Last month, #Amazon removed all #AppleTV and #Chromecast product listings from its website because the devices do not offer its #PrimeVideo streaming service, which the online retailer said may cause confusion for customers. Nearly a month later, the new Apple TV remains unavailable on Amazon, but that could soon change.
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/28/apple-tv-amazon-prime-video-tvos-app/
Cards Against Humanity sold people absolutely nothing for $5 apiece on Black Friday ... and raked in $71,145.
On Friday, the makers of the lewd card game you're afraid to tell your mother about wiped their online store clean, leaving only a page on which people could give them $5. Surprisingly, 1,199 people logged on and gave. In fact, one fellow gave $100 by repeatedly filling out the $5 payment form, the company wrote in a post on the site.
See also: Shocking new photos reveal that Princess Charlotte is very cute
Although the company has a history of charitable giving, having donated over $4 million over the last few years (a fact they're not ashamed to make known), this time they decided to keep the windfall. Read more.
#Amazon delivered a lovely update on its ‘ #PrimeAir ’ project today — almost exactly two years after it showed the first iteration of its drone. You know, the flying delivery #drone that some thought was a massive joke meant for April 1st. Included are some high-res shots and two new videos. Amazon releases a vid with a new Prime Air drone design
http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/29/amazon-shows-off-new-prime-air-drone-with-hybrid-design/?ncid=rss
Unlike many other governments around the world, a Swedish court has ruled that it cannot force ISPs to block their customers’ access to file-sharing site The #PirateBay. The decision came after more than a month of deliberations, according to Swedish publication TheLocal.se and safeguards citizens’ access to the site, despite it being used to distribute copyrighted material. The case was brought by Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry to try and force ISP Bredbandsbolaget into blocking the service, as it has been in many other European countries. In the UK, for example, none of the.
Google cloud outage caused by failure that saw admins run it manually ... and fail
A mistaken peering advertisement from a European network took #GoogleCloud 's europe-west1 region offline last week for around 70 minutes.
The slip-up happened when an unnamed network owner connected a new peering link to Google, and in the process, it advertised reachability for far more traffic than it could handle.
As a result, as The Chocolate Factory explains in this post, most of the lost traffic carried destination addresses in eastern Europe and the Middle East.
“The peer's network signalled that it could route traffic to many more destinations than Google engineers had anticipated, and more than the link had capacity for. Google's network responded accordingly by routing a large volume of traffic to the link. At 11:55, the link saturated and began dropping the majority of its traffic”, the post states.
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/30/euro_network_gobbles_googles_cloud/
128GB DDR4 DIMMs have landed so double your RAM cram plan
#Samsung 's started volume production of 128GB DDR4 RDIMMS.
You read that right – a single registered dual inline memory module packing 36 individual 4GB chunks of 3D TSV DDR4 DRAM, for a total of 128GB, can now be yours.
The Register is aware of servers with 96 DIMM slots, which means … WOAH! … 12.2 terabytes of RAM in a single server if you buy Samsung's new babies.
Samsung says these new DIMMS are special because “the chip dies are ground down to a few dozen micrometers, pierced with hundreds of fine holes and vertically connected by electrodes passing through the holes, allowing for a significant boost in signal transmission.”
There's also “a special design through which the master chip of each 4GB package embeds the data buffer function to optimise module performance and power consumption.”
We'll take you at your word there, Sammie, and also note your claim of 2,400 megabits per second speed for the memory.
On November 29, 1877, Thomas Edison gave the first public demonstration of his tin-foil phonograph. He hollered into a tube: "Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go!" The phonograph etched sound waves into tin foil wrapped around a cylinder, making these the first speech ever recorded.
Swapping some parts around, Edison immediately played back the sound. It was hand-cranked and scratchy, but it worked! This was a shocking invention, and led to rapid improvements—using wax cylinders for recording, mass-produced recordings, and also disc-based recordings.
Here's a modern demonstration of basically the same method, using a replica phonograph:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/71733/edison-showed-phonograph-138-years-ago-today
#Microsoft has killed #Dell 's user-pwning root certificate and its self-reinstalling .dll with its antivirus #WindowsDefender tool.
The certificate is a big blunder because it opens a universal means for attackers on public networks to hose new Dell laptops.
That's because bright minds planted a self-signed root CA certificate and private key on new laptops which allows attackers on public Wi-Fi to steal otherwise encrypted usernames, passwords, and other sensitive data.
"An attacker can exploit a certificate using phishing or man-in-the-middle attacks to decrypt, modify or spoof HTTPS websites, such as banking, social media, or email websites," Microsoft bod Karthik Selvaraj says.
"This could allow a malicious hacker to steal your usernames, passwords, and confidential data.
"They could also carry out transactions without your knowledge, even when it seems like you have a secure browser connection to a website."
The free Windows Defender tool will kill the certificates and the associated Dell.Foundation.Agent.Plugins.eDell.dll plugin that will respawn the certificate.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/26/dell_cert_windows_defender/
The #Graphene Industry is gathering pace. A number of start-ups have recently received multi-million dollar funding and graphite producers are announcing plans to start multi-ton production. Graphene exhibits a unique combination of mechanical, thermal, electronic and optical properties that provide opportunities for new innovation in the following areas:
Flexible displays
Transistors
Photosensors
RFID tags
Solar cells
Secondary batteries
Fuel cells
Supercapacitors
Conductive inks
EMI shielding heat insulation
Anti-oxidation
LEDs etc
Across multiple industries including consumer electronics, automotive, aerospace, medicine, energy, #3Dprinting, polymer composites, wireless technology, filtration and coatings. Graphene possesses (theoretically) record high electrical and thermal conductivity, transparency at all wavelengths, flexibility and outstanding mechanical strength. There are now over 150 companies either producing graphene or developing applications, with many multi-national companies conducting R&D on these materials.
Companies Mentioned:
BASF
Bluevine
Cambridge Nanosystems
FGV Cambridge Nanosystems
Grafen Co.
Grafoid
Graphene 3D Lab Inc
Graphene Technologies
Gwent Electronics
Haydale
Huawei
IBM
NGI
OAS
Samsung
Stratasys
Key Topics Covered:
Research Methodology
Executive Summary
Introduction
Graphene
Carbon Nanotubes Versus Graphene
Other 2D Materials
Graphene Synthesis
Graphene Market Structure
Regulations And Standards
Patents And Publications
Technology Readiness Level
End User Market Segment Analysis
Electronics And Photonics
Polymer Composites
Automotive
Electronics And Photonics
Photonics
Aerospace
Biomedical & Healthcare
Filtration And Separation
Photovoltaics
Oil And Gas
Properties And Applications
3D Printing
Lubricants
Textiles
Tech industry defends encryption amid new questions following Paris attacks.
Technology industry groups are pushing back against calls from law enforcement and intelligence officials to give the government more access to encrypted networks following the Paris terror attacks.
Concrete evidence has yet to emerge that the perpetrators of the attacks used encrypted networks to communicate, but officials have warned that terrorists are finding new ways to avoid surveillance. Some say requiring tech companies to design a so-called backdoor in the devices would give law enforcement better access to encrypted communications.
#Dell has quietly reorganized its software business into four new business units -- and no longer has a separate business unit for the company's data protection software, including its popular #AppAssure solution, Dell solution providers told CRN.
The reorganization, which occurred last month, also led to layoffs in Dell's data protection software team, solution providers said. An email from a former Dell employee, shown to CRN by a solution provider, said the entire field team for data protection software was laid off in October.
When #Dell announced its planned $67 billion acquisition of storage giant #EMC, one person couldn't wait to come out as a naysayer: #HewlettPackardEnterprises CEO Meg Whitman.
She immediately sent an email to her troops pointing out what she described as the downsides of the merger and claimed that her new company, #HPE, was "two years ahead of the game and it will be difficult for others to catch up."
It's hard to see HPE as ahead of the game when it's been in the middle of a years-long painful restructuring, splitting itself in two, with shrinking revenues and massive layoffs.
So on Tuesday, after #HP reported its last ever earnings as a consolidated company, she explained to analysts what she meant:
http://www.businessinsider.com/meg-whitman-dellemc-merger-is-backward-2015-11
PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), a leading global technology distributor, today announced it has been named a winner in #Dell OEM Solutions’ channel program Partner of the Year Awards for Dell’s fiscal year 2016.
The annual awards, honoring Dell partners for delivering exemplary solutions for their customers, were presented at the Channel Partner Summit that kicked off Dell World 2015. Award winners are selected from a group of nominations based on their dedicated use of Dell technologies to provide solutions for their customers’ needs.
#EMC and #VMware shareholders, who have watched their stock prices plummet over the six weeks since computing giant #Dell announced an ambitious but complex plan to buy out storage company EMC, are demanding a series of actions they hope will stop the free fall.
Some institutional shareholders have asked EMC and Dell for three specific actions they say will improve their confidence in the proposed $67 billion buyout, the biggest tech deal of all time, and increase the chances they will vote in favor of it, people familiar with the demands told Re/code.
“They have to improve the deal, and if they don’t, we’re going to vote against it — and a lot of other people are going to vote against it,” one shareholder, whose firm owns several million shares of EMC, told Re/code.
The three demands by some institutional shareholders are designed to address the 30 percent drop in VMware shares and 9 percent drop in EMC shares since the Oct. 12 buyout announcement.
http://recode.net/2015/11/24/emc-and-vmware-shareholders-demand-changes-to-dell-buyout-deal/
It is hard to say exactly how much infrastructure revenue went up for grabs when #IBM sold off its #Systemx division to #Lenovo last year, but in the #HPC market, if you look at the data from IDC and Intersect360, which do detailed tracking of HPC organizations in terms of revenues and installed base, the numbers are not small. It is hard to project until 2015 is finished and all the counting is done, but it is easily on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars that shifted away from IBM/Lenovo and largely toward two vendors: #HewlettPackardEnterprise and #Dell.
These two companies, along with #Cisco Systems with its enterprise-aimed blade servers, have been the main beneficiaries of the IBM/Lenovo deal on just about all server fronts, in fact.
We discussed #HPE ’s revamped plans to move more aggressively in the HPC and data analytics space concurrent with the SC15 supercomputing conference last week with Bill Mannel, who took over this business after many years at SGI. While at the conference we also caught up with the new HPC team at Dell, which ironically enough, has a team of infrastructure people that hail from the former Hewlett-Packard. This includes Jim Ganthier, general manager of engineered solutions at Dell, and Ed Turkel, HPC strategist at Dell, as well as a slew of others who spent many years at their main rival in the systems business. And make no bones about: Dell is throwing down the gauntlet, especially perhaps after supercomputer maker Cray was able to win the deal to install the #Lonestar5 system and HPE is building the Hikari system at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Austin – where Michael Dell started his company in a dorm room in 1984 and just down the road from the company’s headquarters outside of Austin.
http://www.nextplatform.com/2015/11/24/dell-engineers-an-hpc-market-expansion/
#Graphene #3DLab Inc. (TSXV:GGG,OTCQB:GPHBF) announced it has released a new commercial product, Graphene Flex Foam, a multilayer freestanding flexible graphene foam.
As quoted in the press release:
This material is a combination of highly conductive three-dimensional chemical vapour disposition (CVD) ultra-light graphene foam and conductive elastomer composite. This revolutionary product preserves all the remarkable properties of graphene foam such as superior electrical, with an added remarkable flexibility and ease of handling in an extremely lightweight and highly porous architecture.
At last week’s #IngramMicro One summit I had the chance to sit down with Frank Vitagliano, #Dell ’s VP of North American Channel Sales. Vitagliano has been in this business a long time, first with #IBM, then #Juniper Networks and now Dell, much of that time with the channel. As a relative newcomer to the space, it was great to get his perspective. For example, Vitagliano says that 70 percent of all the IT products and services delivered in the marketplace go through a solution provider, a number that’s been pretty consistent over the years. He sees plenty of help on the way for providers stuck in the switch to opex spending, and he says Dell and #Microsoft agree: #hybridcloud is the future.
Channel Partners: Will cloud make a dent in channel sales?
Frank Vitagliano: No, and I’ll tell why. Customers still need help relative to cloud and cloud deployment. They need advice: "Help me understand how it works. Help me understand, should it be on-prem? Should it be off-prem? Help me understand what applications or what parts of my business I can comfortably move into a cloud. What are the security requirements?" Which is obviously the biggest deal. They’re going to solution providers every day as trusted advisers, saying, "I need your help." Now the bigger companies, they do some of that on their own, because they have the IT expertise. But a lot of the midrange and below companies, they may go to cloud, but the solution provider’s still in the middle of it, and in many cases building out the platform and supporting it for them.
And, a hybrid model is going to be the norm. Dell World is not just end users or just channel, it’s combined. We had the CEO of Microsoft there, Satya Nadella, and he and Michael [Dell] got up on stage and talked about a number of different things. One of the things he said, was, "Look, if there’s any confusion about whether this is going to be a hybrid environment or not, let me just tell you, surveys have been done fairly recently that said 10 percent of the customers said, 'I won’t put anything out on the cloud.' Ten percent said, 'I’m comfortable putting everything on the cloud.' Which means 80 percent said 'pieces.'" At the end of the day, it’s hybrid. It’s hybrid. And we’re seeing that.{ad}
Three years ago, inspired by the hit TV show #SharkTank, the marketing department of the data storage and software company #EMC launched a new program aimed at generating innovative ideas. Called #LaunchPad, it replicates many aspects of the TV show. It too features businesspeople going in front of a panel to ask for money to fund their big ideas. It is filmed on a set with bright lights and a live (though small) audience, and it is broadcast to the 50,000 employees in EMC offices around the world. Executives from around the company serve as judges, filling the role played by investor Mark Cuban, real estate expert Barbara Corcoran, and others on Shark Tank.
There are differences, too. The set is located in the back of a mothballed office building in a Boston suburb, and while tough questions may be asked, the tone is decidedly less confrontational at EMC. Most important, the show is the tail end of an innovation process that probably has a bigger payoff than the competition itself.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/543441/emc-looks-to-tv-for-an-innovation-model/
Enormous tech M&A deals have been announced recently: #EMC / #Dell, #WDC / #SanDisk, #Lam-Research / #KLC-Tencor. These follow a very busy year of large tech M&A, with #Avago / #Broadcom, #Nokia / #Alcatel-Lucent and #Intel / #Altera.
This year is shaping up to be a record one for M&A activity across all industries. As PitchBook points out in a recent report: “Even if total value slumps in 4Q to $320 billion — compared to $437 billion in 3Q — total deal value in 2015 will still eclipse $1.7 trillion.”
However, with the large number of multi-billion dollar mergers, there is a nagging feeling that the traditional tech buyers are doing fewer acquisitions of smaller VC-backed startup companies, acquisitions that usually close for a few hundreds of millions of dollars.
With Dell/EMC/ #VMware busy in their own deal, the number of smaller enterprise tech acquisitions will shrink even further. CB Insights points out here that, “There have only been 45 $100M+ exits in the first three quarters of 2015, which puts it on track to be the first year with less than 70 $100M+ exits since 2010.”
http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/22/where-are-all-the-enterprise-tech-buyers/
As my former boss, #HBS strategy guru Michael Porter explained in Competitive Advantage, if you want to earn better profits than your rivals, you have two strategies from which to choose:
Low cost producer – set your prices lower than rivals and get your costs well-below the price; or
Differentiation — give customers such great product benefits that they’re willing to pay you a higher price than rivals’ — and your costs.
Unfortunately, two rivals in the data storage industry — #NimbleStorage, provider of flash/disk data storage hybrids and data management software as a service and #PureStorage, a maker of all-flash arrays — are pursuing strategies in which they slash their prices below their costs.
The level of price cutting in the $40 billion storage industry is so intense, that it is difficult to see how either of these companies will ever make money.
In January, I spent a few days with the senior leadership team of #Lenovo ’s enterprise group in Raleigh North Carolina. A lot of the players have changed since then, but what has been consistent is Lenovo’s objective to provide broader enterprise solutions. Most of my questions at Lenovo’s analyst conference were about software and where they were going with #SoftwareDefinedInfrastructure, or #SDI.
SDI is the hottest thing that has hit the enterprise since the web and Moor Insights & Strategy has been covering it for four years before it became cool to do so. The promise of SDI is to convert IT to a more “public cloud-like” model inside the enterprise with the goals to speed up app deployment and make it more flexible, provide a public-cloud like charging mechanism, and reduce costs versus more proprietary solutions. In terms of maturity, I would say we are in the third inning of a nine inning baseball game. New #hyperscale deployments are fully SDI while larger enterprise have completed POCs (proof of concepts) and are beginning their deployments. Small and medium businesses are kicking the tires.
With this latest #Nutanix announcement, we’re seeing Lenovo, traditionally seen as a hardware company, partnering with multiple SDI companies to deliver hyperconverged infrastructure solutions to the enterprise market. As a result of this latest announcement, Lenovo and Nutanix will work together to create a new family of Lenovo hyperconverged appliances utilizing Nutanix’s software designed to run virtualized apps and provide a storage platform, too. This is in addition to Lenovo’s cloud announcement with #RedHat to deliver new complete #OpenStack-based SDI solutions to Lenovo’s customers.
#Graphene, the strongest material we know of, can now be made 100 times more cheaply than before, thanks to a team of scientists from the University of Glasgow, who used commercially-available super-smooth copper for it to form on. Could this be graphene’s Holy Grail we have all been eagerly waiting for?
Inexpensive, mass-produced graphene could completely change the face of several industries, as well as medical devices.
If graphene could be utilized to make artificial skin, for instance, it would help provide sensory feedback for limb prostheses, which would change patients’ lives dramatically – their artificial limbs would be nearly as dexterous as natural limbs.
Researchers have developed a technique that traps light on the surface of #graphene by using pulses of laser lights.
The new graphene-light technique could generate a variety of miniature optical circuits and Internet speeds can be increased significantly, according to a study by researchers from the University of Exeter in the UK and the ICFO Institute in Barcelona.
A partnership announced by #Dell on Tuesday shows how #cybersecurity defenses are evolving, which could have wide-ranging effects on vendors like #Symantec, #McAfee and #TrendMicro.
The PC giant has partnered with #Cylance, an Irvine, California-based company that specializes in detecting and blocking attacks on endpoint computers.
What's Next?
The contents of an employee intranet Q&A were recently filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Hopkinton, Mass.-based data storage giant #EMC. The exchange is a mix of employee questions and questions anticipated by EMC management, according to a spokesman, and it shows employees seeking clarification on how to think about the EMC shares they hold, how their options will be treated if they're laid off, how exactly the #VMware tracking stock #Dell intends to issue as part of the transaction will work.
EMC is in the midst of an aggressive, $850 million cost-cutting program unveiled last summer that will result in an unspecified number of layoffs. The cost-reduction plan also will result in the company's exiting some businesses and getting rid of products that aren't showing strong growth. With the acquisition by Dell now looming, employees are curious about what it means for the nest eggs they've nurtured at EMC.
Here are several questions employees asked in the internal Q&A.
In spite of product overlaps and VMware’s partnerships with rivals, Dell will be keeping EMC intact
As a private company #Dell is well positioned to defy the industry norm, according to its CEO Michael Dell.
The acquisition of #EMC puts Dell at odds with the rest of the industry. $67bn is a big punt and its CEO cannot afford to fail.
At a recent briefing prior to his visit to the company’s Emea Solutions Conference in Vienna, Dell said: “We have had 11 quarters gaining share in the client business and we are gaining share in the server business.”
According to Dell, customer loyalty is at record levels. He claimed the company filed 27% more patents this year than in 2014.
#IBM sold off its PC server business to Lenovo in 2014, and #Hewlett-Packard recently split into HP Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise ( #HPE ). At the same time, businesses have less of an appetite for large-scale IT contracts, with contracts split across multiple suppliers now popular. The challenge for Dell is to convince such organisations that buying from a single source is the better option, compared with multi-supplier contracts.
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500256911/Michael-Dell-confirms-there-will-be-no-EMC-sell-off
#EMC said Tuesday that it will connect more of its storage systems to public and private clouds via pre-built integrations.
The storage giant said its high-end EMC #VMAX and #VNX systems will connect to public and private clouds. The company also expanded its data protection tools via its Spanning unit and cloud connections.
EMC's move comes a week after the company outlined its #CloudPools effort, which connects its OneFS operating system to #Microsoft #Azure, #AmazonWebServices and #Virtustream.
In a nutshell, EMC's latest move extends the CloudPools approach to its entire lineup.
Among the key points:
EMC's VMAX and VNX storage platforms will be able to tier data to public and private clouds automatically. EMC will support #VMware #vCloudAir, Azure, AWS and #Google Cloud Platform. VMAX can also be tied to EMC #CloudArray and SANs.
#CloudBoost 2.0 will take EMC's data protection tools such as Data Protection Suite and #DataDomain and tie them to cloud storage services for long-term archiving.
Spanning by EMC includes European deployment regions and backup for Salesforce and other software as a service data restoration.
EMC rolled out a new version of its NetWorker data protection software that automates policies where data resides. For instance, policies can move data from a local tier to the cloud after a certain amount of time.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/emc-adds-cloud-hooks-to-storage-system-lineup/
#Hyperconverged powerhouse #Nutanix have announced a partnership with #RavelloSystems, makers of a cloud-based lab system built on a nested hypervisor, to make testing out the #NutanixCommunityEdition very easy.
By teaming up with Ravello, Nutanix has made it easy for prospective customers, or indeed analysts like myself, to try out the #Acropolis hypervisor and its #PRISM management interface. Without a virtual option like this, a customer would need to, at the very least, acquire a compatible piece of hardware on which to install the Community Edition software. That’s a hassle, and though minor, it can be enough to delay or halt someone getting to know this platform, and maybe try someone else’s.
I received early access to the image of Nutanix Community Edition in Ravello, which was used to take the screenshot above. I can confirm that yes, it really does take mere minutes to be at the PRISM console, around ten in my case. I didn’t have to download any OVA files or .ISO images from a vendor website and then upload them, I just went to the Ravello Systems marketplace and grabbed the image. I chose the cloud to deploy to ( #Amazon’s #AWS in this case) and a few minutes later (after loading an ISO image into Acropolis via URL, no download/upload dance) I was installing Ubuntu inside Acropolis running on AWS in Ravello.
#NetApp has taken a swipe at #HewlettPackardEnterprise ( #HPE ) for planning a rival flash storage event in Berlin at the same time as its Insight technical conference, claiming it is "not sure it is helping [HPE's] reputation".
NetApp Insight is taking place in Berlin this week, attracting more than 4,000 NetApp customers and partners. Evening entertainment was provided for delegates last night – in the form of a Brazilian carnival-themed party – and a finale event is planned for tomorrow, giving them free time tonight (Tuesday).
CUPERTINO, Calif., Nov. 17 — #Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX) today introduced #ClusterStor #A200, a first-of-its-kind tiered archive storage system for high performance computing ( #HPC ). The A200 helps reduce storage and operational costs by up to 50 percent compared to tier-one storage platforms.
The A200 was designed to complement the rest of Seagate’s ClusterStor family of scale-out storage systems. It allows customers to non-disruptively migrate designated data off of the performance-optimized, primary storage tiers while keeping it online for fast retrieval. This avoids a common problem in shared HPC environments where the organization is forced to choose between having all of the data available to make the best analysis versus the time required to retrieve data from tape. Performance of the primary storage is often improved by migrating data and freeing up space for more efficient data layout. The pre-configured ClusterStor A200 solution includes an automatic policy-driven hierarchical storage management (HSM) system and near limitless scale-out capacity.
“The A200 is designed to be the perfect complement to our high performance ClusterStor Lustre and #IBM #SpectrumScale engineered systems,” said Ken Claffey, vice president and general manager, Seagate HPC systems business. “It balances performance while also delivering a system that is optimized for the lowest capex and opex for active archive applications. Many critical HPC systems need to go back and analyze valuable data that’s already been archived, but our customers want these large archives to be online with massive data sets available instantly. ClusterStor A200 is a purpose-built solution to help enable storage tiering and end-to-end workflow in HPC environments.”
http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/seagate-engineers-tiered-archive-system-for-hpc-storage/
PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 16, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- #Cloudera, the global provider of the fastest, easiest, and most secure data management and analytics platform built on #Apache ™ Hadoop ® and the latest open source technologies, announced today it ranked 142 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500™, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, and energy tech companies in North America. Cloudera grew 609 percent over this three-year period.
“The past few years have been tremendous for Cloudera – not just for overall company growth but also moving the needle with our partners, customers, products, and the open source community,” said Tom Reilly, chief executive officer at Cloudera. “What matters most is the impact our customers are experiencing, and able to realize through the use of our technology. Our growth simultaneously increases as the value of big data becomes more apparent.”
TECH DELL
CEO Michael Dell Says Encryption Backdoors Are 'a Horrible Idea'
SAN FRANCISCO - SEPTEMBER 22: #Dell CEO Michael Dell delivers a keynote address during the 2010 Oracle Open World conference on September 22, 2010 in San Francisco, California. The Oracle Open World runs through September 23.
@MichaelDell, chief executive officer of his self-named computer company, knows on whose side he stands amid the great encryption debate—the question of whether tech companies should supply certain governments with access to their users’ encrypted communications. He is adamantly opposed.
“Our position on creating a back door inside our products so that the government can get in is that it’s a horrible idea,” he told the Telegraph, a United Kingdom-based newspaper, on Sunday.
Dell’s condemnation comes soon after Theresa May, the British home secretary, earlier this month unveiled a draft piece of legislation that proposes to grant UK spy agencies and law enforcement sweeping surveillance powers. The draft Investigatory Powers Bill requires communications service providers to assist the government in investigations by “maintaining the ability to remove any encryption applied by the CSP to whom the notice relates,” as the text of the bill states.
Depending upon the proposed bill’s implementation, it could greatly hinder or even end strong #encryption in the country. (Although other people are skeptical that the bill, if adopted, would change much.)
http://fortune.com/2015/11/16/dell-encryption-backdoors-horrible-idea/
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#Nexenta (@Nexenta) the global leader in Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage ( #OpenSDS ), today announced they will join #Supermicro and showcase its unified product portfolio for file, block and object storage at #SC15, November 16-19 in Austin, TX. SC15 brings together the international #supercomputing community to provide a unique venue for spotlighting HPC and scientific applications, and innovations from around the world.
In booth #1518, Nexenta will provide insight on its award-winning OpenSDS solutions, including #NexentaStor, designed specifically for unified file and block storage; ranging from spinning disk to hybrid to all flash solutions. The collaboration between Nexenta and Supermicro offers customers high-performance #SDS solutions and advanced technology integration for high performance data workloads of any scale. Together their unified storage solution provides a scalable high IOPS storage infrastructure that delivers performance, reliability and cost effectiveness as well as ease of management with robust automation features. For more information, please refer to the #Supermicro – Nexenta Reference Architecture Datasheet.
AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 16, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SC15 - Today, #QLogic ® announced that its #100Gb Ethernet (100GbE) technology would be showcased as part of the #SCinet Network Research Exhibition (NRE) demonstration of large data flow transfers across a highly intelligent #SoftwareDefinedNetworking ( #SDN ) #OpenFlow ring at SC15. In this demonstration, #QLogic 100Gb Ethernet Adapter technology is being leveraged by the California Institute of Technology, #Dell, EchoStreams, Stanford University and the University of Michigan to enable large data flows to traverse across various paths based on either the shortest or the fastest routes of availability using a custom SDN application spanning connections on the show floor as well as from remote sites leveraging #darkfibre.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/globenewswire/6024540.htm
Cloud consolidation has been running fast and furious over the past 12 months or so, possibly equaling or even surpassing the frenetic M&A activity of the previous year. But here’s the thing: It ain’t over yet, according to Forrester Research.
Per Forrester’s FORR -0.61% Predictions 2016: The Cloud Accelerates report:
The consolidation and shakeout will accelerate in 2016, which will force many current providers to refocus on a narrower field, retreat from cloud, or exit. The major public cloud providers will gain strength, with #Amazon, #IBM #SoftLayer, and #Microsoft capturing a greater share of the business cloud services market.
In 2015, IBM IBM 1.49% was especially busy, snapping up #Gravitant, #BlueBox, and #Cleversafe to build its cloud computing story. But #HewlettPackard, #Cisco, and #Datapipe were also buyers in what seemed to be a nutty round-robin of acquisitions.
And then there’s the proposed $67 billion #Dell - EMC deal that, if completed, would concentrate the cloud efforts from #VMware, Dell and #EMC EMC 0.96% in the #Virtustream unit.
http://fortune.com/2015/11/16/cloud-consolidation-2016/
A "watershed announcement" from #Google regarding quantum computers is expected to be made on 8 December, according to a board member of the quantum computing firm #D-Wave. Steve Jurvetson gave no other details about what Google is planning, though his comments were related to an image projecting the predicted exponential progress of quantum computing over the next few years.
Since they were first theorised by the physicist Richard Feynman in 1982, #quantumcomputers have promised to bring about a new era of ultra-powerful computing. Google has been among the companies pioneering their development, using systems built by the Canadian firm D-Wave to explore the technology's potential for advancing #artificialintelligence and machine learning
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/google-plans-watershed-quantum-computing-announcement-december-1528915
#Intel and its server maker partners are betting that high performance computing can become an enterprise mainstay.
The chip giant added to its #ScalableSystemFramework and rolled out a new architecture call #Omni-Path to make high performance computing ( #HPC ) clusters available for more workloads.
#Dell announced new systems using the Intel architecture and approach to HPC on Monday. #Cray, #Fujitsu, #HPE, #Lenovo, #SGI, #PenguinComputing among others are planning to launch systems revolving around Intel's Omni-Path Architecture.
Intel said volume shipments are likely in the first quarter. Dell rolled out specialized HPC systems for #genomicdata analysis, manufacturing and research.
According to Intel, the popularity of big data and analytics workloads will take HPC mainstream. As a result, HPC techniques and fabric approaches will mean enterprises carve out HPC budgets. Intel calls this development an "HPC Everywhere" era.
#Graphenano, the Spain-based manufacturer of graphene, announced the installation of a manufacturing plant for batteries with #GraphenePolymer in Yecla, (Murcia) Spain.
This plant will reportedly host twenty assembly and manufacturing lines of high added value batteries which should produce, at full capacity, more than a million cells. The production of the first cells in this plant is foreseen for the months of January and February, and will be at full capacity in the second half of the next year.
The plant, which is over 7.000m2 in size, will enjoy the latest technology for the manufacturing of this new kind of batteries, equipment designed specifically for this development. The company's polymer for battery cathodes is said to improve the safety when using it, since they do not produce gases, do not explode and get less hot, in addition to being the only batteries in the world that keep working after being short-circuited. Certification tests carried out in close collaboration with the independent Dekra institutes in Spain (AT4 wireless) and TuV in Germany have exceeded 1000 Wh/kg, which is five times more than the current battery technologies.
Networking giant #Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) reported its fiscal first-quarter results after the market closed on Nov. 12. The numbers were solid, with Cisco beating analyst estimates for both revenue and earnings, while growth was driven by the core switching business, as well as faster-growing segments. However, a weak outlook for the second quarter, resulting from a slowdown in orders, overshadowed Cisco's results.
Cisco reported quarterly revenue of $12.7 billion, up 3.6% year over year and $30 million higher than analysts were expecting. Non-GAAP EPS jumped to $0.59, up 9.3% year over year and $0.03 better than the average analyst estimate. On a GAAP basis, Cisco reported earnings of $0.48 per share, up 37.1% year over year.
#NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) has lost 8.98% during the past week and dropped 7.42% in the last 4 weeks. The shares are however, negative as compared to the S&P 500 for the past week with a loss of 5.56%. NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) has underperformed the index by 6.96% in the last 4 weeks. Investors should watch out for further signals and trade with caution.
NetApp, Inc. is up 3.11% in the last 3-month period. Year-to-Date the stock performance stands at -22.92%.The company shares have dropped 25.86% in the past 52 Weeks. On December 5, 2014 The shares registered one year high of $43.58 and one year low was seen on September 30, 2015 at $28.75. The 50-day moving average is $32.68 and the 200 day moving average is recorded at $32.42. S&P 500 has rallied 0.9% during the last 52-weeks.
http://newswatchinternational.com/news/company-shares-of-netapp-inc-nasdaqntap-drops-by-8-98.html
Germany has officially powered up its new 2.2 petaflop #JURECA #supercomputer.
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/16/jureca_germany_goes_live/
#Quantumcomputing is the Holy Grail for computer scientists because it promises to make computers exponentially more powerful. So imagine the intrigue within the scientific community following news of a ‘watershed’ quantum computing announcement coming from #Google on Dec. 8. Let’s hope it’s not just a remake of the 1980′s TV show ‘Quantum Leap’… The New York Times did a fascinating piece on Stonehenge (above), unmasking numerous mysteries and opening discussion on others. Theories that the rock piles were an early smartwatch for giant Druids were debunked … A farmer spent two decades and millions building the perfect genetically modified apple. His latest iteration, the Arctic, won’t brown regardless how long its flesh is exposed and doesn’t even bruise. Now he just needs to find someone brave enough to eat it … #Apple Chief Tim Cook began his #iPad Pro publicity tour by calling the #Microsoft Surface Book laptop/tablet hybrid ‘diluted’ because he feels it is neither a good laptop nor tablet. That’s a lot of bravado for a man armed with an iPad the size of a TV tray and a cloth keyboard.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2015/11/15/quantum-computers-and-really-big-ipads/
On Monday, a tiny three-year old startup called #Workspot will announce a partnership with #Nutanix, a hot startup worth $US2 billion that’s been upending how companies build their data centres.
The news will likely cause a bit of heartburn to two big, embattled enterprise software companies: #VMware and #Citrix.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/new-nutanix-partner-workspot-wont-please-vmware-citrix-2015-11
Gene M. Amdahl, chief architect of #IBM 's System/360 mainframe and later the creator of the IBM plug-compatible #mainframe vendor that bore his name, has died aged 92.
Amdahl was born in South Dakota, earning a bachelor's degree in engineering physics at the state university in 1948.
One of the few private vendors left in the all-flash storage market, #SolidFire, is taking a different route than its better known -- and newly public -- rival, #PureStorage Inc.
Both vendors began shipping arrays in 2011, but Pure quickly amassed more than $530 million in funding, ramped up sales and became a public company in October. SolidFire took a more measured approach, picked up $150 million in funding, and set out to build a base of large enterprise and cloud-provider customers. Pure racked up nearly three times the revenue as SolidFire in 2014, according to research firm Gartner Inc., but also incurred heavy losses.
SolidFire founder and CEO Dave Wright said his strategy is to steadily grow its base and hit profitability quicker than Pure. #SearchSolidStateStorage recently spoke with Wright about SolidFire's plans and the all-flash storage market.
The rapid maturation of the #Apache #Hadoop ecosystem has caught the eyes of HPC professionals who are eager to take advantage of emerging big data tools, such as #Spark. One #HPC group presenting on the topic at the SC15 show this week in Austin, Texas, is Rutgers University’s RADICAL team.
The Research in Advanced Distributed Cyberinfrastructure and Applications Laboratory ( #RADICAL ) duo of professors Shantenu Jha (Rutgers) and Andre Luckow (Clemson University) are giving a three-and-a-half hour tutorial Sunday morning demonstrating how the power of Hadoop-resident frameworks, such as MapReduce and Spark–as well as the group’s own RADICAL-Cybertools suite–can further the analytical goals of the HPC professional.
In his introduction to the course, Professor Luckow discusses about how the HPC world can learn and benefit from the tools and analytic approaches that have been championed in the Hadoop world. “High performance computing (HPC) environments have traditionally been designed to meet the compute demands of scientific applications; data has only been a second order concern,” Professor Luckow says in his tutorial introduction, which can be viewed on YouTube.
“However, with science moving toward data-driven discoveries relying on correlations and patterns in data to form scientific hypotheses,” Professor Luckow continues, “the limitations of HPC approaches become apparent. Low-level abstractions and architectural paradigms, such as the separation of storage and compute, are not optimal for data-intensive applications.”
While there are powerful kernels and libraries available for traditional HPC, the lack of “functional completeness” of analytical libraries is holding them back, the professor says. “In contrast, the Apache Hadoop ecosystem has grown to be rich with analytical libraries, e.g. Spark MLlib,” he says. “Bringing the richness of the Hadoop ecosystem to traditional HPC environments will help address some gaps.”
http://www.hpcwire.com/2015/11/13/hadoop-and-spark-get-radical-at-sc15/
#Graphene is the first truly two-dimensional crystal, which was obtained experimentally and investigated regarding its unique chemical and physical properties. In 2010, two MIPT alumni, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for ground-breaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene". There has now been a considerable increase in the number of research studies aimed at finding commercial applications for graphene and other two-dimensional materials. One of the most promising applications for graphene is thought to be #biomedical technologies, which is what researchers from the Laboratory of Nanooptics and Plasmonics at the MIPT's Center of Excellence for #Nanoscale Optoelectronics are currently investigating.
Label-free biosensors are relatively new in biochemical and pharmaceutical laboratories, and have made work much easier. The sensors enable researchers to detect low concentrations of biologically significant molecular substances (RNA, DNA, proteins, including antibodies and antigens, viruses and bacteria) and study their chemical properties. Unlike other biochemical methods, fluorescent or radioactive labels are not needed for these biosensors, which makes it easier to conduct an experiment, and also reduces the likelihood of erroneous data due to the effects that labels have on biochemical reactions. The main applications of this technology are in pharmaceutical and scientific research, medical diagnostics, food quality control and the detection of toxins. Label-free biosensors have already proven themselves as a method of obtaining the most reliable data on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs in pre-clinical studies. The advantages of this method are explained by the fact that the kinetics of the biochemical reactions of the ligand (active substance) with different targets can be observed in real time, which allows researchers to obtain more accurate data about the reaction rates, which was not previously possible. The data obtained gives information about the efficacy of a drug and also its toxicity, if the targets are "healthy" cells or their parts, which the drug, ideally, should not affect
http://app.ecnmag.com/news/2015/11/researchers-design-and-patent-graphene-biosensors
#Microsoft will share its #LIQUi|> (no, that’s not a typo) simulator software with the public, so academics can test quantum computing operations on laptops or in the cloud.
On Friday, Microsoft is releasing simulation software that it says will let academics, scientists, or even do-it-yourself eggheads simulate #quantumcomputing on their laptops.
The promise of quantum computing, which breaks the nuts-and-bolts of computing down to the sub-atomic level, is that it can solve problems that go far beyond the capabilities of even today’s most powerful computers.
The current generation of computers represent all data as ones and zeros. It’s all a very binary, on-or-off proposition. By relying on smaller particles, like photons or electrons, a quantum computer would be able to look at data that can hold several contradictory states at the same time. For instance, instead of those ones and zero, a quantum computer would deal with quantum bits (also known as #qubits), which would accommodate multiple states.
http://fortune.com/2015/11/13/microsoft-quantum-computing-simulator/
#Microsoft will share its #LIQUi|> (no, that’s not a typo) simulator software with the public, so academics can test quantum computing operations on laptops or in the cloud.
On Friday, Microsoft is releasing simulation software that it says will let academics, scientists, or even do-it-yourself eggheads simulate #quantumcomputing on their laptops.
The promise of quantum computing, which breaks the nuts-and-bolts of computing down to the sub-atomic level, is that it can solve problems that go far beyond the capabilities of even today’s most powerful computers.
The current generation of computers represent all data as ones and zeros. It’s all a very binary, on-or-off proposition. By relying on smaller particles, like photons or electrons, a quantum computer would be able to look at data that can hold several contradictory states at the same time. For instance, instead of those ones and zero, a quantum computer would deal with #quantumbits (also known as #qubits), which would accommodate multiple states.
http://fortune.com/2015/11/13/microsoft-quantum-computing-simulator/
With Rancher, developers can now deploy and orchestrate stateful containers reliably across any cloud using Docker
CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#RancherLabs today announced that Rancher, the company’s flagship product for building a private container service, has introduced support for orchestrating #PersistentStorageServices for #Docker, making it possible for developers to deploy storage reliably in conjunction with containerized applications. The new feature builds on Docker 1.9 volume plugin capabilities, and makes it easier for developers to run applications that require stateful databases and persistent storage.
“Deploying Dockerized applications that store persistent data required users to create a custom solution that integrated with storage platforms running outside of a Docker environment,” said John Katsaros, principal analyst at FocusOnDocker. “Rancher is continuing to push the industry forward with this latest offering. Developers will now be able to outline the exact storage capabilities needed for each application, drastically simplifying the process.”
When used in conjunction with a Docker 1.9 volume plugin, Rancher users are now able to:
Orchestrate the deployment and configuration of storage services directly on container hosts, utilizing any software defined storage platforms shipped as containers, including, for example, Gluster, Ceph and NexentaEdge.
Launch applications using Docker Compose that can leverage these storage services to automatically create and mount persistent Docker volumes to support stateful application services such as traditional databases.
Utilize any vendor-specific advanced storage features offered by storage services such as snapshot, backup, remote replication and data analytics.
Deploy an application with all of its necessary storage services on any virtual machine or bare metal server, running in any public cloud or private data center.
#Dell aims to reduce the cost and complexity of campus networks with an innovative new architecture that does away with traditional core, aggregation and access layers. Current estimates put around 95% of end user traffic going through the core of these networks and Dell’s solution simply increases this to 100% allowing all network configuration to be fully centralised.
The #C9010 #NetworkDirector forms the foundation and can be initially deployed as a core switching platform for SME data centres. The new architecture comes into play when it’s teamed up with Dell’s #C1048P rapid access nodes, or port extenders. #DellNetworking
http://www.itpro.co.uk/networking/25592/dell-networking-c9010-network-director-review
YouTube is first and foremost a video portal, the world’s largest and most popular online collection of moving images. But it’s also a search engine, the world’s second largest, trailing only its parent company, #Google. And while the library on #YouTube is made up of videos, in practice it has also become the world’s largest streaming music service, used by more people than well-known names like #Spotify or #Apple when it comes to consuming songs and albums.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/12/9723496/youtube-music-app-offline-background
Tintri siren's song helps old order give way to new
Execs come and execs go but some moves seem to illustrate the zeitgeist – and this is one such move. Tony Chang has left his #NetApp #ONTAP engineering VP role to join Tintri as an executive veep, not as a senior VP but an exec VP for #Tintri ’s engineering of its VM-aware systems
Telco behemoth claims support for high system capacity
Chinese telecoms equipment behemoth #Huawei has a converged system called #FusionSphere, which now runs #SAP #HANA, the in-memory database.
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/12/huaweis_hana_box/
