Thursday, March 30, 2017

Amazon and Walmart are in an all-out price war that is terrifying America’s biggest brands

The result in recent months has been a high-stakes race to the bottom between #Walmart and #Amazon that seems great for shoppers, but has consumer packaged goods brands feeling the pressure.

The pricing crackdown also comes in the wake of Walmart’s $3 billion acquisition of #Jet.com and its CEO Marc Lore. Lore now runs Walmart.com and has said one of his mandates is to create new ways for the retailer to beat everyone else on price, including Amazon.

The pricing pressure has ignited intense wargaming inside the largest CPG companies, according to people familiar with discussions at Procter & Gamble, Unilever, PepsiCo, Mondelez and Kimberly-Clark. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

“It’s dominating the conversation every week,” said an executive at one of these companies.

Representatives for these companies either declined to comment or failed to respond to requests for comment. Executives inside these companies would only speak on a condition of anonymity because negotiations with retailers are confidential.

An Amazon spokesperson said in an email: “At Amazon we protect low prices for our customers, every single day — nothing has changed in terms of our focus or how we operate.”
https://www.recode.net/2017/3/30/14831602/amazon-walmart-cpg-grocery-price-war

Toshiba shareholders approve NAND flash sale

Turning #flash into a load of old #Tosh #Toshiba shareholders have approved a proposal to split off the Japanese company's prized #NAND flash memory unit. This opens the way for the sale of a majority stake or even all the business which should make up for the losses at Tosh’s US nuclear arm Westinghouse, which filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors on Wednesday. Toshiba is putting that business up for auction. The flash chip sale should raise at least $9 billion for half the company and Tosh said it believes the unit will be valued at around $18 billion. A source with knowledge of the planned sale said that about 10 potential bidders are interested. Those suitors include #WesternDigital which operates a chip plant with Toshiba in Japan, #Micron, #SKHynix and a team of financial investors. CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa and other executives faced angry questions from shareholders after managers last year described the chip and nuclear businesses as core units at the conglomerate. One shareholder was shocked that something which was supposed to be a company “pillar turned into a hole”. Another moaned that Toshiba has become a laughing stock around the world and the management does not have a clue what is going on. Toshiba expects to book one of the biggest losses in Japanese corporate history with a net loss of $9 billion this year.
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/43255-toshiba-shareholders-approve-nand-flash-sale

Dell Technologies Q4 highlights PC surge, debt reduction

#DellTechnologies said its PC shipments were up to the highest levels since 2011 in the fourth quarter as its infrastructure unit had revenue of $8.4 billion. The company, which is integrating the acquisition of #EMC, said it posted a fourth quarter operating loss of $1.7 billion with revenue of $20.1 billion. The non-GAAP operating profit was $1.8 billion.

Dell Technologies also said it paid down $7 billion in debt in the quarter. For fiscal 2017, Dell said it had an operating loss of $3.3 billion on revenue of $61.6 billion.

According to the company, non-GAAP figures will be used to detail the business results due to the EMC transaction and Dell going private.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/dell-technologies-q4-highlights-pc-surge-debt-reduction/

VMware Announces $300 million Stock Purchase Agreement with Dell

#VMware, INC. NYSE: VMW), a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility, today announced that VMware has entered into a Stock Purchase Agreement with #DellTechnologies, Inc., under which VMware agreed to purchase $300 million worth of VMware Class A Common Stock currently held by a Dell subsidiary. This $300 million Stock Purchase Agreement is part of the company's previously disclosed $1.2 billion buyback authorization through the end of fiscal 2018. Separately, Dell Technologies plans to use the $300 million proceeds to repurchase the Dell tracking stock for VMware, DVMT, as described in Dell's announcement today. The $300 million stock purchase is expected to be completed by the end of VMware's fiscal Q2 2018 ending on August 4, 2017. The impact of the $300 million Stock Purchase Agreement on VMware's previously provided guidance for fiscal Q1 2018 and full year fiscal 2018 diluted share count is not expected to be material. A previously announced $500 million Stock Purchase Agreement with Dell Technologies, Inc. was completed in early fiscal Q1 2018.

http://news.sys-con.com/node/4044965

Dell Says FYQ4 PC Sales the Best in Six Years

#DellTechnologies (DVMT), the holding company that owns #Dell and what was EMC, and also owns 81% of #VMware (VMW), today announced fiscal Q4 results for the three months ended February 3rd, marked by what it says were its best personal computer sales in six years. Dell said its Q4 PC shipments of 11 million rose by 8.2%, year over year, “the largest volume of products shipped since the fourth quarter of 2011.”

http://www.barrons.com/articles/BL-TB-54518

Extreme buys Brocade's data center networking business for $55m

#ExtremeNetworks will buy #Brocade 's data center networking business for $55 million in cash from its soon-to-be new owner #Broadcom. The deal gives Extreme the products descended from its original Ethernet rival #Foundry. Communications chip maker Broadcom picked up Brocade in November for about $5.5 billion plus $400m of debt, but last month sold off its Wi-Fi division #RuckusWireless for $800m to Arris International. With Broadcom’s acquisition technically still to close, Extreme’s purchase requires that to happen without any issues arising
http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/core-edge/extreme-buys-brocades-data-center-networking-business-for-55m/98079.article

Dell's EMC Deal Hits Hard Reality of Rising Costs, Cloud Shift

Chief Executive Officer #MichaelDell is betting the $67 billion merger with #EMC can help the company succeed in a market that’s under pressure from providers such as #Amazon .com Inc. and #Microsoft Corp. About six months after completing one of the biggest mergers ever in the technology industry, #DellTechnologies Inc. is grappling with changing tastes in hardware and rising component costs, underlining the challenges of the EMC Corp. acquisition. In its fiscal fourth quarter, Round Rock, Texas-based Dell reported sales of $20.1 billion and an operating loss of $1.7 billion. During a call with analysts Thursday, Chief Financial Officer Tom Sweet said the company is paying more for some memory and display parts that go into its big lineup of tech gear. Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell is betting the $67 billion merger with EMC can help the company succeed in a market that’s under pressure from providers such as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Cloud system infrastructure services -- which let customers access computer and storage capabilities without the hassle of buying their own gear -- are expected to see revenue growth of 37 percent to $34.6 billion this year, according to research firm Gartner. "So far so good," Sweet said in an interview. But the numbers have to be put “against the backdrop of an ever-changing market," he said. “We’re generally on track from where we thought we would be. It’s early on, but we are seeing the power of the portfolios and the relationships starting to evolve.” Dell had sales of $16.2 billion in the fiscal quarter ended Oct. 28, which included 52 days of EMC’s and VMware’s results. With the merger, Dell combined its well-known computers and servers with EMC’s lineup of storage gear. Sweet told analysts, without giving specifics, that the cost of key parts that go into personal computers and other products were rising. Rivals such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. have highlighted this trend recently too. "While Dell did not quantify any impacts from increased component pricing, nor constraints, it is clear that the company has seen a broad-based increase that will become more notable going forward," Aaron Rakers, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co., wrote in a research note. The Client Solutions Group, which includes personal computers, had sales of $9.8 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter, up 11 percent from a year earlier. The Infrastructure Solutions Group, which includes servers and storage, had sales of $8.4 billion, without giving year-ago numbers. Rakers said storage sales likely dropped around 8 percent, based on his estimates, adding that Dell reported "solid results" in some of its newer offerings in that business. Since the closing of the deal, Dell has paid down about $7 billion in debt, the company said. #VMware, also part of the Dell deal with EMC, had revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter of $1.9 billion with operating income of $565 million.

http://m.thevarguy.com/cloud-computing-services-and-business-solutions/dells-emc-deal-hits-hard-reality-rising-costs-cloud-

CloudNativeCon: Dell joins Cloud Native Computing Foundation

#DellTechnologies has become the latest Platinum member to join the #CloudNativeComputingFoundation ( #CNCF ) – a part of the #LinuxFoundation responsible for a number of open source projects that deal with microservice architecture. This type of architecture envisions every application as a collection of loosely coupled services that can be developed and scaled independently, using container orchestration technologies. Dell will get some say on where the projects are heading, in exchange for $370,000 in annual membership fees. The CNCF has also revealed that German Linux specialist #SUSE has joined as a Gold level member, while #HarmonyCloud, #QAware, #Solinea, and #TenxCloud have joined as Silver members. The announcements were made at the CloudNativeCon in Berlin, an event collocated with KubeCon Europe – another open source conference dedicated squarely to Kubernetes.

http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/colo-cloud/cloudnativecon-dell-joins-cloud-native-computing-foundation/98073.article

Remember that 131% bump on Nutanix IPO? It's now just 18%

Shares of #Nutanix dropped nearly 6 percent on Wednesday, the day that its 180-day lockup on sales by insiders ended. The San Jose-based hyperconverged data technology company has given up much of its early gains in the six months since it went public at $16 a share.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/03/29/nutanix-ipo-shares-ntnx.html#i1

The World’s 6 Weirdest Data Centers

A lot goes on behind the scenes every time you “like” your friend’s baby photos or search for recipes. Thousands of powerful computers retrieve and update the information on your screen. Although important, the windowless, football-field-size buildings that house those computers aren’t exactly exciting. But a number of companies have built data centers in unusual locations, giving them a touch of mystique. In Sweden, for example, #Facebook (FB, +0.63%) constructed a data center that uses chilly Arctic wind to prevent the computer servers inside from overheating. Meanwhile, #Microsoft (MSFT, +0.28%) is researching how to build underwater data centers that would require less energy to cool. Whatever the case, companies carefully consider where to open data centers, keeping in mind security, cost, and proximity to their users. Here are some of the most atypical data centers and a couple of out-there ideas for future facilities.

http://fortune.com/2017/03/29/data-centers-unusual-locations/

A scramble at Cisco exposes uncomfortable truths about U.S. cyber defense

When #WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disclosed earlier this month that his anti-secrecy group had obtained CIA tools for hacking into technology products made by U.S. companies, security engineers at #Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) swung into action. The Wikileaks documents described how the Central Intelligence Agency had learned more than a year ago how to exploit flaws in Cisco's widely used Internet switches, which direct electronic traffic, to enable eavesdropping. Senior Cisco managers immediately reassigned staff from other projects to figure out how the CIA hacking tricks worked, so they could help customers patch their systems and prevent criminal hackers or spies from using the same methods, three employees told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The Cisco engineers worked around the clock for days to analyze the means of attack, create fixes, and craft a stopgap warning about a security risk affecting more than 300 different products, said the employees, who had direct knowledge of the effort. That a major U.S. company had to rely on WikiLeaks to learn about security problems well-known to U.S. intelligence agencies underscores concerns expressed by dozens of current and former U.S. intelligence and security officials about the government's approach to cybersecurity. That policy overwhelmingly emphasizes offensive cyber-security capabilities over defensive measures, these people told Reuters, even as an increasing number of U.S. organizations have been hit by hacks attributed to foreign governments. Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior director of the White House Situation Room in the Obama administration, said now that others were catching up to the United States in their cyber capabilities, "maybe it is time to take a pause and fully consider the ramifications of what we’re doing.” U.S. intelligence agencies blamed Russia for the hack of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election. Nation-states are also believed to be behind the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the 2015 breach of the U.S. Government's Office of Personnel Management. CIA spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak declined to comment on the Cisco case, but said it was the agency's "job to be innovative, cutting-edge, and the first line of defense in protecting this country from enemies abroad." The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the CIA and NSA, referred questions to the White House, which declined to comment.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN17013U

VMWARE PATCHES PWN2OWN VM ESCAPE VULNERABILITIES

#VMware on Tuesday patched a series of vulnerabilities uncovered earlier this month at #Pwn2Own. The flaws enabled an attacker to execute code on a workstation and carry out a virtual machine escape to attack a host server. Monty Ijzerman, manager of the company’s Security Response Center, confirmed that VMware had pushed patches for the bugs, critical and moderate issues in its ESXi, VMware Workstation, and VMware #Fusion products.

https://threatpost.com/vmware-patches-pwn2own-vm-escape-vulnerabilities/124629/

Weaving Together Flash For Nearly Unlimited Scale

IT is almost a foregone conclusion that when it comes to infrastructure, the industry will follow the lead of the big #hyperscalers and cloud builders, building a foundation of standardized hardware for serving, storing, and switching and implementing as much functionality and intelligence as possible in the software on top of that to allow it to scale up and have costs come down as it does. The reason this works is that these companies have complete control of their environments, from the processors and memory in the supply chain to the Linux kernel and software stack maintained by hundreds to thousands of developers. This task, as we have pointed out, is made much easier by the fact that what these companies are scaling up are buy a few handfuls of applications. Enterprises, by contrast, do not have these resources and this degree of control over their environments, and they have to rely on others to bring the software to market and support it for them. And not every application is going to be at a very high scale, so the compute and storage have to scale down as well as out. This is precisely what storage startup Excelero wants to do with flash storage. Forget disks. These are for companies that need to store exabytes of data. If you only need to store terabytes to petabytes, a compelling argument can be made for going all flash, and the NVMesh software that Excelero has created makes it relatively easy to create a pool of flash that is perhaps a better server-SAN hybrid than the other commercial products out there – particularly when it comes to latency and scale. And as the company’s product name suggests, NVM-Express is at the heart of the architecture of its clustered flash storage
https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/03/29/weaving-together-flash-nearly-unlimited-scale/

Can Dow's Cisco Take Arista's Best Customers With Software Bait?

Fighting back against its rival #Arista Networks (ANET), #Cisco Systems (CSCO) plans to sell operating system software for networking devices without requiring customers to purchase high-end hardware, says a report by The Information. It could be a good move by Cisco, a Dow Jones industrial average component, says Mitch Steves, an analyst at RBC Capital. He says Cisco could win more business from internet and tech companies such as Microsoft (MSFT) and Facebook (FB). They've been the biggest customers of Arista.

http://www.investors.com/news/technology/can-cisco-take-aristas-best-customers-with-software-bait/

4 fresh OpenStack guides and tutorials

Want a job in the IT industry? If you've got experience working with #OpenStack, landing that next position ought to be no problem. But how do you gain OpenStack skills and keep them sharp? In addition to the official project documentation, in-person and online training and certification programs, printed guides and books, there are also a number of great community-created resources. Every month we bring together the best of these for you into one handy package. Here's what we found recently. TripleO is a tool within the OpenStack umbrella that is used for installing, upgrading, and managing OpenStack clouds using some of the same services that sit within the cloud itself. When using TripleO to deploy OpenStack, sometimes, it can be difficult to figure out why something didn't happen as you expected it to if you don't know the right places to look. In this guide from Arie Bregman, learn how to debug a TripleO overcloud deployment failure. OpenStack and various container management tools are intermingled in many ways. Kolla is a project which provides "production-ready containers and deployment tools for operating OpenStack clouds" and getting started with Kolla is easy with this guide from Saverio Proto. Skydive is an open source tool for analyzing how your network is set up, both in term of protocols and topology, in real time. It can be a helpful tool for debugging issues with your OpenStack cloud's networking setup. Learn the basics of both the command-line client and the web interface in this handy guide to tracking service function chaining with Skydive from Bernard Cafarelli. OpenStack and OpenDaylight are often deployed together, the latter providing important networking capabilities which your cloud can utilize. OpenDaylight's Virtual Tenant Network is a tool that allows for a multi-tenant virtual network on a software-defined networking (SDN) controller. Learn how to configure your OpenStack cloud to make use of OpenDaylight VTN Manager in this guide from Vinoth Kumar Selvaraj

https://opensource.com/article/17/3/openstack-tutorials

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Cisco Reportedly Developing Standalone Networking OS

#Cisco has built a new network operating system that will allow users to run its most sophisticated networking features on older and lower-cost Cisco routers and switches, according to a report. The move to potentially disrupt its networking hardware business was first reported by The Information, which said that Cisco, for now, is not looking to have its network operating system available for non-Cisco switches. Customers who want to run the new operating system, known as Lindt, will be able to move away from switches based on proprietary high-performance Cisco chips to Cisco hardware that works with lower-cost chips, according to the report.
http://m.crn.com/news/networking/300084349/cisco-reportedly-developing-standalone-networking-os.htm

Here’s What LinkedIn Could Mean for the Microsoft Clou

Last June, when #Microsoft announced its $26.2 billion plan to buy social network provider #LinkedIn, most attention focused on the rich purchase price and how Microsoft could take advantage of all that LinkedIn user data. But other intriguing questions remain about the deal completed in December. First is whether Microsoft (MSFT, +0.28%) and LinkedIn will eventually converge their computing infrastructures. Microsoft, after all, is building #Azure as a competitor to Amazon Web Services, which leads the market in providing shared computing infrastructure to businesses. Toward that end, Microsoft, like #Amazon (AMZN, +2.26%), is aggressively recruiting third-party software companies to use its cloud data centers instead of (or in addition to) their own facilities. LinkedIn, not to put too fine a point on it, is (or was) a large third-party software company running its own data center facilities.
http://fortune.com/2017/03/29/microsoft-linkedin-cloud-data-center/

Hadoop fails to live up to the promise and the hypeThe cost and complexity of 

#Hadoop, the #opensource #bigdata framework first developed at #Yahoo for analyzing large data sets, is a total failure that costs too much and is too much of a headache to implement, say people in the field. In a lengthy and in-depth piece on #Datanami, big data experts describe Hadoop as too primitive for any kind of complex processing work or interactive, user-facing applications. At best, it's a batch process job, which is how Hadoop started out. It doesn't seem to have grown beyond it.

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3185559/storage/hadoop-fails-to-live-up-to-the-promise-and-the-hype.html

Cisco Launches UCS Blade VMware vSAN Ready Nodes

#Cisco has long been a #VMware #vSAN Ready Node partner with their more traditional rackmount servers available in all-flash configurations like the UCS C220 1U server and the #UCS C240 2U server. Now Cisco has certified their popular UCS B200 blades in an all flash configuration for vSAN. Most vSAN deployments are heavier on drive count, hence the popularity of rackmount servers. The UCS B200 blades are targeting a very different use case, which is plain to see given the unbalanced CPU/Memory footprint to storage capacity.

http://www.storagereview.com/cisco_launches_ucs_blade_vmware_vsan_ready_nodes

Graphene Cools Down Smart Phones, Computers & Other Electronic Devices

Cooling down smartphones and computers will now be easier as scientists have found out that graphene does it effortlessly. #Graphene is a very small material than can fit into tiny chips, which heats an individual's smartphone, computer, and other devices.

http://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/11159/20170328/graphene-cools-down-smart-phones-computers-and-other-electronic-devices.htm

Rigetti Computing Raises $64 Million in Series A and B Funding, Led by Andreessen Horowitz and Vy Capital

BERKELEY, Calif., March 28, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- #RigettiComputing, a leading #quantumcomputing start-up, announced it has raised $64 million in Series A and B funding. The Series A round of $24 million was led by Andreessen Horowitz. Vijay Pande, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has been appointed to Rigetti's Board of Directors, joining Rigetti CEO Chad Rigetti and angel investor Charlie Songhurst.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rigetti-computing-raises-64-million-in-series-a-and-b-funding-led-by-andreessen-horowitz-and-vy-capital-300430164.html

Lenovo and DataCore: Partnering to Make SDS Simple and Affordable

#Lenovo ’s new #DX8200D software-defined storage ( #SDS ) appliance with #DataCore’ s #SANsymphony is interesting technologically but also underscores the workings of the Lenovo Data Center Group’s ( #DCG ) partner strategy. In essence, Lenovo designed the DX8200D to exploit the capabilities of existing SAN arrays by virtualizing and pooling heterogeneous storage assets. Lenovo calls the new solution a “pre-integrated turnkey appliance” and noted that its centralized interface supports data protection, replication, de-duplication, compression, and other enterprise storage capabilities at a much lower price point and with less complexity than traditional solutions. As such, Lenovo customers can use the DX8200D to efficiently scale their storage infrastructures, increase the life/ ease the replacement of existing assets and simplify the transition to SDS. Based on Lenovo’s System x3650 M5 server, the DX8200D is designed to deliver exceptional response times, availability and utilization. Lenovo and DataCore also said they will work together to pre-test appliances in order to reduce deployment risks and increase time-to-value. Who are the target customers for the DX8200D? Mainly medium to large enterprises with existing heterogeneous storage infrastructures. Organizations in education, healthcare, industrial and the public sector should find the solution particularly valuable. Along with its SDS capabilities, the DX8200D is a good choice for accelerating analytics, CRM, ERP and transactional workloads, as well as for supporting business continuity and disaster recovery processes.

http://techspective.net/2017/03/28/lenovo-datacore-partnering-make-sds-simple-affordable/

Dell EMC Selects Viavi's Xgig 1000 Storage Network Test Solution

MILPITAS, Calif., March 28, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- #ViaviSolutions (NASDAQ: VIAV) today announced that #Dell #EMC has selected the #Xgig 1000 10/25/50/100 GE Analyzer for storage network test. #DellEMC is a global leader in #enterprisestorage systems, maintaining its position by innovating to address demand for new speeds, protocols and features. The company needs test capabilities that can keep pace with rapid market evolution, and the Xgig 1000 delivered with support for the broadest range of speeds and protocols in the industry. "In addition to supporting the higher speed, 32 Gb development needs to address new features such as mandatory forward error correction. Viavi's Xgig analyzer precisely met our requirements, allowing us to effectively test for link training, speed negotiation and FEC," said James Wynia, Director Product Management Networking, Dell EMC. "It was also very important that these new capabilities were incorporated in the familiar user interface and management environment, allowing us to leverage existing infrastructure and avoid retraining our team when time was of the essence." With support for 32 Gb FC and 25 GbE, the Xgig 1000 addresses all predominant speeds and protocols in storage networking, supporting manufacturer R&D and helping field installers deploy and troubleshoot data centers. This development continues a long line of market firsts, including support for 16, 32 and 128 Gb FC and 10, 25, and 100 GbE. The platform is known for innovative features such as: inline, non-intrusive capture and analysis and inline jamming; and true analog pass-through adapters keeping the linear nature of signal over copper connections. "What really puts Viavi at the forefront of its industry is its willingness to be both market-focused and standards-focused," Wynia added. "While the industry is still figuring out the standards, enterprises cannot wait to deploy new speeds and architectures, and we need to respond. Viavi is involved with standardization efforts but also working with its customers. That's what makes them a true pioneer."
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dell-emc-selects-viavis-xgig-1000-storage-network-test-solution-300429699.html

Salesforce's chief diplomat on what it's like being BFFs with Amazon's $12 billion cloud

On Tuesday, #Amazon Web Services, the online retailer's massively profitable cloud computing arm, introduced #AWSConnect — a new service that lets businesses set up their own call centers built on Amazon's own customer service tech. There are two big things to note with the launch of AWS Connect. First, it's just another example of how aggressive Amazon can be when it breaks into new markets. There are lots of call center software companies out there, some of which require expensive switchboard hardware to get started. AWS Connect is a price-competitive alternative that also offers customers the ability to set up Alexa-style voice menus. The other thing is that, at first blush, #AWSConnect looks like it could compete with customer service products from #Salesforce, the $58 billion enterprise software company that's become Amazon's BFF after its relationship with #Microsoft fell apart. But the two companies are using it to highlight just how tight their bonds have become, with Salesforce actually integrating with AWS Connect today. "I'm spending probably too much time in Seattle," where Amazon is based, jokes San Francisco-based Salesforce Executive VP of Strategic Alliances Ryan Aytay.
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-web-services-connect-salesforce-integration-2017-3

AWS launches Amazon Connect, productizes Amazon’s in-house contact center software

#AWS continues to add yet more software and services to build out its revenues and touchpoints with businesses that already use its cloud infrastructure for storage and to host and administer services and apps. The latest product, launching today, is #AmazonConnect, a cloud-based contact center solution. AWS said it is based on the same tech that Amazon itself has built and uses in-house “to power millions of customer conversations.” To some, this may not come as a surprise: a solution from AWS taking on traditional call centers was rumored to be in the works in February under the working title of “Lily”, according to a report in The Information. (That name isn’t mentioned today, although other parts of that report have proven to be correct.) In doing this, Amazon is moving into a business area that is already pretty crowded with companies that offer different aspects of cloud-based contact center solutions, including #Zoho, #Zendesk, #Freshdesk, and many more: some of these, including Zendesk, Zoho, and #Freshdesk, are actually partnering with #Amazon for this service. Taken together, these services are collectively disrupting a lot of the more costly, traditional ways of serving customers both for technical and other kinds of support. Many traditional solutions would not be cloud-based and might incorporate outsourcing or in-house teams, and infrastructure, for a business that is projected to be worth nearly $10 billion by 2019, with some of the current market leaders including #Avaya, #Cisco and #Genesys.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/aws-amazon-connect/

The Dell Wyse 3040 Blurs The Lines Between Entry PC And Secure Thin Client

The world of #VDI (Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure) has been quietly innovating without many IT folks being aware of just how much has shifted underneath their feet and the implications of the improved VDI experience. Compared to five years ago, today’s best VDI experience is night and day difference, driven by improvements on the server, networking and thin client. On the server side, we have virtualized graphics from both #NVIDIA and #AMD which reduce latency, and we have seen big server CPU improvements in performance per watt and core count. Networking has moved from 100Mb to gigabit and it’s easier to prioritize packets. Lastly, the performance of the endpoints are improving, which is dramatically redefining the virtual desktop experience. A great example of that is the new #Dell #Wyse 3040 thin client, announced today, which I want to talk about. First some background on VDI.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2017/03/28/the-dell-wyse-3040-blurs-the-lines-between-entry-pc-and-secure-thin-client/#7f90e0207cfe

Dell Technologies, Microsoft, partner with Jamii Bora

#DellTechnologies and #Microsoft have signed a memorandum of understanding with #JamiiBora Bank (JBBL) to supply laptops to students to the tune of Sh450 million. The partnership, initiated by JBBL’s leasing subsidiary, allows Dell, through its licensed local distributors, to supply the laptops through a leasing arrangement. Microsoft will provide negotiated Windows 10 and Office software packages under its ‘Shape the Future’ programme for use by students. Jamii Bora Group Chief Executive, Sam Kimani, said the partnership with the global ICT players was a vote of confidence in the bank. “We are in the final stages of signing up a leading private university for the leasing of laptops and are in contact with many other institutions of higher learning that have also shown great interest,” said Kimani.
https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/mobile/article/2001234349/dell-technologies-microsoft-partner-with-jamii-bora

6 Possible Suitors In The Storage Wars: Behind The Scenes Of HPE's $1B Plan To Acquire Nimble Storage

What you may not know about #HewlettPackardEnterprise' s bid to buy #Nimble Storage for $1 billion in cash is that #HPE was pitted against six other firms by the upstart developer of all-flash and hybrid flash storage systems and related technologies. Nimble, for a brief moment, was worth $2.2 billion, but that value would erode as its sales projections changed and it kicked off a search for a buyer in 2016. Nimble, confident it could fetch something close to its post-IPO value, would cast a wide net to see what it could catch. HPE, meanwhile, needed Nimble's technology to give it a full range of flash storage systems for SMB to large enterprise clients and help it better compete in the fast-growing all-flash storage market. Details of how the wheeling and dealing started, and how the final agreement was nailed down, are included in one of Nimble Storage's last SEC filings as an independent company. But instead of reading through all that legalese, CRN presents the highlights in a special timeline that takes you through the art of this deal.
http://m.crn.com/slide-shows/storage/300084329/6-possible-suitors-in-the-storage-wars-behind-the-scenes-of-hpes-1b-plan-to-acquire-nimble-storage.htm

Cisco UCS Spelunking. Exploring Cisco’s Splunk Community and Other News Bits

#Splunk is one of our key #CiscoUCS ISV Partners in the area of data and analytics for the #DataCenter. #BigData as we all know throws off tons of structured and unstructured data and the ability to discover its meaning and therefore value requires good analytics capabilities. This is where Splunk comes into play with Cisco UCS. Our C Series and S Series Cisco UCS offerings when combined with our Cisco UCS Big Data and Analytics Integrated Infrastructure CVDs deliver awesome data platforms for Splunk – we’re fast; we scale; we’re easy to manage; we save you Op Ex and Cap Ex budget; and we improve your Data Scientist’s productivity. Splunk, as a recognized and multiple winner in the IT Operations Analytics (ITOA) segment according to Gartner, provides the analytics engine. Together we’re a pretty awesome team. Over the past few years the Cisco UCS team has been working with the Splunk R&D team on various Cisco integrations ranging from UCS, and Nexus, to Spark and Security. Just recently the Cisco DEVNET team showcased their Splunk portal. It’s quite cool, check it out here to see the Data Center and other integrations available to you.
http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/cisco-ucs-spelunking-exploring-ciscos-splunk-community-and-other-news-bits

How IBM Has Become A Serious Contender In The Enterprise Cloud Services Market

When it comes to #publiccloud, #Amazon and #Microsoft enjoy the mindshare of enterprise decision makers. While Amazon’s #AWS is considered the category leader, Microsoft has not left any stone unturned to become a cloud-first company. Given the breadth and depth of the portfolio, industry veterans agree that AWS and #Azure are the top public cloud platforms for enterprises. These two companies have been making steady progress to consolidate their position in the market. #Microsoft is inching closer to #Amazon, which is widening the gap between the second and third slots. #Google, #IBM, and #Oracle are battling it out to become the third best enterprise cloud. What is IBM’ s strategy to become the top enterprise cloud platform leaving the competition behind? IBM’s big bets come in the form of #Blockchain, #CognitiveComputing, and #InternetofThings. These services are built on the foundation of #Bluemix and #Watson – the cloud and #AI platforms from IBM. Both Bluemix and Watson have emerged as the key differentiating factors for the company. Bluemix, a service built on top of OpenStack and Cloud Foundry, delivers IaaS and PaaS capabilities. Watson is an outcome of decades of research from IBM in the space of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Though the platform can deliver traditional cloud services such as VMs, storage, and networking, IBM is emphasizing on the forward-looking use cases revolving around data and analytics.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/janakirammsv/2017/03/26/how-ibm-has-become-a-serious-contender-in-the-enterprise-cloud-services-market/#28706cb43e63

Google is fighting with Symantec over encrypting the internet

#Google, which has accused #Symantec and its partners of misissuing tens of thousands of certificates for encrypted web connections, quietly announced Thursday that it’s downgrading the level and length of trust Chrome will place in certificates issued by Symantec. Encrypted web connections — HTTPS connections like those on banking sites, login pages or news sites like this one — are enabled by Certificate Authorities, which verify the identity of the website owner and issue them a certificate authenticating that they are who they say they are. Think of a Certificate Authority like a passport agency and the certificates they issue like passports. Without the CA’s authentication of a website owner’s identity, users can’t trust that the site on the other end of their HTTPS connection is really their bank. Symantec is a giant in the world of CAs — its certificates vouched for about 30 percent of the web in 2015. But Google claims that Symantec hasn’t been taking its responsibilities seriously and has issued at least 30,000 certificates without properly verifying the websites that received them. It’s a serious allegation that undermines the trust users can place in the encrypted web, and Google says it will begin the process of distrusting Symantec certificates in its Chrome browser. Symantec lashed out at Google’s claims, calling them “irresponsible” and “exaggerated and misleading.” “Since January 19, the Google Chrome team has been investigating a series of failures by Symantec Corporation to properly validate certificates. Over the course of this investigation, the explanations provided by Symantec have revealed a continually increasing scope of misissuance with each set of questions from members of the Google Chrome team; an initial set of reportedly 127 certificates has expanded to include at least 30,000 certificates, issued over a period spanning several years,” Google software engineer Ryan Sleevi wrote in a forum post outlining the case against Symantec. “This is also coupled with a series of failures following the previous set of misissued certificates from Symantec, causing us to no longer have confidence in the certificate issuance policies and practices of Symantec over the past several years.” To remedy the situation, Sleevi said that Chrome would reduce the length of time the browser trusts a Symantec-issued certificate and, over time, would require sites to replace old Symantec certificates with newer, trusted ones. Sleevi said that Symantec’s behavior failed to meet the baseline requirements for a Certificate Authority, creating what he called “significant risk for Google Chrome users.” He added: Symantec allowed at least four parties access to their infrastructure in a way to cause certificate issuance, did not sufficiently oversee these capabilities as required and expected, and when presented with evidence of these organizations’ failure to abide to the appropriate standard of care, failed to disclose such information in a timely manner or to identify the significance of the issues reported to them. These issues, and the corresponding failure of appropriate oversight, spanned a period of several years, and were trivially identifiable from the information publicly available or that Symantec shared.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/27/google-is-fighting-with-symantec-over-encrypting-the-internet/

Fujitsu, Lenovo to delay PC business integration: source

#Fujitsu Ltd. and China’s #Lenovo Group Ltd. will delay the planned integration of their personal computer businesses, a company source said Tuesday. The two companies initially aimed to reach a final agreement on the integration within March. But negotiations will not be concluded until April at the earliest, the source said. After the integration, the companies are expected to seize 40 percent of the domestic PC market. The deal will require regulatory approval. Fujitsu and Lenovo, the world’s biggest PC manufacturer, announced in October a strategic partnership including plans for the PC business integration. They are expected to maintain Fujitsu’s plants and employment in Date, Fukushima Prefecture, and Izumo, Shimane Prefecture. They are also likely to keep Fujitsu’s FMV PC brand. Lenovo is considering taking a majority stake in a joint venture the two firms will set up, while Fujitsu and the state-owned Development Bank of Japan are planning to hold the rest of the stake.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/03/28/business/corporate-business/fujitsu-lenovo-delay-pc-business-integration-source/#.WNxJayNOlnE

Former Intel CIO to lead Lenovo data centre business

Chinese PC-maker #Lenovo has hired former #Intel CIO Kim Stevenson to head its newly formed #datacentre business units. The newly formed business units will help Lenovo enter five market segments which include data centre infrastructure, #softwaredefineddatacenters, ‘ #hyperscale ’ systems, data center services, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence applications. These new units will each be led by a general manager who will develop offerings and go-to-market strategies and will take the responsibility of the entire business from end-to-end.

http://www.cbronline.com/news/verticals/the-boardroom/former-intel-cio-lead-lenovo-data-centre-business/

Winslow Technology Group LLC Names Ed Palmer as New Chief Operating Officer

MarketwiredMarch 27, 2017 WALTHAM, MA--(Marketwired - March 27, 2017) - IT solutions leader #Winslow Technology Group (WTG) announced today that Ed Palmer has joined the organization as Chief Operating Officer. In this role, Palmer will be responsible for operational strategy, planning, and execution to help scale the business. A twenty-eight-year veteran of the IT industry, Palmer brings expertise in the areas of strategic partner alliances, business development, sales operations, professional services, managed services, product marketing and operational efficiencies. Most recently, Palmer held a senior level executive position focusing on strategic partner alliances and operations at Forsythe Solutions Group, a large National Solution Provider. Palmer began his career at StorageTek where he was a standout performer for many years. He subsequently held several key field leadership positions at StorageTek, Storability Software and Sun Microsystems. Palmer earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic Engineering Technology from Wentworth Institute of Technology and his MBA from Boston University. Ed, his wife Kristen, and family reside in the Boston area.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/winslow-technology-group-llc-names-100000704.html

ZeroStack, Nimble Team on Cloud Storage

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – March 27, 2017 – #ZeroStack, the leader in making self-driving private cloud affordable for all companies, today announced a joint solution with #Nimble Storage that integrates ZeroStack’s Intelligent Cloud Platform with Nimble Storage systems to create a pre-tested, completely automated, and fully supported converged private cloud solution. With this joint solution, enterprises can now leverage their existing investments in Nimble Storage and ZeroStack installed on servers to build a highly resilient and high performing cloud for application development, running packaged enterprise applications and hosting. The combined ZeroStack/Nimble Storage solution offers several unique advantages:

ZeroStack’s Cloud Platform solution can now use Nimble Storage systems as back-end storage. Users can simply plug the Nimble Storage devices into the ZeroStack platform.Nimble Storage’s advanced features, such as cross-site replication with end-to-end encryption, and application-level policies under which applications like Oracle or SQL Server are specifically tuned to run on Nimble Storage with the highest performance.ZeroStack users can leverage Nimble’s QoS and Dedupe capabilities for overall storage efficiencies

http://www.channelpartnersonline.com/news/2017/03/zerostack-nimble-team-on-cloud-storage.aspx

New Supermicro Rack Scale Design Brings Open Management for On-Demand Cloud Scale Data Centers

#Supermicro RSD Empowers Data Center Operators with Agility, Maximum Utilization and Future-Proof Infrastructure SAN JOSE, Calif., March 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a global leader in compute, storage and networking technologies including green computing, announces a new Rack Scale Design (RSD) solution that empowers cloud service providers, telecoms, and Fortune 500 companies to build their own agile, efficient, software-defined data centers. Supermicro RSD is a total solution comprised of Supermicro server/storage/networking hardware and an optimized rack level management software that represents a superset of the open source RSD software framework from Intel® and industry standard Redfish RESTful APIs developed by DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force). Supermicro RSD solves the hardware management and resource utilization challenges of data centers, large or small, often with tens of thousands of servers distributed in hundreds of racks using traditional 1-to-1 server management tool IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface). Designed with the whole rack as the new management unit in mind, Supermicro RSD leverages open Redfish APIs to support composable infrastructure and enable interoperability among potential RSD offerings from different vendors. With industry standard #Redfish APIs, #Supermicro RSD can be further integrated into data center automation software such as #Ansible, #Puppet or #privatecloud software such as #OpenStack or #VMware.

http://www.fox34.com/story/35002027/new-supermicro-rack-scale-design-brings-open-management-for-on-demand-cloud-scale-data-centers

Sunday, March 26, 2017

VMware Validated Design for SDDC 4.0 Architecture Reference Poster

On March 2nd 2017 we released the #VMware Validated Design for #SoftwareDefinedDataCenter 4.0. A milestone release in our commitment to delivering our customers standardized, proven, and robust data-center level designs for the Software-Defined Data Center. The excitement from our customers and partners for this release has been phenomenal – from the wave of product updates, new advanced day-two operations, streamlined online access, and the release of the Solution Enablement Toolkit for partners. As we talk to customers and partners on a daily basis, there are many questions about the design. We wanted a way to provide a quick architecture reference as you get started with the design. It is my pleasure to share the architecture reference poster for the VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center 4.0.

https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2017/03/23/vmware-validated-design-sddc-4-0-architecture-reference-poster/

HPE Memory Pool Can Continue Application Performance Improvements

In a keynote talk at the 2017 FAST conference in Santa Clara, CA, Kimberly Keeton from #HPE spoke about Memory Driven Computing. At the same time that data demands are increasing due to #bigdata, )#IoT, #bigvideo and other drivers, microprocessor improvements (especially in processing speed) are limited by the slowing up scaling (often referred to as Moore’s Law). At the same time, data access to memory is becoming a bigger factor in overall system performance. As a consequence we need to look at a transition from processor-centric computing to memory-driven computing.

The development of new non-volatile memory options with various trade-offs between performance, data retention and endurance is leading to a new memory/storage hierarchy. Magnetic RAM ( #MRAM ), Resistive RAM ( #RRAM ) and Phase Change memory ( #PCM ) products are now available on the market offering a range of latencies.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2017/03/26/hpe-memory-pool-can-continue-application-performance-improvements/#5df53d0c5e82

What would a memory-centric system look like?

Data growth is increasing much faster than network bandwidth, while storage is getting cheaper and networks aren't. Which means, someday, moving to memory-centric systems. What would they look like? Here's a vision from the former director of #HPLabs and the new CTO of #WesternDigital.

One of the keynotes at the recently concluded Non-Volatile Memory Workshop 2017 was given by Martin Fink, a 31-year HP veteran and newly appointed CTO of Western Digital. Martin ran HP Labs, and HP's high-end server business, and has been thinking about memory-centric computing for years. If the terms "memristor" and "polymorphic computing" ring a bell, you can thank HP Labs for injecting them into the technosphere.

SCALE FIRST

Today, memory is anchored to server CPUs, and in-memory computing is all the rage. With new NVDIMMs and lots of DIMM slots, servers supporting 2TB of memory are now possible. Does that seem like plenty?

http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-would-a-memory-centric-system-look-like/

Dell EMC Remains No. 1 in IDC's Quarterly Converged Systems Market

For the full year 2016, the #hyperconverged system market surpassed $2.2 billion in global revenue, up 110 percent compared to 2015. As IDC data reported, #DellEMC was the fastest-growing hyperconverged system market vendor, growing revenue at a whopping 206 percent in 4Q 2016 year over year, based on the sales of #VxRail Appliances, #VxRack Systems and the #XC Series. Taking a look at IDC tables for 4Q 2016, Dell EMC held a 17 percent market share of the hyperconverged system market, behind only #Nutanix (20 percent), who together were distantly followed by #H3C (3 percent), #HPE (2 percent) and #SimpliVity (2 percent) among named vendors. "The converged systems market is going through a period of change," said Eric Sheppard, research director, enterprise storage and converged systems. "We are seeing strong growth from products with new architectures, increased levels of automation, and heavy use of software-defined technologies. "This growth has been offset by reduced spending on traditional converged systems and a conscious decision by some vendors to terminate some parts of their product portfolio."

http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/dell-emc-remains-no.-1-in-idc-s-quarterly-converged-systems-market

Scientists Turn To DNA For Digital Data Storage

#Quantumcomputers are supposed to be super computers — faster than any existing computer, capable of tackling the most complex and seemingly impossible computational problems within a reasonable amount of time. This computational power is made possible by how a quantum computer works. Unlike a traditional computer that reads, manipulates and stores information in bits that are only capable of taking the form of 0 or 1, a quantum computer makes use of quantum bits (qubits for short) that are capable of taking the form of 0, 1, or 0 and 1 at the same time (known as superpositioning). Achieving a state of superposition is challenging enough, if it can be achieved at all. What’s even harder is replicating and saving the data that a quantum computer can derive. Replicating is impossible because of quantum theory’s ‘no-cloning theorem’ — it’s simply impossible to program two atoms to be in the exact same quantum state. Storing data is difficult as well because there’s currently no hard drive that’s big enough to accommodate how much of it a quantum computer is capable of churning out. Because a quantum computer is essentially non-traditional, it makes sense that its hard drive should also be non-conventional, right? And nothing is as non-conventional as a DNA-based hard drive (at least until the next great idea comes along). In a recent paper published in the journal Science, scientists from Columbia University (Yaniv Erlich) and the New York Genome Center (Dina Zielinski) demonstrated how a single gram of DNA can effectively store up to 215 petabytes of digital data (equivalent to 215 million gigabytes of data). Theoretically, this will be just like storing every data ever recorded by humans in containers the size of a couple pickup trucks. They refer to their strategy as ‘DNA Fountain’ and it makes use of a three-dimensional instead of a two-dimensional surface, and this extra surface area is what makes it possible to store that almost unimaginable amount of data. To test their idea, Erlich and Zielinski encoded a few chosen files of different formats (including a movie, an image, a science paper, an Amazon gift card and even a virus called Zipbomb). Combined, the files gave them a total of about 72,000 DNA fragments. They had these fragments sequenced, decoded, then reassembled. And even if they lost over 2,000 of the fragments, they were still able to perfectly recreate the files. Which basically shows how viable DNA storage can be. Aside from its enormous storage capacity, DNA can also last for longer periods of time. Unlike CDs and DVDs, DNA will not degrade over time, as long as it is kept in a cold, dark, and dry storage. Neither will it become obsolete. The prospect is promising, but sequencing and synthesizing DNA is too darn expensive at the moment. Until costs go down, it may not yet be the practical solution for backing up quantum computer data. And if Google happens to actually pull off their plan to build and test their 49-bit quantum computer at the end of this year, they will have to figure out where and how to store their quantum data. How that will be solved remains to be seen. In the meantime, however, it should be noted that whether it is Google or IBM with its radical 50-qubit Q quantum computer, one thing is certain, such systems are no longer just a theoretical dream but rather real quantum computing programs that will keep pushing computing to new frontiers.

http://wallstreetpit.com/113116-scientists-turn-dna-digital-data-storage/

Canonical Combines its OpenStack with Huawei’s SDN Controller

#Huawei and #Canonical announced the integration of Huawei’s #CloudFabric data center network system with Canonical’s Ubuntu #OpenStack. They’ll combine Huawei’s Agile Controller for software-defined networking ( #SDN ) with Canonical’s OpenStack distribution, Ubuntu OpenStack, along with Canonical’s application modeling service Juju. “We’ve been doing a number of things with Huawei, but this expansion across telco and enterprise is important to us: their SDN, our OpenStack, and Juju,” said John Zannos, VP of cloud alliances and business development at Canonical

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/canonical-combines-openstack-huawei-sdn-controller/2017/03/

Dell EMC and Intel's Cloud Ecosystem Hub make it easier to access resources

#DellEMC and #Intel have teamed up to launch the #CloudEcosystem Hub, a collection of resources including training, events, marketing support and sales leads to help service providers build their business and customers make the best decision when choosing a cloud provider. The web-based interface is accessible to all enterprises, offering information on how to digitally transform their business with resources explaining the proposition and benefits to using Dell EMC's cloud platform. They are then able to use filters and search terms to find the best service provider to meet their needs, then contact a right fit directly from the hub.
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/hybrid-cloud/6705/dell-emc-and-intels-cloud-ecosystem-hub-make-it-easier-to-access

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Virtustream Expands Enterprise Cloud Platform for Mission Critical Applications to Asia-Pacific Region

#Virtustream, the enterprise-class cloud company and a #DellTechnologies Business, today announced that its enterprise cloud platform and services for mission critical applications are now available in the Asia-Pacific region including Australia and Japan. This offering includes Virtustream’s innovative cloud technology and unique consumption billing model.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/virtustream-expands-enterprise-cloud-platform-220000188.html

Global Thin Clients Market- Dell(Wyse) , HP , NComputing , Centerm , Igel

The Report titled “Global #ThinClients Market” gives important perceptions into global Thin Clients industry along with new flanged industry details, chapter wise analysis of each section and looming Thin Clients industry trends, which will guide the readers to target Thin Clients market product Specifications, clients driving the long-term Thin Clients market revenue with profitability and currently dominating players in Thin Clients. 2017-2022 Report Keynotes of the Thin Clients Market: The report covers projection as well as evaluation for the Thin Clients market on a global as well as regional level. The study offers Thin Clients historic information of 2016 in addition to a forecast from 2017 to 2022 based upon both quantity (Million Units) as well as revenue (USD Million). The research study includes chauffeurs and restraints for the Thin Clients market along with the influence they carry the demand over the projection period. Additionally, the record includes the research of opportunities offered in the Thin Clients market on a global level. This report basically covers Thin Clients market in North America, Thin Clients market in Europe, Thin Clients market in Middle East and Africa, Thin Clients Market in Latin America and Asia Pacific. This report segregates the Thin Clients market based on Type, Competitive Players, Regions and Application. In order to provide the individuals of this report a thorough view on the Thin Clients market, we have consisted of a thoroughly affordable scenario and Thin Clients type profile of key suppliers. To recognize the competitive landscape in the Thin Clients industry, an evaluation of Porter’s five forces version for the Thin Clients market has actually also been included. The study inclusive a market attractiveness analysis, in which type segments are benchmarked based on their Thin Clients market size, growth rate as well as the general attractiveness of Thin Clients. Additionally, the study covers product portfolio of different companies along with patent analysis (2012-2017) bifurcated right into patent trend, patent share by firm and also patent evaluation according to region.
http://registrardaily.com/2017/03/23/global-thin-clients-market/

Enterprise storage for modern workloads - Introducing the the new Red Hat Gluster Storage

What’s new? You’re invited to a launch event introducing #RedHatGluster Storage 3.2. Hear from industry analysts, customers, partners, and #RedHat experts how breakthrough innovations in #softwaredefinedstorage can provide highly elastic, cost-effective storage for your enterprise applications.

https://www.redhat.com/en/about/events/enterprise-storage-modern-workloads-introducing-new-red-hat-gluster-storage

Salesforce platform to be delivered out of AWS' Australian datacentres

#Salesforce announced on Tuesday that its Intelligent Customer Success Platform will be available from Australian datacentres, initially out of Sydney. At the Salesforce World Tour in Sydney, the CRM giant said it will leverage Amazon Web Services ( #AWS ) to deliver its sales cloud, service cloud, app cloud, community cloud, and analytics cloud to local customers, with general availability slated for the second half of 2017.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/salesforce-platform-to-be-delivered-out-of-aws-australian-datacentres/

CenturyLink joins NetApp partner program, to re-sell managed storage

#CenturyLink (CTL -1.2%) has joined the Unified Partner Program at #NetApp (NTAP -2.5%), extending an existing relationship by arranging to re-sell the latter's managed storage solutions. It's a "big push in the field," CenturyLink's Terence Gleeson tells LightReading. The provider will take six main routes to market, including large enterprise, SMB, government and education, and global teams. CenturyLink has a number of co-location environments where customers have had NetApp equipment. It wants to offer customers a complete package, whether they want to manage their own hardware or for CenturyLink to provide a managed service.

http://seekingalpha.com/news/3252631-centurylink-joins-netapp-partner-program-re-sell-managed-storage

Supermicro Launches Intel Optane SSD Optimized Platforms

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 21, 2017 — #SuperMicro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), a leader in compute, storage and networking technologies including green computing, expands the Industry’s broadest portfolio of Supermicro #NVMe Flash server and storage systems with support for #IntelOptane SSD DC P4800X, the world’s most responsive data center SSD. Supermicro’s NVMe SSD Systems with Intel Optane SSDs for the Data Center enable breakthrough performance compared to traditional NAND based SSDs. The Intel Optane SSDs for the data center are the first breakthrough that begins to blur the line between memory and storage, enabling customers to do more per server, or extend memory working sets to enable new usages and discoveries. The PCI-E compliant expansion card delivers an industry leading combination of 2 times better latency performance, up to more than 3 times higher endurance, and up to 3 times higher write throughput than NVMe NAND SSDs. Optane is supported across Supermicro’s complete product line including: BigTwin, SuperBlade, Simply Double Storage and Ultra servers supporting the current and next generation Intel Xeon Processors. These innovative solutions enable a new high performance storage tier that combines the attributes of memory and storage ideal for Financial Services, Cloud, HPC, Storage and overall Enterprise applications. The first generation Supermicro supported Intel Optane SSDs are initially a PCI-E compliant expansion card with additional form factors to follow. A 2U Supermicro Ultra system will be able to deliver 6 million WRITE IOPs and 16.5 TB of high performance Optane storage. Intel Optane will deliver optimal performance in the 1U 10 NVMe All-Flash SuperServer and the capacity optimized 2U 48 All-Flash NVMe Simply Double Storage Server and provide accelerated caching across the complete line of NVMe supported scale out storage servers including the new 4U 45 Drive system with NVMe Cache drives. “Being First-To-Market with the latest in computing technology continues to be our corporate strength, the addition of Intel Optane memory technology gives our top tier customers a new memory deployment strategy that provides better write performance and latency than existing NVMe NAND SSD solutions including more than 30 drive writes per day,” said Charles Liang, President and CEO of Supermicro. “In addition this new memory is slated to consume 30 percent lower max-power than SSD NAND memory, supporting our customer’s green computing priorities.” “Supermicro’s system readiness for the new Optane memory technology will provide fast storage and cache for MySQL and HCI applications, ” said Bill Lesczinske, Vice President, Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. “With 77x better read latency in the presence of a high write workload and as a memory replacement with Intel Memory Drive Technology – software will make the Optane SSD look like DRAM transparently to the OS, providing greater in-memory compute performance to Supermicro systems.”
https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/supermicro-launches-intel-optane-ssd-optimized-platforms/