It’s twilight for small in-house data centers
Virtualization, cloud services, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) are making it much easier to shift IT infrastructure operations to service providers, and that is exactly what many users are doing.
This trend is being felt the most at in-house data centers in small- to mid-size companies. These firms may be trying to shut down their data centers, or shift a major portion of their workloads to external providers.
Larger firms have been consolidating data centers for years, and even the federal government is shutting down hundreds of data centers in its consolidation push. But these big firms and institutions are optimizing their operations and holding on to them, even as they increase their use of SaaS and cloud services at the margins. Read more...
Security pros advise users to ditch Java
Security firms are being none too gentle with Oracle's Java following the revelation this week that attackers are using two unpatched Java vulnerabilities to compromise selected targets. The most common advice: Uninstall the Java plug-in in your browser and don't use services that require the software.
On Monday, security firm FireEye revealed that a customer had been attacked with a previously unknown vulnerability. Yet Oracle already knew about the security issue and apparently had an update at the ready to be released on its regularly scheduled patch day in October. With reliable exploits for the vulnerabilities rapidly being adopted by security researchers and cyber criminals alike, the company rushed out a fix for the flaw on Thursday.
Overall, the incident has left a bitter taste in the collective mouths of many security professionals. Read more...
Infosys unveils self-service cloud hub
Indian outsourcer Infosys Tuesday unveiled a package of services and technologies that aim to help companies deploying hybrid clouds.
Fragmentation of enterprise workloads across technologies and services running on both private clouds and multiple public cloud services is a key issue for customers, so Infosys is offering customers self-service catalogs of well-integrated business applications, platforms, and other point technologies from its partners, said Vishnu Bhat, Infosys' vice president and global head for cloud.
The Infosys Cloud Ecosystem Hub has what it calls a "smart brokerage" feature, which is an enterprise-wide decision support mechanism to select, compare and deploy cloud services from across providers, Bhat said. Decisions can be based on an evaluation of over 20 parameters such as quality of service, technology compatibility, regulatory compliance needs and total cost of ownership of application workloads, he added. Read more...
Extended software support “immoral and indefensible”
Are extended software support fees immoral and indefensible? That’s a question that one Gartner analyst has just, in a roundabout way, answered in the affirmative.
The analyst in question is Rob Addy, a research director in Gartner's Technology & Service Provider Research division whose bio says he specialises in software and hardware support services, plus the provision of desktop support services in an outsourcing context.
Addy recently blogged about the question and didn’t hold back labelling the fees “a hefty fee to ‘encourage’ users to migrate forward onto a ‘supported’ version” and advancing an argument that “… extended support fees are a cynical ploy by the ISVs to extract more cash from their customers.” Read more...
Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum looks for new life
The founder of the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum is working to revive the organization, which fizzled in 2010.
Even though the group has been defunct for a couple of years, it still counts 1,300 people on its mailing list and 3,000 in its LinkedIn group, said Reuven Cohen, who first kicked off the forum in 2008. Cohen's company Enomaly, which offered software for building public clouds and the SpotCloud marketplace for on-demand computing, was purchased by Virtustream late last year.
Since he proposed reviving the organization on his blog and on Google+ Monday morning, he's gotten "dozens" of emails from people supporting the idea, Cohen said. Read more...
G-Cloud app store is launched
The government has launched its G-Cloud application procurement site, CloudStore, giving small businesses across the UK a chance to compete with large IT companies for public-sector contracts.
CloudStore opened on Sunday, with services from 257 companies offered to public-sector organisations in a browsable, GCHQ-vetted catalogue of cloud services, ranging from rentable infrastructure, applications and platforms to consultancy. Read more...
Android device makers chase Apple with cloud strategies
The importance of bundling services and software with mobile devices is finally resonating with Android device makers as they compete with Apple, and some of them outlined their cloud strategies at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Acer and Lenovo, which make Android-based tablets and smartphones and Windows PCs, will offer cloud and hosting services that make it easier for people to synchronize and access content and documents across PCs, smartphones, and tablets.
Acer will load its devices with AcerCloud, a hosting service on which users can push documents and files that can be shared across its tablets, smartphones and PCs. Lenovo provided some details about its upcoming cloud service, which will allow content and files on its TVs, tablets, smartphones, and PCs to be accessed and shared through private or public clouds. Read more...
NetWare-Linux love child turned up to 11
Novell and SUSE Linux may technically be separate companies, but they are owned by the same Attachmate conglomerate and they still have to work together on specific products, such as Open Enterprise Server, which bolts NetWare print and file services to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
In the wake of buying Novell for $2.2bn back in April, SUSE Linux was broken out as a separate division and its headquarters moved back to its Nuremburg, Germany, stomping grounds.
The identity management, security, directory, NetWare support contracts, and Open Enterprise Server, an amalgam of NetWare services ported to run atop SLES, were kept in a separate Novell division headquartered in Provo, Utah, which is Novell's old stomping grounds. An alien visiting earth would never even know the $210m Novell acquisition of SUSE Linux occurred in November 2003 and would think that the two units had partnered to create a hybrid that in essence makes Linux look like NetWare. Read more...
Startup pushes software-defined networking
Software-defined networking startup Embrane this week came out of stealth mode to unveil its product and strategy for virtualizing network services.
Embrane was founded in 2009 by former Cisco executives Dante Malagrinò and Marco Di Benedetto, Embrane's CTO. Malagrinò and Di Benedetto were early members of the Andiamo Systems team, a storage networking company funded and acquired by Cisco, as well as Nuova Systems, the company that provided Cisco with its unified computing technology.
At Cisco, Malagrinò helped develop and market Cisco's Data Center 3.0 strategy, which stressed virtualization and a unified fabric. Di Benedetto architected the core elements of Cisco's NX-OS data center operating system.
Other Embrane executives are from 3Com, HP, Juniper, Oracle, Alactel-Lucent, Array Networks, and Palo Alto Networks. Embrane has raised $27 million since its founding. Read more...
Startup Agari debuts security services to stop fake email, phishing attacks
Startup Agari debuts today with cloud-based email security services aimed at allowing enterprises and e-commerce companies to identify and block fake and spoofed email exploiting their legitimate business domain names to conduct scams and phishing attacks.
Facebook and YouSendIt are among the early adopters of the Agari technology, according to Patrick Peterson, founder and CEO of the company, which is based in Palo Alto.
"They understood how email identity is being abused," says Peterson, who adds the Agari service allows Facebook, for example, to set policy controls and automatically block fake email attempting to exploit Facebook's legitimate domain names used for email. Read more...
Microsoft offers free bacon outside Amazon and Google HQ
Working for Microsoft or Google is a dream for a lot of people. They pay well, they offer great on site services so you never want to/have to leave, and you’re probably going to end up working on some very cool projects.
The problem is, both companies are vying for employees from the same talent pool. That can make it difficult to find enough new people when trying to expand. Microsoft is dealing with that very problem right now as it attempts to double the size of its Kinect engineering team in Seattle.
To solve the problem, Microsoft has hired an advertising agency by the name of Wexley School for Girls. Their objective is to entice talent from other high profile companies in the Seattle area to jump ship and go work on Kinect. The tactics being used to get the attention of said talent are rather sneaky. Read more...
Carriers step up to help businesses adapt to workers’ smartphones
The nation's leading wireless carriers are making more products and services available to businesses to integrate and support their workers using wireless smartphones and tablets.
Verizon Wireless made two announcements Monday, while AT&T made a separate announcement of a service called Toggle that allows enterprise apps to run on any Android phone a user chooses. Separately, Verizon announced the Private Applications Store for Business that allows companies to run in-house or third-party apps on any smartphone or tablet on any network. It will be offered later this year, with pricing set on a per-user/per-month basis, although Verizon didn't specify how much. Read more...
Blocked from China, Twitter goes after overseas Chinese
Twitter plans to offer a Chinese-language user interface in the coming weeks. But the company doesn't expect the bulk of the Chinese-speaking population will be using it anytime soon.
China, which heavily censors the Internet, has blocked Twitter since 2009. This has denied the company a vast market of 485 million Internet users, many of whom have taken to China's own locally developed Twitter-like services.
Twitter's Chinese interface is meant to reach native Chinese speakers living outside the country, said Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner. The size of this market amounts to 35 million people living in 30 countries, she said.
The new interface will be offered in both simplified and traditional Chinese Mandarin. Simplified Chinese Mandarin is the written language predominately used in mainland China, where Twitter is blocked. Both Taiwan and Hong Kong -- where Traditional Chinese Mandarin is used -- allow users to access Twitter. Read more...
Docs and devs: Health secretary wants healthcare apps
Health secretary Andrew Lansley has launched a call for new ideas for health apps to help patients make informed decisions about their care.
The invitation is open to healthcare professionals and app developers. Lansley cited an existing example of what could be done, the Choosing Well app developed by NHS Yorkshire and Humber which enables people to search for their nearest NHS services.
The Department of Health said any ideas, which can also extend to online maps, should relate to one of five themes: personalisation and choice of care and support; better health and care outcomes; autonomy and accountability; improving public health; and improving long term care and support. Read more...