep Reinforcement Learning to Play Chess
http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.01549v2
This report presents Giraffe, a chess engine that uses self-play to discover all its domain-specific knowledge, with minimal hand-crafted knowledge given by the programmer. Unlike previous attempts using machine learning only to perform parameter-tuning on hand-crafted evaluation functions, Giraffe’s learning system also performs automatic feature extraction and pattern recognition.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM releases Power-based Linux servers with Nvidia GPUs
IBM OpenPower Foundation users get three new toys
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2429156/ibm-releases-power-based-linux-servers-with-nvidia-gpus
DUBLIN: IBM USED its keynote speech at this year’s LinuxCon Europe event to launch a line of Power processor-based, Linux-tuned machines.
The Power Systems LC line was introduced by Dr Stefanie Chiras, director and business line executive of IBM scale-out Power Systems, as part of her keynote on the subject of ‘waitless computing’.
IBM, as a patron of the OpenPower Foundation, has been a staunch supporter of Linux and OpenStack, and this represents a logical step for the company, as it has been building its Power line following the sale of its x86 server business to Lenovo in 2014.
The LC range joins the existing Power Systems for Linux to increase the company’s commitment to scale-out data centre offerings.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple planning to launch new 4K 21.5-inch iMac next week, iPad Pro in early November
http://9to5mac.com/2015/10/06/apple-planning-to-launch-new-4k-21-5-inch-imacs-next-week/
With September’s iPhone release in the rearview and the iPad Pro set for an early November launch, Apple is ready to add some new Mac hardware into its fall product line. Apple is currently planning to announce new 21.5-inch iMacs with 4K screens next week, according to multiple reliable sources.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Is RAM Suddenly So Cheap? It Might Be Windows
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/10/06/2246206/why-is-ram-suddenly-so-cheap-it-might-be-windows
The average price of a 4GB DDR3 memory DIMM at the moment $18.50 — a price that’s far lower than at this time last year. Why is it so cheap? The memory business tends to go in boom and bust cycles, but the free availability of Windows 10 means that fewer people are upgrading their PCs, reducing RAM demand.
Memory is dirt cheap at a time when it should be expensive
http://www.itworld.com/article/2989724/hardware/memory-is-dirt-cheap-at-a-time-when-it-should-be-expensive.html
If you were looking to stock up on memory, now would be a good time.
Years ago – decades, really – a friend told me “memory equals performance.” I’ve yet to see that maxim proven wrong. So if you want to upgrade your PCs or Macs with more memory, now would be a great time to do it.
Normally memory prices shoot up around this time of year as system builders gobble it up for their Christmas inventory build-up. While we have new CPUs from both Intel and AMD, the expected pop in PC sales from a new version of Windows did not happen, and memory is at its lowest point in recent years.
Microsoft worked diligently to make sure Windows 10 would run on the same hardware that ran Windows 7 and 8.1, and with that icon in the system tray telling you your free copy is ready for download, Microsoft killed a lot of incentive to upgrade. Then again, if your migration was anything like mine you might just want to buy a new system with Windows 10 installed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux kernel dev who asked Linus Torvalds to stop verbal abuse quits over verbal abuse
Could not work with people who ‘spew vile words to maintain radical emotional honesty’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/06/linix_kernel_dev_who_asked_linus_torvalds_to_stop_swearing_quits_over_swearing/
Sarah Sharp, the maintainer of USB 3.0 drivers in the Linux Kernel who in July 2013 urged Linux overlord Linus Torvalds to stop abusing fellow developers, has quit all Linux-related work.
Sharp has revealed she quit her role on the kernel last year and backed out of Linux entirely due to the abusive commentary she asked Linus Torvalds to address.
Sharp goes on to say she has “the utmost respect for the technical efforts of the Linux kernel community” because it has “scaled and grown a project that is focused on maintaining some of the highest coding standards out there.”
“The focus on technical excellence, in combination with overloaded maintainers, and people with different cultural and social norms, means that Linux kernel maintainers are often blunt, rude, or brutal to get their job done,” she writes. “Top Linux kernel developers often yell at each other in order to correct each other’s behavior.”
“That’s not a communication style that works for me,” Sharp writes, calling for “the communication style within the Linux kernel community to be more respectful.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This day still dawned: Microsoft recommends Ubuntu
Microsoft recommends Ubuntu “as the best cloud operating system”
Microsoft’s share price has changed radically when the Indian-born Satya Nadella took hold of the company’s management passionate Linux hater-known Steve Ballmer evening.
Since then, the company has begun to deal with more open minded to competitors.
Just a couple of years before Microsoft could not have expected sympathy Linux box, let alone that it HAS BEEN recommended the company. However, this is what happened: Microsoft recommends that you use Ubuntu in the cloud, as it is the company that “the most popular Linux in the cloud”.
Although Microsoft is skeptical about the competitors now more in more favorable conditions, however, it does not mean that the company render everything to ensure that its own market share is growth and decline competitors.
Linux “advertising” is not our only near-term reversal. The company has imported their own applications, such as super-popular Office, including the platforms of competitors.
“Create VMs w/ #Ubuntu, the most popular Linux for #cloud environments: http://msft.it/6018BzsnO #MarketplaceMonday ”
Source: http://www.mbnet.fi/artikkeli/tietokoneet/tama_paivakin_viela_koitti_microsoft_suosittelee_ubuntua
Tomi Engdahl says:
PC still does not sell
According to Gartner, July-September, sold a total of 73.7 million PC computers. The number is slightly lower than six million items each year earlier.
Its own sales volume were able to increase only Apple and Dell. Apple’s rise was one and a half per cent, Dell half a per cent. All other sales quantity decreased significantly.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3425:pc-ei-edelleenkaan-myy&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
The tyranny of choice: Why enterprise tech buyers are confused
The solution? I can’t decide
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/07/too_many_it_product_choices/
The tech industry has left users punch-drunk with choice with the ever-increasing complexity of the technology offering being one reason for the recent sluggish IT market.
This has exacerbated the impact of a strengthening dollar which has been behind an unprecedented rise in the price tags of tech products, Canalys boss Steve Brazier said this morning.
Brazier said “rising levels of complexity” were marking it “harder for customers to keep up with everything.” This in turn made it harder for customers to make decisions, he concluded.
This created an opportunity for account managers and channel partners of course, to help guide customers through the increasingly complex landscape. Assuming of course, that these third parties were able to get a grip themselves.
A more tangible brake on the market was the rise in the dollar, and the drop in energy prices. This had led to a shift of growth from the (former?) emerging markets, to the developed economies, he said. The European “picture was improving” he said, with the US doing better still.
But, he continued, “Prices are going up. That has clearly restricted demand.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner and IDC: Global PC shipments fell 7.7% and 10.8% in Q3 2015, Apple placed third in the U.S.
http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/08/gartner-and-idc-global-pc-shipments-fell-7-7-and-10-8-in-q3-2015-apple-takes-third-in-the-u-s/
The PC market has been having a lot of trouble this year, and Q3 2015 is no exception. Both Gartner and IDC agree: PC shipments are down globally, though Apple is managing to do alright in the U.S.
Gartner estimates worldwide PC shipments dropped 7.7 percent to 73.7 million units in the third quarter. The top five vendors were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, and Acer.
“The global PC market has experienced price increases of around 10 percent throughout the year, due to the sharp appreciation of the U.S. dollar against local currencies,”
“The PC market continues to contract as expected, but we remain optimistic about future shipments,” IDC research manager Jay Chou said in a statement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mozilla pledges cull of NPAPI and Silverlight from Firefox in 2016
Joins Chrome in telling developers to go native
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2429763/mozilla-pledges-cull-of-npapi-and-silverlight-from-firefox-in-2016
MOZILLA HAS ANNOUNCED that its Firefox browser is joining Google Chrome in ending support for NPAPI plugins.
The venerable standard, which dates back to the days of Netscape, is now showing its age, and causing more problems than it solves, and will see native support removed by the end of 2016.
Very little impact was caused when Google removed support in Chrome, excepting a lack of support for Microsoft’s Silverlight which brought down several top streaming media sites including Sky Go and BT Sport.
Benjamin Smedberg, Firefox’s quality engineering manager, explained on the Mozilla Blog: “As browsers and the web have grown, NPAPI has shown its age. Plugins are a source of performance problems, crashes and security incidents for web users.
“Mozilla intends to remove support for most NPAPI plugins in Firefox by the end of 2016. Firefox began this process several years ago with manual plugin activation, allowing users to activate plugins only when they were necessary.
Tomi Engdahl says:
From SimCity to, well, SimCity: The history of city-building games
To boot, the majority of older games are available on digital distribution service GOG.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/10/from-simcity-to-well-simcity-the-history-of-city-building-games/
Cities are everywhere. Billions of us live in them, and many of us think we could do a better job than the planners. But for the past 26 years dating back to the original SimCity, we’ve mostly been proving that idea false.
While extremely limited in its simulation, Doug Dyment’s The Sumer Game was the first computer game to concern itself with matters of city building and management. He coded The Sumer Game in 1968
It’s strange to consider how healthy the market is for city-building games today, given how squalid it was just a few years ago. Besides the flawed SimCity 2013 edition and the exemplary Cities: Skylines, we have the Anno, Settlers, and Tropico series trucking along nicely. And today, the majority of older games discussed in this article are available on digital distribution service GOG.
https://www.gog.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
SanDisk, HP take on Micron and Intel’s faster-than-flash XPoint
Joining forces for Storage Class Memory deal
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/12/sandisk_and_hp_partner_to_counter_xpoint/
HP and SanDisk are joining forces to combat the Intel/Micron 3D XPoint memory threat, and developing their own Storage-Class Memory (SCM) technology.
SCM is persistent memory that runs at DRAM or near-DRAM speed but is less costly, enabling in-memory computing without any overhead of writing to slower persistent data storage such as flash or disk through a CPU cycle-gobbling IO stack. It requires both hardware and software developments.
Micron and Intel’s XPoint memory is claimed to be 1,000 times faster than flash with up to 1,000 times flash’s endurance. Oddly enough HP and SanDisk say their SCM technology is also “expected to be up to 1,000 times faster than flash storage and offer up to 1,000 times more endurance than flash storage.”
It also is expected to offer significant cost, power, density and persistence improvements over DRAM technologies, enabling servers to have tens of terabytes of SCM for use with in-memory databases, real-time data analytics, transactional and high-performance computing.
SanDisk’s EVP for memory technology, Siva Sivaram (appropriate last syllable there), said he was pleased at the deepening relationship with HP, to which SanDisk will bring “our complete portfolio of enterprise SAS, SATA and PCIe products, and leading-edge enterprise system solutions.” That sounds like an OEM or reselling type deal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
EMC has had it’s problems:
The do-it-all storage giant is dying: Clouds loom over on-prem IT
EMC highlights the problems all face
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/08/the_onpremises_it_supplier_problem/
News now:
According to http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/nyt-ennatyskauppa-dell-ostamassa-emc-n-65-miljardilla-6057346
NOW: Record Shop – Dell buying EMC for 65 billion
The New York Times says Dell to reveal possible today its intention to buy the storage company EMC.
Investment company Silver Lake supported by the acquisition of the technology sector hit a record high.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linus Torvalds: Linux is the crazy people doing crazy things
“The year 2016 is a portable arm-year”, predicts Torvalds. He believes himself to switch to arm-man.
“Linux gained everything seems I expected, during the first six months. Since then other people have solved the problem with new and interesting problems. Linux is all about crazy people who are doing such crazy things I never could have imagined reality. I look forward to what others are doing on Linux over the next 25 years.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/linus-torvalds-linux-on-hulluja-ihmisia-tekemassa-hulluja-asioita-6057249
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBC bypasses Linux kernel to make streaming videos flow
The move to shunt TCP into userspace is gathering momentum
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/12/linux_networking_api_showing_its_age/
Back in September, The Register’s networking desk chatted to a company called Teclo about the limitations of TCP performance in the Linux stack.
That work, described here, included moving TCP/IP processing off to user-space to avoid the complex processing that the kernel has accumulated over the years.
It’s no surprise, then, to learn of other high-performance efforts addressing the same issue: both the BBC in its video streaming farms; and CloudFlare, which needs to deal with frequent packet flood attacks.
The Beeb’s work is described by research technologist Stuart Grace here. The broadcaster explains that its high-definition video streams have to push out 340,000 packets per second into 4 Gbps ultra-high definition streams.
With just 3 µs per packet of processing time, the post says, using the kernel stack simply wasn’t an option.
Using the network sockets API, the post explains, involves a lot of handling of the packet, as “each data packet passes through several layers of software inside the operating system, as the packet’s route on the network is determined and the network headers are generated. Along the way, the data is copied from the application’s buffers to the socket buffer, and then from the socket buffer to the device driver’s buffers.”
The Beeb boffins started by getting out of the kernel and into userspace, which let them write what they call a “zero-copy kernel bypass interface, where the application and the network hardware device driver share a common set of memory buffers”.
CloudFlare: We wrote a new syntax, you won’t believe what happened next
CloudFlare’s approach is similar – a userspace kernel bypass – but with wrinkles specific to its circumstances.
CloudFlare’s problem is not just the quantity of packets, but the need to distinguish attack packets from user data. Regular readers of The Register will already know that the provider suffers regular attacks.
As Gilberto Bertin writes: “During packet floods we offload selected network flows (belonging to a flood) to a user space application. This application filters the packets at very high speed. Most of the packets are dropped, as they belong to a flood. The small number of “valid” packets are injected back to the kernel and handled in the same way as usual traffic.”
To get what it wanted, Bertin says, the company settled on writing modifications to the Netmap Project
Tomi Engdahl says:
Freelancer.com code exposes bids to competitors
Not confidential information, just A/B testing
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/12/freelancercom_code_exposes_bids_to_competitors/
Pay-peanuts-get-monkeys project auction site Freelancer.com seems to have had its own site built on cents-per-hour rates, and has ended up with an embarrassing information disclosure bug.
The site’s programming error embeds far too much information in the HTML associated with project pages, letting those in the know look over what other bidders are saying – and bidding – to win a project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloomberg Business:
Dell agrees to buy EMC for about $67B in the largest technology acquisition ever — Dell to Buy EMC in Deal Worth About $67 Billion — Dell Inc. agreed to buy EMC Corp. for about $67 billion in the largest technology acquisition ever, creating a corporate-computing giant that will use …
Dell to Buy EMC in Deal Worth About $67 Billion
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-12/dell-to-acquire-emc-for-67-billion-to-add-data-storage-devices
Computer maker to add almost $50 billion to debt load
Michael Dell to lead company and help fund the transaction
The deal, which founder Dell is funding with partners such as Silver Lake, will help the personal-computer maker broaden its product lineup to respond to enduring threats from perennial rival Hewlett-Packard Co. and upstarts such as Nutanix Inc. For EMC, the combination may mollify activist investors clamoring to see more growth.
“From EMC’s perspective, this is a great deal. They couldn’t have worked it out better,” said Rajesh Ghai, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. “Eventually, big customers are going to want to buy from fewer suppliers, and if you have everything under the same roof, you have a better chance.”
The deal will help Dell raise its profile in data centers, the modern factories of the digital age that house servers, networking gear and storage systems. EMC had 21 percent of the storage market last year, about twice what Dell had
Dell’s CEO will plan to increase his holdings in VMware over time, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said on a conference call with reporters.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arik Hesseldahl / Re/code:
Sources: Silver Lake approached HP, Lenovo, Huawei to explore the sale of Dell PC business last week, was rebuffed by all
Silver Lake Explored Sale of Dell’s PC Business Ahead of EMC Deal
http://recode.net/2015/10/12/silver-lake-explored-sale-of-dells-pc-business-ahead-of-emc-deal/
Private equity firm Silver Lake, co-owners of Dell, last week approached Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Huawei to explore the possibility of selling off Dell’s personal computing business, sources familiar with the matter told Re/code.
But by Monday, Dell proposed to pay a combined $67 billion to acquire the data storage company EMC and its subsidiary VMware in what is the largest proposed technology M&A deal in history.
It was not immediately clear if Silver Lake acted alone or if Dell was consulted. It is also unclear if Silver Lake or Dell would continue to explore a sale at this point.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dell’s $67 Billion EMC Deal Dwarfs All Other Tech Tie-Ups
http://www.wired.com/2015/10/dells-emc-acquisition/
Today, Dell and EMC made official what had been reported since last week: an acquisition for the ages. Now that we know the full details, we can take stock of just how big a transaction this is. The short version? Very, very big. In fact, it’s arguably the biggest in all of tech.
Under the terms of the deal, EMC stockholders will receive approximately $33.15 per share, valuing the transaction at approximately $67 billion. That may sound like a lot if you’re not familiar with EMC, but it’s one of the largest cloud services and storage companies in the world.
“For Dell this puts them firmly in the center of the IT stage in a period of huge change, not just in storage, but across a range of next-generation technologies, including virtualization, cloud, convergence and security,” explains 451 Research analyst Simon Robinson. “Plus gives them real enterprise credibility.”
Dell – EMC (2015): $67 Billion
HP – Compaq (2001): $25 billion
Facebook – WhatsApp (2014): $19 billion
HP – EDS (2008): $13.9 billion
Symantec – Veritas (2004): $13.5 billion
Google – Motorola Mobility(2011): $12.5 billion
Oracle – PeopleSoft (2005): $10.3 billion
HP – Autonomy (2011): $10.3 billion
Microsoft – Skype (2011): $8.5 billion
Oracle – BEA Systems (2008): $8.5 billion
Oracle – Sun Microsystems (2010): $7.4 billion
Microsoft – Nokia (2013): $7.2 billion
What the Dell, EMC merger really means
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2991765/it-industry/what-the-dell-emc-merger-really-means.html
Despite its $67B price tag, the deal isn’t likely to reshape the tech market
The acquisition, announced today, is not as disruptive to the tech market as, say, Oracle’s purchase of Sun Microsystems, or Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Digital Equipment Corp., companies with competitive platforms and technologies.
Dell customers are already buying EMC products. While the two firms overlap in some storage product lines, Dell is already a major reseller of EMC products.
EMC and Dell already have a deep relationship. Annually, EMC garnered 8% to 9% of its revenue from its relationship with Dell. For Dell, the partnership accounted for 50% of its storage revenue in years past — about 90% of that coming from the resale of EMC’s midrange Clariion line of SAN arrays and 10% from high-end systems.
Dell is banking on the idea that customers want products that are easily integrated, and this merger gives it “extraordinary opportunities to bring together and integrate technologies for customers,” said Dell. “We believe customers increasingly like that integration,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dell/EMC Draw Mixed Reviews
PC slump drives $67B acquisition
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327977&
Dell bid $67 billion to buy storage giant EMC. The deal, billed as the largest high tech acquisition to date, is so far getting mixed reviews.
The move comes as PC sales which still make up the majority of Dell’s revenues, are slumping. Market watchers recently reported the PC sector declined 7-10% in the third quarter.
Dell’s historic rivals Hewlett-Packard and IBM are both slimming down under the market pressures.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Q’comm Unveils Server Bid
Xilinx partnership rivals Intel/Altera combo
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327954&
Making a long anticipated leap from its mobile roots to the cloud, Qualcomm officially entered the server market, announcing it is sampling to top-tier server makers a development platform based on a new SoC.
The news was hailed as the strongest validation to date of ARM’s move into servers which has so far been relatively slow and bumpy. Qualcomm forged partnerships with Xilinx and Mellanox which could be important given its big data center customers are exploring FPGAs as co-processors and carriers are adopting new comms architectures such as network function virtualization (NFV).
Qualcomm has “a long history of developing custom IP for high performance microarchitectures and we think we can leverage that expertise into world leading data centers,” Qualcomm President Derek Aberle said at a press event. “Given our position in mobile, we are consistently at the leading node…which is very important to have in a competitive solution in data center.”
Cloud computing will account for 40% of the server market by 2018, a 110% increase from 2013, to become a $15 billion opportunity by 2020, Qualcomm said. While the U.S. leads in server demand, China is fast approaching to feed its “under penetrated” market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andy Rubin: AI Is The Future Of Computing, Mobility
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327971&
Andy Rubin, the man behind Google’s Android operating system, thinks artificial intelligence will define computing in the future.
“There is a point in time — I have no idea when it is, it won’t be in the next 10 years, or 20 years — where there is some form of AI, for lack of a better term, that will be the next computing platform,” said Rubin onstage at the Code/Mobile conference.
More specifically, Rubin believes Internet-connected devices (smartphones, tablets, thermostats, smoke detectors, and cars, for example) will create massive amounts of data that will be analyzed by deep-learning technologies. This process will be the foundation of the first artificial intelligence networks. They will be able to tell people, for instance, what their thermostat is set to, when it’s time to hit the gym, and whether or not your pool has too much chlorine.
Context is important. “The thing that’s gonna be new is the part of the cloud that’s forming the intelligence from all the information that’s coming,” said Rubin.
Andy Rubin: AI Is The Future Of Computing, Mobility
http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-applications/andy-rubin-ai-is-the-future-of-computing-mobility/a/d-id/1322556?
Andy Rubin, the man behind Google’s Android operating system, thinks artificial intelligence will define computing in the future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Interview: Why evolution isn’t enough to future-proof your systems
Hyperconverge your way to happiness
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/13/forwardlooking_it/
In our Regcast they claimed that IT departments will have to behave differently in a hyperconverged world, and so in our after-hours conversation we wanted to know more about the future that they predict, and why it’s not a simple process of evolution to adapt to changing stresses on IT.
Intrigued to know how we’re going to get to this digital nirvana?
Tomi Engdahl says:
If Dell and EMC really do merge, expect massive, bloody consolidation
Cisco, Nutanix and NetApp all have plenty to worry about, too
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/12/if_dell_and_emc_really_do_merge_expect_massive_consolidation/
EMC/Dell deal We’re far from convinced that Dell acquiring and/or merging with EMC is a good idea, but if it did what kind of entity would we be looking at?
The crux of the matter is just how much overlap Dell is willing to endure. And the answer may be “lots”.
But it’s hard to see Dell enduring the considerable overlap in products it shares with EMC.
EMC’s done very well over the years by letting VMware operate independently
EMC was able to pull off this trick because ESX and vSphere became de facto standards without its active help. Indeed, EMC just sat back and watched server consolidation drive demand for networked storage. Dell would be brave to do things differently
If Dell were to make VMware an integrated part of its business, IBM and HP’s affection for OpenStack would give both excellent reasons to advance it as an even more direct vSphere competitor.
What about brand? EMC’s a mighty one in enterprise IT.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Quentin Hardy / New York Times:
Intel Q3: beats expectations with $14.5B revenue, $3.1B net income, despite weak PC market, with data center group revenue up 12% YoY to $4.1B
Intel’s Results Reflect Move to Cloud Computing
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/technology/intels-results-reflect-move-to-cloud-computing.html?_r=0
SAN FRANCISCO — The Intel Corporation is changing with the times.
Intel became the world’s biggest producer of semiconductors thanks mostly to personal computers, which eventually led to chips for server computers.
Now, the new hot trend of cloud computing — data centers filled with tightly connected servers — is remaking Intel.
PC sales are in a long decline, as customers increasingly use online services connected to mobile devices. While Microsoft and others to try to revive the market with new designs and tabletlike models, in the most recent quarter worldwide PC shipments fell 10.8 percent from the year before, according to IDC.
Making PC chips is still a big business, but not the way it once was. The data center group also has much higher profit margins: Operating profit from PC chips was $2.1 billion, down 20 percent from a year ago, while data center chips had an operating profit of $2.1 billion, up 9 percent.
“If you zoom out, we’re not a PC company anymore,” Stacy J. Smith, Intel’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. “We still work with PC companies, but we’re deeply involved in automotive, wearables, all kinds of new devices.”
Last month, Intel even sponsored Fashion Week in New York, stressing the convergence of clothing and computing.
Intel’s net income for the third quarter was 64 cents a share, above the projections of Wall Street analysts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple updates iMac line-up with 4K and 5K displays, Skylake processors
Also outs new Magic Keyboard, Mouse and Trackpad accessories
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2430265/apple-updates-imac-line-up-with-4k-and-5k-displays-and-skylake-processors
APPLE HAS UPDATED its iMac range with higher-resolution screens and Skylake processors, no doubt in a bid to steal the limelight from Microsoft’s latest Windows 10 kit.
Apple said in a surprise announcement on Tuesday that the 21.5in and 27in iMacs are now available with 4K and 5K Retina displays with resolutions of at 4096×2304 and 5120×2880 respectively.
The 21.5in iMac, available in three models, is available to buy now for £899, £1,049 and £1,119, the latter with the new 4K screen. The 27in iMac can be picked up for £1,449, £1,599 and £1,849.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Just what do real CIOs think a real strategy looks like?
‘I know it when I see it’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/14/strategy_cio_roundtable/
Strategy is supposed to be what a top tech exec is paid for, so it’s not surprising our recent roundtable on the subject was rather over-subscribed, giving us a mix of financial services, leisure, startups, national government and a couple of sizeable charities. What we explored was how to actually go about building a strategy rather than simply a plan.
What is Strategy?
Without answering that question, you aren’t going to get very far, but our IT Decision Makers had a range of very different ideas. At the happy end of the table, strategy is a forward-looking process, implementing the vision of the CEO, with timescales that fit the structure of the business.
Some are working on what they called “Japanese” time, where we’re working towards a big goal that won’t be realized until years are past. So their strategy is about expansionary change, new products and services with adoption of new platforms a component. They referred to this as building for the next generation, which is a rare ideal.
At the other end is a brutal reality is that some have inherited dysfunctional infrastructures and the “strategy” reflects restoration of stability and even reliable logins.
Whose Strategy is it anyway?
Strategy is very much a function of the CEO’s vision, which makes life a bit tough when your firm goes through a series of CEOs in quick succession and personally quite tough when you are a “changer and grower” and the new strategy is “stability” or “cost reduction”.
Being able to hear the mood music is critical to getting buy-in from the CEO and the rest of the leadership team. If they see your role as basically just keeping the lights on, then upgrading the customer experience, sophisticated analytics or upgrading to Windows 10 will just annoy them and diminish your credibility.
Disruption
This is the most fashionable of the business buzzwords at the moment – by which I guess they mean the sort of disruption you get on purpose rather than the Volkswagen kind.
We talked of how futile ‘bold strokes’ would be in many types of organization, especially the larger multinationals, with one ITDM referring to them as foam cushions, which would simply spring back to their old shape. The ITDMs gave us a counsel of despair, giving a one-word answer to ‘how do you disrupt a multinational’, replying with variations on “acquisitions”.
What did we learn?
That plans are not strategies
That knowing the appetite for risk is critical to personal success as well as the firm
Tech is no different to any other part of the business in needing strategy
If you change your strategy every three months it ain’t a strategy, but change it too slowly it won’t work.
If you change your strategy every three months it ain’t a trategy, but change it too slowly it won’t work.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Toybox Demo for Oculus Touch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFEMiyGMa58
The Toybox demo for Oculus Touch demonstrates the power of social VR. You can use your hands to poke at things, pull objects apart, stack blocks, and play games with another person inside a virtual world.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How far will Microsoft go with Android?
‘We’ll go wherever our customers are’ – exec
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/14/could_microsoft_going_all_the_way_with_android_google_play/
There is only one destination for companies that fail with their own mobile operating system, and it’s called Android. Last month, BlackBerry acknowledged defeat by announcing PRIV, an Android device with a focus on security.
What then is Microsoft’s Plan B when it comes to mobile? In the Nadella era we have already seen the company embrace Android and iOS with applications for Microsoft Office and more: a quick count shows 75 current Microsoft apps on the Play Store, including games, clients for Dynamics CRM and Dynamics AX, Skype, news and weather apps, and Bing Search.
Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant, is in public beta for Android and promised for iOS.
Another Android project is the Arrow Launcher, currently in private beta, which replaces the stock Android home page with a custom launcher providing frequently used apps, quick access to contacts, and a notes and reminders page.
How far will Microsoft go with Android?
“Microsoft chief experience officer Julie Larson Green told The Australian: ‘We’ll go wherever our customers are’.”
Note also that Microsoft already has Android mobiles, in the form of Nokia X phones acquired with Nokia. These devices run Android but without Google Play services
“This product does not support Google apps nor this phone Google Play. The Nokia store in the phone has nothing,
The strategic importance of Android to Google is that it promotes the use of Google’s services, such as search. In a business context – which is where Microsoft has the best chance to build on its strength in Office, Active Directory and other server applications – Google wants to promote its Android for Work security system and Apps for Work services.
These factors will make it difficult for Microsoft to succeed with Android on mobile in the same way that it did with Windows on PCs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Devs ask Microsoft for real .NET universal apps: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android
Windows 10 only is not a universal solution
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/14/developers_ask_microsoft_for_real_net_universal_apps_windows_mac_ios_and_android/
Microsoft introduced the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) this year: applications that run across many device types, provided that they all run Windows 10.
Unfortunately, that proviso means that the UWP is far from universal, targeting only a small minority of Windows PCs out there, and leaving other operating systems untouched. In a world where Macs are commonplace, and mobile is owned by iOS and Android, UWP apps are more niche than universal. If Microsoft succeeds in migrating most users to Windows 10 over the next couple of years, that will improve matters, but only on the PC.
Now developers are petitioning Microsoft for a true universal app model.
“The goal is to enable *one* .NET Client Application Project to build deliverables for the following platforms,” states the request on the Visual Studio 2015 feedback site, and goes on to list Windows 10, Legacy Windows, Unix, Linux, Android, iOS, Mac and HTML5.
The problem Visual Studio developers face is that they want to continue coding in .NET languages like C#, and to use the powerful XAML language to build a user interface, but their customers demand support for platforms other than Windows, especially iOS, Android and Mac.
The Microsoft of today is already making every effort to promote cross-platform development (as long as it is not Java).
The Xamarin tools come closest to what developers are demanding. Xamarin targets iOS, Android and Mac, and Xamarin Forms is an implementation of XAML that enables a cross-platform user interface.
Another existing piece which has cross-platform promise is .NET Core, a fork of the .NET Framework which runs on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. Currently, .NET Core only targets server-side applications using ASP.NET, or the UWP, but in principle it could be extended to client applications.
Extending .NET to HTML5 clients may seem a stretch, yet there is already a Userware project called CSHTML5 in preview which claims to implement 99% of C#, 70% of XAML and 40% of .NET Core by compiling to HTML and JavaScript. In conjunction with Apache Cordova, something like this can also work as a mobile solution.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Miguel Helft / Forbes:
What bubble? With so many high-growth companies building sustainable businesses, the unicorn boom has just begun
What Bubble? The Unicorn Boom Has Just Begun
http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/10/14/what-bubble-the-unicorn-boom-has-just-begun/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Xilinx Revenues Driven By Data
CEO expects to play in x86, non-Intel server markets
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1328017&
Programmable device company Xilinx today (Oct. 14) announced second quarter fiscal 2016 sales of $528 million, down 4% from the prior quarter and down 13% year-over-year. Second quarter net income was $127 million, with the Asia Pacific region accounting for 40% of revenue.
“The quarter was characterized by solid profitability and strong new product growth. Sales performed as expected with increases from wired and wireless communications offsetting expected declines from defense,” said Moshe Gavrielov, Xilinx President and CEO, said in a release.
Following the announcement of a server partnership with Qualcomm, Xilinx put emphasis on its data center future. The company’s data center and communications business grew 5% sequentially to account for 41% of Xilinx’s revenue in Q2.
Gavrielov sees data centers as an emerging market and networking, storage, and acceleration as the three main areas of focus. Xilinx is in a good position with the first two, but is in the middle of a competitive acceleration market split among several architectures.
“Clearly Intel has the highest market share, but it is expected to have more than one set of solutions driven by the customers who are large, independent companies,” Gavrielov said, adding that Xilinx’s partnership with Qualcomm is not exclusive. “I believe, over time, that [data centers] will provide an interesting growth opportunity for us. We have a strategy that allows us to participate in different levels of integration.”
The server acceleration market could be hundreds of millions or a billion dollar industry, though Gavrielov cautioned “it’s premature to count on it” and that it would be several years before Xilinx would see results.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lexar outs cards across SD, XQD and CFast with sizes up to 512GB and USB-C
It’s just getting silly now
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2430434/lexar-announces-cards-across-sd-xqd-and-cfast-with-sizes-up-to-512gb-and-usb-c
Tomi Engdahl says:
Junk your IT. Now. Before it drags you under
Legacy systems tie you to unproductive legacy thinking and lead to stagnation
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/15/junk_your_it_now_before_it_drags_you_under/
So why haven’t the capabilities for each successive generation of devices increased exponentially?
In practice, the growing sophistication of software has meant that while computers certainly feel faster than they did thirty or forty years ago, the difference – as far as our perceptions are concerned – isn’t nearly as great. Files might load a thousand times faster, but we still experience a perceptible interval between selecting “Open…” and being able to work on a file.
Thirty years ago, Ted Nelson, one of the great visionaries of computing, said that our devices had to deliver a ‘bingo effect’ – as soon as you reached out for a document, it should be there, ready to edit. Today we open a document in Microsoft Word – even on a multi-Ghz machine with a solid state disk and plenty of RAM – in a process that always takes a few seconds. And it always has. Sure, it takes a few less seconds than it may have back in 1986, using Microsoft Word on the first Macintosh Plus, but where’s that thousand-fold improvement from Moore’s Law?
A decade ago virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier noted the complexity of software seems to outpace improvements in hardware, giving us the sense that we’re running in place. Our computers, he argued, have become more complex and less reliable. We can see the truth of this everywhere: Networked systems provide massive capacities but introduce great vulnerabilities. Simple programs bloat with endless features. Things get worse, not better.
Anyone who’s built a career in IT understands this technical debt. Legacy systems persist for decades. Every major operating system – desktop and mobile – has bugs so persistent they seem more like permanent features than temporary mistakes. Yet we constantly build news things on top of these increasingly rickety scaffolds. We do more, so we crash more – our response to that has been to make crashes as nearly painless as possible. The hard lockups and BSODs of a few years ago have morphed a momentary disappearance, as if nothing of real consequence has happened.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Walmart to open-source its cloud-hopping code
Retail giant offers skeleton key to escape cloud lock-in from … oh, no cloud in particular
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/15/walmart_opensources_its_cloudhopping_code/
Retail colossus Walmart has open-sourced its own cloud operations code.
Walmart is a big cloud user but says that come the year’s fourth quarter its online retailing operations are too big for any one cloud to handle. Portability is therefore something it prizes, hence its 2013 investment in cloud automation startup OneOps, to help it move workloads among diverse public clouds and to automate its in-house operations. That outfit’s code, still called OneOps, will soon be available at an eponymous website.
The code offers continuous lifecycle management tools and code to model the behaviour of complex workloads.
The feature Walmart’s making the most of, however, is cloud portability code that makes it possible to “cloud shop” so that workloads move among different public and private clouds to take advantage of price differences or to reach scales a single public cloud can’t deliver.
OneOps code will appear on GitHub before the end of the year, so it will be a while before we can assess whether the code really does work around proprietary APIs.
OneOps enables continuous lifecycle management of complex, business-critical application workloads on any cloud-based infrastructure.
http://oneops.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google is removing the desktop notification center from Chrome
http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/14/google-is-removing-the-desktop-notification-center-from-chrome/
Google today announced it is removing the notification center from Chrome for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The reason the company is giving for the change is simple: “In practice, few users visit the notification center.” The notification center in Chrome OS will remain.
Google has been toying with notifications in Chrome for years. Chrome apps and extensions have supported push notifications on desktop since May 2010 (added in Chrome 5, for those keeping track). More recently, web pages gained the ability to send push notifications to Chrome users via the emerging web push standard in April 2015, with the release of Chrome 42.
The notification center started showing up in 2013, largely in the hopes of supporting Google Now for desktop.
Users didn’t bother.
In fact, many Chrome users (myself included) made a point of disabling the notification center immediately. Having the browser bother you outside the browser was simply annoying.
Streamlining Notifications on Desktop
http://blog.chromium.org/2015/10/streamlining-notifications-on-desktop.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Let’s check out Dell, doom and the competition
Now would be a good time not to be in Dell’s crosshairs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/15/dell_doom_and_the_competition/
Sysadmin blog In case you missed it: pretty much the entire IT industry’s margins are collapsing. It is hitting all sectors from smartphones to desktops to servers, storage and even networking. Tech has reached “good enough” for most, and now price rules.
This is Dell’s world, and now it’s packing EMC ammunition.
Software-defined-whatsits and public clouds are putting pressure on old school vendors. Youngsters cutting their teeth on the technology of the now look at dinosaurs like Cisco with incomprehension.
They live in a world where everything can be addressed with an API and vendor lock-in is simply not to be tolerated.
In the future (or the now, if you’re young), data is separated from the things that make data work. At the application level this is what the microvisor/container revolution is about.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP is putting privacy screens in its laptops because people are nosy
http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/14/hp-3m-laptop-privacy-screens/
If you find yourself working in crowded spaces like coffee shops, it can be tough to keep prying eyes from glancing at your screen. To combat that sort of snooping, HP is outfitting its stable of notebook PCs with privacy screens from 3M. The duo is working on new displays that integrate the security feature for “an on-demand electronic privacy solution.”
first products are expected to arrive in mid-2016