Google's Deep Mind Explained! - Self Learning A.I.

@DeepMind is the world leader in artificial intelligence research and its application for positive impact.

We’re on a scientific mission to push the boundaries of #AI, developing programs that can learn to solve any complex problem without needing to be taught how.

If we’re successful, we believe this will be one of the most important and widely beneficial scientific advances ever made, increasing our capacity to understand the mysteries of the universe and to tackle some of our most pressing real-world challenges. From climate change to the need for radically improved healthcare, too many problems suffer from painfully slow progress, their complexity overwhelming our ability to find solutions. With AI as a multiplier for human ingenuity, those solutions will come into reach.  

As in all long-term research efforts there are many hurdles ahead, but our team of renowned scientists and engineers is making exciting progress.

By implementing our research in the field of games, a useful training ground, we were able to create a single program that taught itself how to play and win at 49 completely different Atari titles, with just raw pixels as input. And in a global first, our AlphaGo program took on the world’s best player at Go - one of the most complex and intuitive games ever devised, with more positions than there are atoms in the universe - and won.

At the same time, our DeepMind Applied team is working with experts in different fields to make meaningful real-world breakthroughs. Our systems are having a major environmental impact by learning how to use vastly less energy in Google’s data centres, and we’re collaborating with clinicians in the UK’s National Health Service on delivering better care for conditions that affect millions of people worldwide.

The progress we’ve made is in part down to our approach, which combines the long-term thinking and interdisciplinary collaboration of academia, the energy and focus of a technology start-up, and the social purpose of a team fervent about amazing impact.

We set our own independent research agenda and roadmap as an autonomous company in the Alphabet group. We’re committed to openly publishing our work, with four Nature papers and over 150 peer-reviewed papers. 

Recognising that there are strong opinions on the safe and ethical use of AI, and that no one team has all the answers, we’re also deeply involved in working through these issues with  wider academic and research communities.

Our motivation in all we do is to maximise the positive and transformative impact of AI. We believe that AI should ultimately belong to the world, in order to benefit the many and not the few, and we’ll continue to research, publish and implement our work to that end.

Dell Technologies Accelerates Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Portfolio Growth; Simplifies Path to VMware-based Clouds

@DellEMC #VxRail and #VxRack #SDDC advancements offer greater performance and adoption of next generation technologies for multi-clouds in VMware environments NEWS PROVIDED BY Dell Technologies 13:00 ET LAS VEGAS, May 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- @DellTechnologies World -- News summary No.1 market leader in global #hyperconverged infrastructure ( #HCI ) system sales advances portfolio after 145% reported worldwide revenue growth in 20171 @DellEMC #VxRail adopts advanced technologies, including NVMe and #25Gbps networking connectivity, to greatly speed access to data and applications Dell EMC #VxRack #SDDC simplifies management and improves performance, built on VxRail hardware with Dell EMC #PowerEdge 14th generation servers Dell EMC VxRail and VxRack SDDC offer clear path to adopt @VMware-based private, hybrid and multi-clouds Full story Dell Technologies is launching new hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) advancements to further simplify customer IT transformations with more powerful systems. New Dell EMC VxRail Appliances and VxRack SDDC Systems further extend Dell EMC's HCI global systems sales leadership1 with adoption of advanced technologies and the latest innovations from Dell EMC and VMware. The combined technologies can accelerate customers' abilities to transform to modern, multi-cloud environments. "As HCI systems are increasingly being used for core data center applications, customers are adopting VxRail and VxRack SDDC as the foundation for deploying clouds of all types," said Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, president and general manager, Dell EMC Server and Infrastructure Systems. "These technologies, co-developed by Dell EMC and VMware, offer a simple and clearly defined path to private, hybrid and multi-clouds to help our customers transform their IT infrastructure to free up valuable staff time while enabling IT to be the enabler for faster, nimbler businesses." Results of the ESG 2018 IT Transformation Maturity Study, sponsored by Dell EMC and released this month, demonstrate that: An overwhelming majority of transformed companies–98%–use either converged infrastructure (CI) or HCI, and 86% report using both Transformed companies report running an average of more than 35% of their applications on CI/HCI, quantifying their operational expenditure savings at 25% on average Organizations running cloud-like IaaS are operating on-premises infrastructure more than two and a half times as cost-effectively as public cloud alternatives According to IDC, global HCI system sales surpassed $3.7 billion in 2017 vendor revenue, up 64.3% from 2016, as the fastest growing segment of the overall converged systems market. Dell EMC led all vendors in global HCI systems sales in 2017, with a 27.1% revenue share while growing 145% year over year at a rate more than 2.25 times faster than the overall industry.1 Meanwhile, IDC predicts the HCI solutions market will reach $10.3 billion by 2022. Dell EMC VxRail and VxRack SDDC adopt advanced technologies as ideal foundation for multi-cloud strategies Dell EMC VxRail, the top selling Dell EMC HCI solution from the world's leading HCI systems portfolio, is now even more flexible and powerful with the addition of several advanced technologies. VxRail continues to set the standard for simplifying and modernizing VMware environments, regardless of where an organization is on their IT transformation journey. Continuing to be integrated with VMware vSAN and vSphere software, new VxRail advancements include the adoption of: NVMe cache drive options future-proof enhanced performance with dramatically lower latency and higher performance than existing SAS based cache drives Powerful Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors, supporting up to 1.5TB of RAM per CPU socket for 2x more memory (up to 3TB per node) NVIDIA® Tesla® P40 GPU accelerators providing 2x performance and 50% more users for high-end graphics use cases such as those needed by CAD developers and designers New 25GbE networking provides the most aggregate bandwidth of any other HCI appliance and up to 50% more networking connectivity options than the previous generation2 Support for the Dell EMC Networking S4112-ON half-width, 10 and 25 GbE Open Networking switch, a space-saving top-of-rack switch, purpose-built for software-defined data center environments New simplified management experience with VxRail Manager Events consolidation and viewing in VMware vCenter New VxRail STIG Compliance Guide and automated scripts harden the storage, virtualization and networking components to accelerate deployments of secure infrastructure Additionally, for customers looking to build a complete Software-Defined Data Center using VxRail as a building block, they can use the guidance of the latest VMware Validated Designs (VVD). Using the guidance of VVD for SDDC 4.2 for VxRail, customers can more easily architect an SDDC with complete NSX and vRealize functionality with less risk.  Dell EMC VxRack SDDC is the ultimate infrastructure foundation for realizing a multi-cloud vision. It is the only turnkey cloud platform, based on VxRail hardware, built on 14th generation PowerEdge servers, delivered with integrated networking, and powered by VMware Cloud Foundation and Dell EMC software. VxRack SDDC delivers the simplest path to a hybrid or multi-cloud approach with an automated elastic cloud infrastructure at rack scale. Updates to VxRack SDDC, the most advanced VMware Cloud Foundation integrated system2, meet a variety of customer cloud use cases with: New, more powerful configurations built on VxRail hardware with the latest Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation server platforms, designed for HCI deployments, to accelerate IT services and application delivery New enhancements for VDI with support for NVIDIA® graphics processing cards The latest VMware Cloud Foundation 2.3 with newly integrated cloud management and automation for on-premises IT-as-a-Service (IaaS) and more flexibility to scale with heterogeneous server support Exclusive SDDC automation and serviceability extensions integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation that extend the management experience and simplify cloud-ready operations Availability Dell EMC VxRail Appliances and Dell EMC VxRack SDDC Systems updates are available globally now.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dell-technologies-accelerates-hyper-converged-infrastructure-portfolio-growth-simplifies-path-to-vmware-based-clouds-300640020.html

Virtustream Adds SaaS & Healthcare Cloud Enhancements

Today At @DellTechnologies World 2018, @Virtustream, a Dell Technologies company, announced its latest generation of #Viewtrust, its risk management and continuous compliance monitoring solution. The latest generation brings in new #SaaS capabilities to enhance scalability, performance and serviceability. The company is also announcing new disaster recovery capabilities and availability of the @SAP Health solution on S/4 #Hana to its popular healthcare cloud.  Compliance is becoming more difficult as data centers are becoming more and more decentralized and the process of compliance itself grows more complex. Customers using Virtustream Viewtrust have a near real-time view of their entire compliance posture, continuous monitoring and automated risk analysis based on customized threat and impact values. Not only can the solution be leveraged to help meet compliance, but it can be deployed as on-premises software, self-service SaaS or managed service model and help to protect data against cyber threats. Benefits include: Reduced cost and complexity of managing extensive compliance regulations. Virtustream Viewtrust continuously monitors the IT landscape, identifies potential risks to enable proactive remediation, and delivers reports and associated artifacts necessary to address regulatory oversight. Additionally, it meets industry compliance requirements such as FISMA, SOX, PCI DSS, HIPAA, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, GDPR and more, in addition to adhering to custom user-defined compliance frameworks. Continuous monitoring of risk in spite of ever-increasing volumes of data. Viewtrust provides a scalable platform for ingesting, collecting, storing and processing sensor data such as vulnerability scans, configuration scans, logs and policies. Virtustream Viewtrust employs risk-scoring algorithms to compute risk based on asset, system, geo-location and mission criticality, ensuring that regulatory compliance control requirements are met through automated risk mitigation workflows. All information is stored in a central dashboard for end users and project management leaders’ compliance reporting needs. A singular, automated 360° operational view of enterprise risk and compliance. Virtustream Viewtrust automates compliance and reduces the overall cost of managing risk. The solution orchestrates a true 360° enterprise risk view by integrating reporting data from virtually any collection of existing systems, empowering enterprises with a comprehensive insight into their risk and compliance posture across physical and cloud environments whether private, public, hybrid or community clouds. Built-in audit package document generation and management capabilities. Viewtrust provides numerous predesigned and formatted templates designed to align with industry requirements for auditing and compliance. Workflow-based automation manages the complete audit package lifecycle from initiation to validation to certification and accreditation. Templates can also be customized to exact client specifications to create comprehensive risk management reports to meet unique regulatory and enterprise needs Integration with DISA eMASS. Viewtrust integrates directly with the US Government’s Defense Information Systems’s Agency’s (DISA) Enterprise Mission Assurance Support Service (eMASS) application enabling Information Assurance (IA) teams to automate the publication of compliance statements, assessments, artifacts and Plan of Action and Milestones (POA&M) into eMASS. Viewtrust automation significantly reduces the time spent completing steps three and four of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Risk Management Framework (RMF), and thus significantly reduces the time spent documenting the compliance requirements of federal agencies. Virtustream has been in the healthcare market for about a year now and states that several key customers have chosen their solution. As the solution becomes increasingly popular, Virtustream is adding new capabilities to meet current and future customer needs. These include flexible disaster recovery options for Epic and enhanced patient and operational insights available through SAP Digital Health, powered by S/4 HANA. The new capabilities combined with Virtustream’s regulatory compliance make it an ideal cloud partner for applications such as the SAP Digital Health solution on S/4 HANA.

http://www.storagereview.com/virtustream_adds_saas_healthcare_cloud_enhancements

Michael Dell On Regulating AI, The Coming 5G Explosion And Considering Going Public, Or Not

@DellTechnologies Chairman and CEO @MichaelDell is sending a message that his namesake company believes deeply in the power of technology to make the world a better place, but he's also intimately familiar with the cold hard realities of the global IT market and how the industry behemoth fits into it. In a Q&A with global press and analysts during the Dell Technologies World conference Monday in Las Vegas, Dell reinforced his argument that Dell Technologies' position as the largest IT infrastructure player in the world gives it an especially advantageous position in leading-edge technologies like artificial intelligence and 5G. It's been a little more than a year-and-a-half since Dell architected the largest buy-out in the history of the IT industry with the acquisition of data storage giant EMC. Since then, Dell said, the company has exceeded revenue expectations, while steadily paying down debt and continually developing its portfolio. The company in February said it would consider an IPO, or a reverse merger with VMware, which is part of the Dell Technologies family of companies. Dell Monday, though, was not keen to elaborate on those considerations. What follows is an edited excerpt of Dell's Q&A with reporters and analysts.

https://www.crn.com/slide-shows/internet-of-things/300102916/michael-dell-on-regulating-ai-the-coming-5g-explosion-and-considering-going-public-or-not.htm

VMware Takes on Cisco & Juniper With Network Vision

LAS VEGAS -- @DellTechnologies World -- @VMware threw down the gauntlet to @Cisco and @Juniper on Tuesday, outlining a vision for a unified network architecture that spans the on-premises #datacenter, enterprise branches, Internet of Things, as well as multiple #publiccloud providers. While some of the pieces are new, most of the architecture is comprises existing technologies from VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW), some going back nearly a decade. But it's the most complete, unified vision that VMware has yet offered of how those pieces fit together, including the role played by @VeloCloud, the #SDWAN vendor acquired by VMware in December. (See VMware Acquiring SD-WAN Startup VeloCloud Networks.) New pieces include a deal with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) to extend VMware networks to Azure cloud, following a similar deal with Amazon Web Services Inc. last year. (See Following Amazon Partnership, VMware Is a Cloud Company Now.) Additionally, NSX Data Center now supports workloads on Pivotal, Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift, with enhanced performance for telco NFV and higher-end enterprise applications, as well as support for bare metal Linux. "Our VMware strategy in a nutshell is any device, and any application, on any cloud," VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a keynote address at Dell Technologies World on Monday afternoon. VMware and its competitors got their start in the era when data centers were at the center of the enterprise, with branch offices connecting to the enterprise data center, and doing so via SD-WAN. But now, the enterprise data center isn't the center anymore -- it's one nexus of data and applications among many. Data and applications reside on the Internet of Things. They reside in branch business locations, such as chain restaurants, retail stores and oil rigs. They reside on the public cloud. All of that needs to be connected, and backhauling over MPLS is too expensive and rigid, said Rajiv Ramaswami, VMware COO products and cloud services, previewing VMware's announcement on a webinar with tech journalists last week. The IoT, in particular, stretches the boundaries of the network and IT infrastructure, Gelsinger said. "IoT is a powerful force that's just beginning to emerge that will drive your resources to the edge," he said. "IoT is where the digital world meets the physical world." Networks need to be programmable, flexible and elastic, adapting to real-time business needs, and scalable to manage varying workloads from the core to the edge, Gelsinger said.

https://www.lightreading.com/enterprise-cloud/network/vmware-takes-on-cisco-and-juniper-with-network-vision/d/d-id/742703

Former Gartner analyst changes mind on Rubrik position for spot at Veaam

@Gartner analyst @Dave Russell has joined @Veeam as VP of enterprise strategy, three days after @Rubrik announced that he would be joining them in a similar capacity. Rubrik said on Friday that Russell had been recruited as VP and chief strategist, along with Gartner colleague Pushan Rinnen,who would become director of product marketing.

https://www.channelnomics.com/channelnomics-us/news/3031369/former-gartner-analyst-changes-mind-on-rubrik-position-for-spot-at-veaam

Dell taking dedicated Isilon NAS instances to Google Cloud

@Google and @DellEMC have teamed up to offer #Isilon NAS instances within the Google Cloud Platform, the companies have announced at @DellTechnologies World on Monday.  Under the offering, Dell said it will provide 24x7 monitoring and maintenance to the dedicated Isilon instances, with management still happening under the OneFS interface. By allowing companies to have dedicated hardware, Dell claimed it would alleviate data compliance and security concerns that may arise from workloads being in the public cloud. EMC picked up Isilon Systems in November 2010 for $2.25 billion, before Dell bought EMC for $67 billion in August 2016 to create the largest privately-held technology company.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/dell-taking-dedicated-isilon-nas-instances-to-google-cloud/

Quantum blockchain to use entanglement in time

There is a real fear that #quantumcomputing will upset the cryptographic basis of current #blockchains; a #quantumblockchain would remove that. In a paper from @Del Rajan and @Matt Visser from the School of Mathematics and Statistics, Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand they examine a solution. Matt Visser “Our method involves encoding the blockchain into a temporal GHZ (Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger) state of photons that do not simultaneously coexist. It is shown that the entanglement in time, as opposed to an entanglement in space, provides the crucial quantum advantage. All the subcomponents of this system have already been shown to be experimentally realized. Perhaps more shockingly, our encoding procedure can be interpreted as non-classically influencing the past; hence this decentralized quantum blockchain can be viewed as a quantum networked time machine.” The problem for conventional cryptography Cryptography is the basis for current blockchains. Without cryptography, blockchains lose many of their most attractive attributes – including assurance that nohing has changed. Public key cryptography underpins most online communications and most current blockchain technology. This exploits a pair of keys to encrypt information: a public key which is shareable a private key known only to the key’s owner. Anyone can encrypt a message using the intended receiver’s public key. Only the receiver can decrypt the message using her private key and the more difficult it is to determine a private key from its public key, the more secure the system. Today the best public key cryptography systems mean a traditional computer must calculate the factors which comprise the keys. Thus far the complexity exceeds their ability to do this in much less than some billions of years. The quantum blockchain problem If, however, processing power were to increase by some massive factor, then it might become possible for an entity possessing such computing power to generate a private key from the corresponding public key. If actors could generate private keys from corresponding public keys, then even the strongest forms of traditional public key cryptography become vulnerable, including blockchains. Enter quantum computing. Quantum computing relies on quantum physics. On a theoretical basis quantum computing may offer more calculating power than any traditional form of computing. Quantum computing takes advantage of quantum bits (qubits). Enterprise Times will not delve further into the technicalities) but the implication is that, with quantum computing, it becomes possible to break public key cryptography. (Google and IBM , and others, are working on quantum computing.) What do Rajan and Visser add? In their own words: “For an analysis of the quantum benefit, we look primarily at the blockchain’s ability to be rendered tamper proof. With just a spatial GHZ state, the measurement correlations of these states are stronger than what a classical system could ever produce. In this spatial entanglement case, if an attacker tries to tamper with any photon, the full blockchain would be invalidated immediately; this already provides a benefit over the classical case where only the future blocks of the tampered block are invalidated. The temporal GHZ blockchain adds a far greater benefit in that the attacker cannot even attempt to access the previous photons since they no longer exist. They can at best try to tamper with the last remaining photon, which would invalidate the full state. “Hence in this application of quantum information, we see that the entanglement in time provides a far greater security benefit than an entanglement in space. The temporal GHZ state involves an entanglement between photons that do not share simultaneous coexistence, yet they share non-classical measurement correlations. This temporal non-locality, between two entangled photons that existed at different times, was interpreted in as follows: “…measuring the last photon affects the physical description of the first photon in the past, before it has even been measured. Thus, the “spooky action” is steering the system’s past”. “Stated more shockingly, in our quantum blockchain, we can interpret our encoding procedure as linking the current records in a block, not to a record of the past, but linking it to the actual record in the past, which does not exist anymore.” Enterprise Times: what does this mean If it is a fact that blockchain concepts, never mind implementations, are stunningly complex to comprehend, then adding a quantum dimension makes the head spin – unless you are a quantum mathematician. This makes deriving practical conclusions difficult. That said there are some obvious points to make: current blockchains are public key cryptography dependent blockchains will become vulnerable IF any form of quantum computing arrives (imagine if that is the NSA or its Russian or Chinese equivalents – and it only has to be one, once) Rajan and Visser are not offering a working solution, more some valuable insights quantum cryptography will become a necessity (something that IBM and Google are researching) most enterprise executives will have to depend on areas of mathematics which the ordinary mortal cannot approach, never mind understand. There is a tricky chicken and egg situation here. It would be preferable if models for unbreakable quantum cryptography arrive before quantum computers. The demand for a quantum blockchain to use entanglement in time has many attractions.

https://www.enterprisetimes.co.uk/2018/05/01/quantum-blockchain-to-use-entanglement-in-time/

Radio Free HPC Looks at New USA Supercomputing Map

In this podcast, the @RadioFree #HPC team looks at the new interactive USA #Supercomputing Map from @Hyperion Research. “The mapped sites include government, academic and industrial HPC data centers, along with HPC vendors. This powerful tool can be used to identify the economic impact of HPC in a user-defined area (state, Congressional district, et al.) or for the United States as a whole, or to understand where HPC jobs are located, as well as who the Congressional district representatives are.” As part of the discussion, Rich recaps Hyperion’s recent HPC User Forum in Tucson. The event featured an extended session on Quantum Computing with presentations by D-Wave Systems, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NIST, and Rigetti Computing. You can watch them all right here on insideHPC.  After that, we do our Catch of the Week: Henry is concerned about about the privacy implications raised by near-relative DNA methods used to catch the Golden State Killer. Henry notes that Gartner’s claim that AI is going to deliver $3.9 Trillion dollars in Global Business Value by 2022. Shahin reminds us that this week marked the 25th anniversary of the first Mosaic browser. Dan notes that Amazon logged $1.6 Billion in profits for the first quarter, a big jump from last year thanks to substantial growth in AWS. Meanwhile, Microsoft Azure is up 93 percent this quarter as well.
https://insidehpc.com/2018/04/radio-free-hpc-looks-new-usa-supercomputing-map/

Tech market will reach $8 trillion, predicts Michael Dell

Speaking to press and analysts at the company's annual conference in Las Vegas, @DellTechnologies' founder and CEO @MichaelDell said that he believes current forecasts are actually undervaluing the market. "I think the market, by the way, is going to grow. I think $3 trillion is wrong; I think it's going to be $4 trillion, $5 trillion, $8 trillion - because technology is right at the centre of everything." This is despite figures from analyst firms like Gartner, which show that PC shipments have been continuously falling for three and a half years due to longer refresh cycles and more expensive hardware. On the other hand, Dell's comments come off the back of a healthy period for his business; the company's vice president of products and operations Jeff Clarke announced that for the first quarter of 2018, Dell expects to increase its global share of the PC market for the 21st quarter in a row, as well as growing its server and storage market shares. According to Gartner's estimates, Dell currently commands just under 20% of the global server market, pulling in revenues of $3.6 billion in Q4 last year. Main rival HPE is nipping at its heels, however, with a market share of 19.3% according to revenue. "Our customers are responding to the power of our combined company, creating good momentum as we kick off 2018," said Jeff Clarke. "We have exciting announcements planned across our portfolio at this year's event that are driving this leadership and our customers' digital transformation, ultimately resulting in better business outcomes."

http://www.itpro.co.uk/business-strategy/31027/tech-market-will-reach-8-trillion-predicts-michael-dell

Aerohive® to Showcase Latest Innovations at Dell Technologies World

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- @Aerohive Networks® (NYSE:HIVE) today announced its participation at @DellTechnologies flagship customer event, Dell Technologies World, taking place April 30th to May 3rd at the Venetian in Las Vegas, Nevada. “Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” Tweet this Wireless experts from Aerohive will be showcasing the newest innovations, including the first family of access points based on 802.11ax. Those in attendance can stop by Aerohive Booth 1643 to learn how the latest enterprise Wi-Fi 802.11ax standard can transform customer’s networks and businesses, as well as experience a live demo of HiveManager, the single pane of glass for cloud management of Dell Networking switches and Wi-Fi access points. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding new Aerohive product and service offerings and statements regarding their expected performance, market receptiveness and competitive advantage. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult or impossible to predict. The actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements as a result of these uncertainties, risk and changes in circumstances, including, but not limited to, risks and uncertainties related to: general demand for wireless networking in the industry verticals targeted or demand for Aerohive products in particular, unpredictable and changing market conditions, risks associated with the deployment, performance and adoption of new products and services, risks associated with our growth, competitive pressures from existing and new companies, technological change, product development delays, our inability to protect Aerohive intellectual property or to predict or limit exposure to third party claims relating to its or Aerohive's intellectual property, and general market, political, regulatory, economic and business conditions in the United States and internationally. Additional risks and uncertainties that could affect Aerohive’s financial and operating results are included under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations," in the Company’s recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Aerohive’s SEC filings are available on the Investor Relations section of the Company’s website at http://ir.aerohive.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof, and Aerohive Networks disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made, except as required by law.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180430006177/en/Aerohive%C2%AE-Showcase-Latest-Innovations-Dell-Technologies-World

Verizon Taps Cisco, Juniper to Simplify Network with SDN

@Verizon is partnering up with @Cisco and @Juniper Networks to simplify its network through #softwaredefined networking ( #SDN) technologies. That network simplification will take place on the edge, where SDN will be used to combine Verizon's routers for Ethernet and IP-based services into a single disaggregated platform. A key tenet of SDN is the separation of network data and control planes (or hardware and software network layers). "This new multi-service edge solution features a disaggregated control plane and leverages external compute to enhance the capabilities of that control plane beyond that of a traditional router," Verizon said in a statement today (April 30). In addition to allowing Verizon to respond to industry technology changes more quickly, the company said the new initiative will result in improvements to processes such as the deployment and provisioning of network infrastructure.

https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2018/04/30/verizon-sdn.aspx?m=1

Veeam Appoints Former Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst, Dave Russell, as New VP of Enterprise Strategy

@Veeam Appoints Former @Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst, @DaveRussell, as New VP of Enterprise Strategy Russell brings more than 28 years of experience to Veeam to drive company’s enterprise strategy and evangelize Veeam’s vision as the most trusted provider of Intelligent Data Management solutions to meet the demands of the Hyper-Available Enterprise April 30, 2018 07:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time BAAR, Switzerland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Veeam® Software, the leader in Intelligent Data Management for the Hyper-Available Enterprise™, today announced that it has appointed Dave Russell, most recently Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, as Vice President of Enterprise Strategy. In this role, Russell will be responsible for driving strategic product and go-to-market programs, spearheading industry engagement, and evangelizing Veeam’s vision for the Hyper-Available Enterprise at key events across the globe. Reporting directly to Kate Hutchison, Chief Marketing Officer at Veeam, Russell will work closely with the executive leadership team in accelerating the company’s growth in the enterprise. Veeam hires Dave Russell, most recently Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, as their Vice President of Enterprise Strategy. Tweet this “Dave’s resume speaks for itself; he is one of the most prominent figures in the industry, and to have him join Veeam at such an exciting time in our growth is a testament to the company’s momentum in the market,” said Peter McKay, Co-CEO and President of Veeam. “Over the past year, we have grown at an exponential rate and are doubling down on our success in the Fortune 500 segment of the market where enterprise customers have recognized our platform as world-class for their infrastructures. Veeam Hyper-Availability Platform is the only solution leveraging intelligent automation, purpose-built for massive scaling to manage the hyper-growth of data being generated by digital transformation, IoT and blockchain technologies. Dave’s experience and skill-set will help accelerate our growth and enterprise momentum and I am delighted to have him on our team.” “This is a great opportunity to apply my 28 years of thought leadership experience in an industry that is evolving rapidly as enterprises manage the challenges of data hyper-criticality, hyper-growth and hyper-sprawl,” added Dave Russell, Vice President, Enterprise Strategy at Veeam. “Customers are struggling to effectively manage and protect exponential data volumes, and I am looking forward to advising them on a smooth journey towards intelligent data management, allowing them to accelerate innovation and bring new digital services to market faster.” Russell has almost three decades of experience and most recently held the role of Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. His research focus was on storage strategies and technologies, with an emphasis on backup/recovery, snapshot and replication, SSD/flash optimization software, software-defined storage (SDS) and storage management. He was also co-author of the 2017 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup & Recovery Solutions. Prior to joining Gartner, Russell spent 15 years at IBM in storage product development as a software engineer in mainframe storage and as a manager of product development, architecture and strategy teams for distributed systems storage solutions. Russell will be featured in the General Session at VeeamON on May 15, 2018. Register for VeeamON 2018, the premier conference for Intelligent Data Management, which will take place May 14 – 16, 2018, in Chicago, IL. Nearly 10,000 customers, partners and influencers attended VeeamON 2017 in New Orleans, LA, and the regional VeeamON Forum events held all around the world.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180430005606/en/Veeam-Appoints-Gartner-VP-Distinguished-Analyst-Dave

Dell Technologies Capital Announces Strong Exit & Investment Momentum in its First Year Out of Stealth

News summary Investments in 81 companies since 2012 with numerous portfolio companies experiencing growth rates of more than 100% and several exceeding $50 million in revenue Completed 24 investments one year out of stealth with one third of new investments focused on AI/ML and the remaining focused on security, next-gen infrastructure and developer ecosystem Venture practice  had 11 exits from its portfolio, of which three have gone public in the past seven  months—DocuSign, MongoDB and Zscaler—all "unicorn" IPOs with a collective market value of more than $11 billion Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) started trading in March 2018 and is a leading pioneer in transforming network security for the cloud era; Dell Technologies Capital was the lead investor in Zscaler's first institutional round in 2012 Key M&A events include VMware's acquisition of Wavefront and Vista's acquisition of JAMF Full story Dell Technologies Capital, the venture investment practice for Dell Technologies, announces strong investment momentum one year after coming out of stealth. From May 2017 to April 2018, the investment team completed 24 new and follow-on investments as part of its $100 million average annual investment run rate. Since 2012, Dell Technologies Capital has made 81 investments focused on early-stage startups that span a broad range of technology areas. In the past year, a third of new investments focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and the remaining investments focused on security, next-gen infrastructure and other technology areas strategic to the Dell Technologies family of companies. The venture team had 11 exits in the past year, of which three of its portfolio companies IPO'd in the past seven months. Dell Technologies Capital was the first institutional investor in Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS), a leading pioneer in transforming network security for the cloud era; the startup went public in March 2018. Dell Technologies Capital invested in MongoDB (NASDAQ: MDB) which went public in October 2017 and the recently public DocuSign (NASDAQ: DOCU). These IPOs had a collective market valuation exceeding $11 billion, highlighting the team's ability to identify early investment opportunities and to help build successful startups. The Dell Technologies Capital portfolio includes several startups currently experiencing growth rates of more than 100% and several exceeding $50 million in revenue. A full list of current portfolio companies can be found here: https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/capital/ventures/portfolio.htm "Since coming out of stealth at Dell EMC World last year, we've had a very busy, and very successful, year," said Scott Darling, president of Dell Technologies Capital. "We are delighted with our continued strong performance and the market reception to the DocuSign, MongoDB and Zscaler IPOs. The real value we bring to Dell Technologies and our startup portfolio companies is through our joint work, which allows us to deliver best-of-breed solutions for our customers faster, especially in emerging tech areas." The Dell Technologies Capital investment team is comprised of experienced industry professionals with a strong mix of both operational and investment expertise, providing not only the insight to identify promising technologies and teams but also the knowledge and skill to help their portfolio companies achieve scale. The team focuses on early-stage investments in several emerging technology areas including but not limited to Internet of Things (IoT), AI, ML, developer-led Infrastructure, next-gen infrastructure, server-less computing and security.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dell-technologies-capital-announces-strong-exit--investment-momentum-in-its-first-year-out-of-stealth-300638680.html

Dell Technologies Expands Partner Programs

Today at @DellTechnologies World 2018, Dell Technologies announced it is investing in new programs, incentives and solutions designed to fast track its channel partners’ delivery of digital, IT, security and workforce transformations for their customers. With 5,000 partners in attendance, the company will be announcing new Advantage framework, a new @DellEMC #ReadyStack program, and a new rewards program. The new Advantage framework is designed to make it easy for customers to work across the Dell Technologies family of businesses with engagement, tools and incentives while at the same time having their own independent program. The framework doesn't replace the program that partners already have but adds capabilities and certifications making it easy to more efficiently deliver positive business outcomes from across the Dell Technologies portfolio. The new Advantage framework will also nicely compliment the existing Dell EMC Partner Program, which is also updated with new features and capabilities. For channel partners that deal in converged infrastructure stack solutions, the new @DellEMC #ReadyStack program aims to simplify the process for current and future offerings. This includes Dell EMC storage (e.g., #Unity, #SC Series, #XtremIO, #Isilon), #Dell @EMC #PowerEdge servers, Dell EMC Data Protection and optional Dell EMC open networking, with support for multiple hypervisors, bare metal and containers. The Ready stack program also offers ways for partners to talk to customers looking to build systems version the turnkey CI and HCI systems offered by Dell EMC. One area where partners and customers keep a close eye on is emerging technologies. To help partners seize on these opportunities, Dell Technologies will be introducing new Solutions Competency offerings that include HPC, Data Analytics, Business Applications, and Security (IoT is already offered). On top of solutions competency offerings that will help grow revenue, the company is expanding on its deployment competencies. Over the last twelve months partners who have leveraged these deployment competencies have seen a 2x increase in their average deal size. Dell Technologies is also offering an opt-in points-based reward program, the Dell EMC MyRewards Program. This new program will replace the existing Partner Advantage and Sell & Earn programs. This new program will offer bigger and better promotions with up to 3x bonus payout and simplified, express claiming globally. The Dell EMC Partner Program also is delivering enhanced rebates focused on driving new business, storage refresh and attaching Pro-Support Plus to storage. New elements include: The new demo program provides tiered partners with the ability to use earned MDF to purchase any storage, converged infrastructure, hyper-converged infrastructure and data protection solutions at a discount. The Proof of Concept (POC) program removes complexity around partner-led POCs, streamlining the approval process and enabling Titanium partners to independently lead POCs at end user locations with no-cost hardware, software, pro-support and shipping. The new IT Transformation campaign helps tell the connected story, positions business outcomes and drives consultative selling, all positioning the value of the Dell Technologies portfolio. Through this initiative, Dell EMC will deliver marketing content organized across the buyer’s journey and giving partners access to industry analyst research to build their business case based on customer outcomes and business benefits. Availability The Dell EMC Ready Stack Program is available now via the Dell EMC Partner Portal.

http://www.storagereview.com/dell_technologies_expands_partner_programs

Announcing the Dell EMC AI Challenge

In this video from the @DellEMC #HPC Community meeting, @Shreya Shar and @Onur Celebioglu from Dell describe the new Dell EMC #AI Challenge. “Dell EMC invites you to participate in an AI Challenge! Abstracts and proposals will be accepted through May 31, 2018, and will be reviewed according to the following three criteria: Most innovative use of AI technology Biggest economic or social impact Highest potential for commercialization Who’s judging the entries? A panel of industry experts will give each entry careful consideration: Michael Jones, Sr. Director of Strategy, Halliburton Matt Hall, CEO & Founder, Agile Scientific Matt Grover, Principal Technical Architect, Walmart What happens next? Five finalists will be selected between June 24 and June 26, 2018. All five finalists will receive exclusive remote access to a Dell EMC HPC and AI Innovation Lab cluster, powered by a Dell EMC PowerEdge C4140, to prove out their ideas. What do the winners receive? Dell EMC AI Innovation Award One overall winner will receive: 200K core-hour access to a Dell EMC HPC and AI Innovation Lab cluster. A guest blog on the Dell EMC website. A spotlight in Dell EMC’s booth at the SC18 Conference. A solution feature at a relevant industry conference or event. Global Industries AI Innovation Award Another entry, which may or may not be the overall winner, will receive a route to commercialization or a joint go-to-market plan from Dell EMC Global Industries. DELL EMC AI Challenge timeline  Resources Dell EMC PowerEdge C4140 Meet the demands of cognitive computing workloads with a dense, accelerator-optimized 1U server supporting 4 GPUs. Learn more Dell EMC HPC & AI Innovation Lab This 13,000 square foot data center is devoted to HPC. Tune your solution for optimized performance with the latest technologies. Learn more Pushing the Boundaries of AI Providing the expertise required to accelerate the evolution of human progress in the age of artificial intelligence.

https://insidehpc.com/2018/04/announcing-dell-emc-ai-challenge/

Toshiba Memory America Highlights Broad Range of SSD Application Solutions at Dell Technologies World

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--This week at Dell Technologies World 2018, Toshiba Memory America, Inc. (TMA), the U.S.-based subsidiary of Toshiba Memory Corporation, will be on hand to showcase its lineup of flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) and software to demonstrate server and storage application solutions. Toshiba Memory is once again a Diamond-level conference sponsor, and the two companies have been collaborating on storage solutions for nearly 20 years. Toshiba Memory products can be found in numerous Dell solutions across multiple business lines, including laptop/mobile computing, desktop, data center and enterprise servers/storage. “The digital transformation of the data center requires a modern high-performance infrastructure leveraging flash-based storage” Tweet this At Dell Technologies World, Toshiba Memory will highlight how its SSDs are optimizing a wide variety of Dell solutions. In addition, Toshiba Memory will demo the recently announced KumoScale™1 NVMe-oF™ (NVM Express™ over Fabrics) shared accelerated storage software and the company’s state-of-the-art 96-layer BiCS FLASH™ 3D memory. Demonstrations are located in Toshiba Memory’s booth #404 of the Dell Technologies Solutions Expo from April 30 through May 2, and include: Dell systems featuring Toshiba Memory SSDs: Dell EMC™ PowerEdge™ servers with vSAN, Dell EMC XC HCI appliances with Nutanix®, Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers with SQL Server and HammerDB (both Intel® and AMD based), Dell ESI (Extreme Scale Infrastructure) with SQL Server, HammerDB and Cassandra, and Dell EMC S2D (Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Ready Node) with software defined storage. Toshiba Memory SSD and Flash products: enterprise SSDs, client SSDs, off module power loss protection technology (boot drive solution), self-encrypting SSDs (SED), and 96-Layer BiCS FLASH 3D Memory. KumoScale NVMe Over Fabrics shared accelerated storage software: KumoScale enables the use of NVMe-oF to make flash storage accessible over a data center network, providing a simple and flexible abstraction of physical disks into a pool of block storage, all while preserving the high performance of direct-attached NVMe SSDs. Toshiba Memory can also be found participating in sessions throughout the event. Steve Fingerhut, senior vice president and general manager, SSD and Cloud Software business units, will be introducing Guru Session speaker Andrew McAfee on Tuesday, May 1 at 3 p.m. In addition, Toshiba Memory will have breakout sessions at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, April 30 (Lido 3001A) and Tuesday, May 1 (Lando 4203). These sessions will be delivered jointly by Toshiba Memory’s Drew Tipton and Dell’s Jeff Armstrong, and will focus on security and self-encrypting drive solutions. “The digital transformation of the data center requires a modern high-performance infrastructure leveraging flash-based storage,” noted Steve Fingerhut. “Toshiba Memory is committed to providing leading technologies at cloud scale. We are proud to be a key SSD supplier to Dell, and excited to demonstrate our broad portfolio across their client, server and storage solutions at Dell Technologies World.”

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180430005262/en/Toshiba-Memory-America-Highlights-Broad-Range-SSD

Gartner Lead Analyst Pushan Rinnen Joins Rubrik

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 30, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- @Rubrik, the #Cloud #DataManagement Company, has hired lead @Gartner analyst @Pushan Rinnen to further extend the company’s technology leadership and go-to-market strategy.  Rinnen brings more than two decades of experience and expertise in backup and recovery to Rubrik. She was a critical driver of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions. Rinnen, formerly a Research Director at Gartner, will join Rubrik’s marketing team to contribute to strategy and messaging for Rubrik’s industry-leading product portfolio. At Gartner, she advised numerous clients and authored thought-leading research notes on both data center and cloud-based backup and recovery. She also has research experience in areas such as network-attached storage (NAS), storage area networks (SAN) and unified storage. “I’ve been analyzing the players in this industry for years and find Rubrik’s approach to building both its product and its culture inspirational,” said Pushan Rinnen. “Bipul’s vision and his personal commitment to fostering a strong, transparent culture is unique. And, the speed and degree to which Rubrik has disrupted this market is unprecedented. I’m excited to work with the team to scale its go-to-market strategy as the company continues to evolve and deepen its market-leading capabilities.” The news comes at a time of record growth for Rubrik, as the company recently announced that it has achieved a run rate approaching $300M in just four years of selling, added Microsoft Chairman John W. Thompson to its board and also hired former Atlassian finance chief, Murray Demo, as the company's CFO. Earlier this month, Rubrik announced Rubrik Polaris, the industry’s first SaaS platform for data management applications. “Pushan’s decision to join the Rubrik team speaks volumes about the impact the company is making in the cloud data management space,” said Bipul Sinha, Rubrik co-founder and CEO. “Rubrik is continuing to push the envelope and help companies to manage and do more with their data. Global enterprises are increasingly choosing Rubrik to modernize IT, and the addition of Pushan demonstrates our commitment to this space.”

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/04/30/1489531/0/en/Gartner-Lead-Analyst-Pushan-Rinnen-Joins-Rubrik.html