IT Executive news

• Startup NodePrime decloaks, wants to manage your whole data center

  30-09-2015 23:42
  
  San Francisco-based startup NodePrime wants to be the proverbial single pane of glass that you use to manage your complicated, heavily virtualized data center, the company announced as it exited stealth today with a $7 million seed funding round in the books.
  The idea is to provide the type of infrastructure management that Google and Facebook use to manage their outsized data centers. But where Google and Facebook have to spend big on custom hardware and elite engineering talent, NodePrime wan
  
  Read more

• Windows slips to third place on Gartner's latest device forecast

  30-09-2015 22:15
  
  Microsoft's Windows will become a third-place operating system by 2017, research firm Gartner said today.
  By then, Apple's combination of iOS and OS X -- the former powering iPhones and iPads, the latter Macs, and the pair increasingly alike in features if not in functionality -- will have slipped by Windows on the number of devices shipped during the year, Gartner's latest forecast showed.
  According to Gartner, which provided Computerworld with its forecast broken out by OS, Windows will power
  
  Read more

• Microsoft offers businesses a 'premium' network link to Office 365

  30-09-2015 21:43
  
  One snag with cloud applications is that they often run over that pesky thing called the public Internet, a Wild West of uncertain speed and reliability. That's fine for a lot of consumers but not always great for businesses.For companies using Office 365, Microsoft has now rolled out a premium service called Azure ExpressRoute, which allows them connect to Office 365 services via a private, managed wide area network.ExpressRoute was already available for Microsoft's Azure cloud services, and as
  
  Read more

• Asana moves beyond simple task management with new update

  30-09-2015 21:13
  
  One of the key problems with doing work in a group is managing who's doing what tasks when. In a traditional workplace, that's often handled with status meetings, email chains and layers of management to help wrangle what everyone is doing. That's the problem that Asana originally set out to solve with the product it launched first in 2012. The company's core product allows business users to track tasks for teams and projects so that it's easy to see what people are working on and how
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Heavy industries may be the looming giants of the Internet

  30-09-2015 20:43
  
  Old-line industries haven't seen much of a payoff from the Internet yet, but once they get moving they could become bigger users than either tech companies or consumers.As tech boomed and consumer businesses like retail changed radically in the 1990s and 2000s, industrial productivity in the U.S. was only growing by about 4 percent per year, General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said Tuesday at a GE conference. Since 2010 growth has slowed to about 1 percent per year, he said. IT ad
  
  Read more

• Progressive Insurance revs up IT-enabled innovation

  30-09-2015 20:25
  
  Some of the best business ideas were dreamt up in a garage--Hewlett-Packard and Harley Davidson, Disney and Mattel, Amazon and Google.So when IT leaders at $18 billion Progressive Insurance wanted to foster that kind of inspiration among the company's 26,000 employees, they launched the Business Innovation Garage (BIG). A resource that's available to help employees test innovative ideas, the garage is staffed by a manager and a rotating group of "mechanics"--IT analysts, system engineers and dev
  
  Read more

• IP protection: Don’t expect government help

  30-09-2015 20:25
  
  If actions – or in this case inaction – speak louder than words, the message from the U.S. government to the private sector regarding defense against cyber economic espionage by China is clear: “You’re on your own.”
  That remains true, in the view of multiple experts, even after Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama announced an agreement last week that, according to a White House press secretary Fact Sheet, “neither country’s gove
  
  Read more

• Adblock Plus creators plan independent board to decide ad acceptability

  30-09-2015 20:09
  The makers of Adblock Plus want to make the process of deciding which ads are "acceptable" and can bypass its filters more transparent. The company plans to create an independent board to set the acceptability criteria by early next year.German company Eyeo has run into criticism over the way it monetizes development of the open-source Adblock Plus: It doesn't block all ads by default, but allows some unintrusive, mostly text-based ads through its filters. About 70 of the largest publishers whos
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Believe it or not, likes are coming to Outlook -- "@Mentions," too

  30-09-2015 20:03
  
  If you’ve ever sent a “thumbs up” emoji to a coworker via email, listen up: Facebook-style likes are coming to Outlook.
  Microsoft said Wednesday that it was incorporating likes as well as a second feature,  “@Mentions,” into its Outlook client for the Web for those customers who use Office 365 and Exchange Online. The two new features will eventually roll out to other Outlook clients—Office 2016 clients for Windows and Mac, as well as Outlook for iOS and
  
  Read more

• Intel, Samsung launch their fastest SSDs with up to 5Gbps speeds

  30-09-2015 19:58
  
  Intel and Samsung separately announced new solid-state drives (SSDs). Intel's boasts the company's fastest speed to date at 5Gbps.
  Intel's new P3608 Series PCIe SSD comes in 1.6TB, 3.2TB and 4GTB capacities and delivers up to 850,000 I/Os per second (IOPS) random reads and 150,000 random writes.
  The drive has a sequential read/write speed of up to 5,000MBps (5Gbps) and 3,000MBps (3Gbps), respectively.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
  Read more

• OneDrive for Business gets new tools to compete in crowded cloud storage market

  30-09-2015 19:35
  
  September has been the month for companies to announce updates to their cloud storage products in order to draw business away from the competition. It's a crowded, rough-and-tumble market, with offerings from Google, Box, Dropbox and other companiesMicrosoft is no different in that regard, announcing a set of updates to its OneDrive for Business product Wednesday that should make it a more appealing option for companies looking to store files in the cloud. The first big change is a next-generati
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: The new Healthcare model: Beyond the pill, the premium and the patient

  30-09-2015 19:05
  
  The Healthcare sector’s anxiety over revenue pressures came to the fore last week when a 5000% price increase on a life-saving drug by tiny, unknown Turing Pharma provoked a severe backlash, and at least one Presidential candidate rattled the sabre of price controls in response. Turing Pharma and its "pharma bro" CEO are just symptoms for the real disease facing healthcare: revenue growth anemia.Other important announcements have been made in the last few weeks that point to how the rest o
  
  Read more

• The evolution of Mac OS X

  30-09-2015 19:00
  
  Progression of OS XMore than 14 years ago, Apple unveiled its Mac OS X operating system, which became noteworthy for its UNIX architecture.OS X has been known over the years for its simplicity, aesthetic interface, advanced technologies, applications, security and accessibility options. From the Finder to Spotlight, the Dock to iCloud, OS X has been integrated into Apple's hardware, as well as iOS devices, so users can easily work and navigate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment,
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: OS X El Capitan reviews: A big thumbs up from the critics

  30-09-2015 18:17
  
  OS X El Capitan has been released today, and so far the critics really seem to like it. I can't blame them a bit, I've been running the beta versions for quite a while and I think it's the best Mac operating system Apple has ever released. It's been running great on all of my iMacs and my Macbook Pro.In this roundup, I'll give you a smattering of commentary about OS X El Capitan from leading reviewers so you can get a feel for what it has to offer. For many more details, you can also check out A
  
  Read more

• Bold CIOs are breaking free of legacy tech

  30-09-2015 17:57
  
  Rotary Club members who donate $1,000 or more to the Rotary Foundation get a lot of special attention. They are named Paul Harris Fellows in honor of the organization's founder. They receive a certificate and an elegant lapel pin. It's an important award in the Rotary world, and one that has been around since 1957. But recently it had become the source of a lot of unhappiness.When Discover Financial Services set out to expand its offerings beginning in 2007, the company's legacy technology was a
  
  Read more

• Many SAP users are still skeptical about S/4Hana and cloud ERP

  30-09-2015 17:34
  SAP placed a big bet on S/4Hana when it launched the new enterprise suite earlier this year, but users aren't so sure it's the technology they're looking for.That's one conclusion from the results of a new survey released Tuesday by DSAG, the German-speaking SAP User Group. The results of the study were presented this week at the 16th DSAG annual meeting in Bremen.Just 6 percent of the 357 German, Austrian and Swiss user companies surveyed have already started a project using the new technology,
  
  Read more

• Microsoft board shrinks Nadella's 2016 stock award

  30-09-2015 17:19
  
  Microsoft's board of directors earlier this month downsized the stock award portion of CEO Satya Nadella's 2016 compensation package compared to the year before, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
  Although Nadella's full package for the fiscal year -- Microsoft's began July 1, 2015, and will end June 30, 2016 -- won't be disclosed until October 2016, the board pegged the stock part at approximately $7.9 million in a Sept. 15 filing with the SEC.
  
  Read more

• Cisco, Juniper, Brocade to virtualize AT&T

  30-09-2015 16:59
  
  Cisco, Juniper Networks and Brocade are intent on granting customer AT&T’s wishes.
  They have been lined up to develop virtualized interpretations of their respective routers for AT&T’s SDN CPE project. AT&T plans to run the routers as virtualized network functions (VNF) on bare metal hardware running at AT&T operating system and software control stack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
  Read more

• Spec showdown: Google's Pixel C tablet vs. Microsoft's Surface 3

  30-09-2015 16:56
  
  There’s nothing like a good ol’ fashioned tech showdown between two similar devices that offer vastly different experiences. Thanks to Google challenging Microsoft’s Surface 3 tablet with the Pixel C, it's time for just such a brawl!
  In one corner, you’ve got Microsoft's 10.8-inch, 2-in-1 tablet rocking the full-fat version of Windows 10, versus Google's 10.2-inch, 2-in-1 slate equipped with Android 6.0.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please clic
  
  Read more

• Dyreza malware steals IT supply chain credentials

  30-09-2015 16:47
  
  Cyber-criminals using the Dyreza computer trojan appear to be shifting gears from online banking and moving into the industrial supply chain.New versions of Dyreza are configured to steal credentials for order fulfillment, warehousing, inventory management, e-commerce and other IT and supply chain services. This represents a deliberate strategy on the part of attackers to target new industries at all points across the supply chain, researchers from security firm Proofpoint said in a blog post."W
  
  Read more

• How CIOs are meeting the needs of customers in the 'mobile moment'

  30-09-2015 16:39
  
  Here's a look at how three CIOs helped their companies succeed with innovative mobile strategies.Anil Cheriyan,
  SunTrust Banks:
  Think 'mobile-first'
  We used to think of mobile applications as a "millennial" thing, but we've found they're important to all of our customers. We created a mobile app for our customers several years ago and have been perfecting it ever since. With every new product we create, we think mobile first.About 85 percent of our banking transactions take place through some ki
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: How the best remote companies train their people

  30-09-2015 16:38
  
  We all know the importance of having great talent on our team. Talent alone though is not enough. After working with some of the best remote companies, I’ve seen that an outstanding training process can dramatically change an employee’s experience and success.Training is a lot more than a few lectures from a manager. The key to a great training process is how well your new talent fits in and how quickly they are able to understand what your organization values and how it operates.Thi
  
  Read more

• Australian university dumps Google for Microsoft over data hosting concerns

  30-09-2015 16:36
  
  It's little surprise that European governments prefer to host their data in Europe than in the U.S. -- but now even Australian academics are expressing a preference for the Old World over the New.
  On Monday, the CIO of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, told staff that Google can no longer be entrusted with their email and calendars because it plans to host them in the U.S., and not the European Union. 
  "Data security is our top priority at Macquarie University, and following a dec
  
  Read more

• Finding the courage for career transformations

  30-09-2015 16:12
  
  We talk a lot about transformation in this industry: digital transformation, IT transformation, business transformation, and so on.But what we often overlook are career and personal transformation. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Tony Koures, CTO at the University of California, San Diego's Clinical and Translational Research Institute. What I heard was an inspiring transformation story.>> More Career coverage on CIO.com <<Koures started out in the sciences. He earned a P
  
  Read more

• Cisco acquires security consultancy

  30-09-2015 15:42
  
  Cisco this week said it intends to purchase Portcullis, a privately held cybersecurity consultancy based in the United Kingdom.
  Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
  +MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Cisco security chief: 4 things CISOs need to survive+CiscoJames Mobley, Cisco vice president of security solutionsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
  Read more

• Apple's Cook looks to grow its $25 billion enterprise business

  30-09-2015 15:36
  
  Apple CEO Tim Cook says no organization, including his own, "deserves a really high grade" for their efforts in enterprise mobility. "The tactical way people are using mobile in enterprise is too much around doing email, browsing, doing basic things, not reinventing and transforming their business," Cook said during a keynote at BoxWorks, enterprise storage company Box's annual conference in San Francisco yesterday. For Apple, enterprise a $25 billion a year businessAs he often does, Cook
  
  Read more

• Expired certificates cost businesses $15 million per outage

  30-09-2015 15:00
  
  The average global 5,000 company spends about $15 million to recover from the loss of business due to a certificate outage -- and faces another $25 million in potential compliance impact.
  These estimates, based on a Ponemon survey of about 2,400 global respondents, include remediation costs, loss of productivity, lost revenues, and brand image damage.
  This past April, for example, Instagram forgot to renew its security certificate, causing security warnings to pop up for its website visitors.
  A
  
  Read more

• BrandPost: Healthcare’s Biggest Public Confidence Challenge: Security and Privacy

  30-09-2015 15:00
  
  The healthcare industry as a whole does a great job addressing the core issue of privacy. Clinicians and physicians alike have always fiercely protected their obligations to patient confidentiality. In the U.S., HIPAA provides additional strict enforcement.But the immaturity of healthcare organizations’ cybersecurity can inadvertently create a significant privacy gap. Even with strict adherence to privacy policies, when healthcare organizations’ security falls short, their privacy pr
  
  Read more

• Ashley Madison breach shows hackers may be getting personal

  30-09-2015 14:43
  
  When AshleyMadison.com posted its slogan “Life is short. Have an affair,” it probably wasn’t bargaining for the one that it got last month. Someone got as intimate with the site’s members as you could get, exposing the online identities and sexual preferences of millions of adulterous wanna-bes.The affair quickly turned into one of the largest personal information dumps ever, and the online hook-up site joined the ranks of the most notorious IT security breaches of all ti
  
  Read more

• Onenigheid in top UWV vanwege aanpak digitalisering

  30-09-2015 14:11
  Bij uitkeringsinstantie UWV is onenigheid uitgebroken vanwege de almaar falende digitalisering, zo meldde NRC Handelsblad gisteren. Daardoor komt een vorig jaar al gestart project, dat juist in het leven was geroepen om vorderingen te maken, in gevaar.Vorig jaar werd tijdens hoorzittingen van de commissie Elias al... lees meer
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: How to be a project manager mentor

  30-09-2015 14:01
  
  I was talking with a colleague several years ago over lunch and the subject of coaching and mentoring came up during the conversation.“I wouldn’t be where I am without the people who poured their wisdom and knowledge into me,” he said, staring into his cappuccino. Looking over at a group of 20-somethings, he shook his head. “I’d like to do that for the next generation, but I don’t know how to start.”Mentoring and coaching have been buzzwords within manag
  
  Read more

• The 7 best project management mobile apps of 2015

  30-09-2015 14:00
  
  Project management anytime, anywhereProject managers continue to advance as invaluable resources to businesses of all sizes. They are information powerhouses and masters at planning, facilitating, scheduling, communicating and conflict resolution. With workforces becoming increasingly mobile, project managers also require access to powerful project management mobile apps to streamline and simplify PM processes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
  Read more

• LG Gram is a MacBook Air rival for PC users

  30-09-2015 14:00
  
  If you're a Windows guy or gal, but wish you could own a PC that's similar to Apple's thin and light MacBook Air, you now have a new option. LG, a company mostly known in the United States for its monitors and TVs, is now shipping a PC called the "Gram," and it takes dead aim at the MacBook Air.
  Calling its new laptop Gram is LG's way of telling you that weight is a major selling point. The 13-inch Gram is a half-inch thick, and it weighs just 2.16 pounds; the same size MacBook Air is more than
  
  Read more

• Is Apple's walled garden showing signs of erosion?

  30-09-2015 14:00
  
  Apple has long benefitted from a perception that its devices and the software that powers them are more safe and secure than the competition, but last year's high-profile iCloud hack and a recent large-scale malware attack bring Apple security into question. Earlier this month, Apple suffered a potentially catastrophic security lapse when malicious code injected into a counterfeit version of Xcode, the company's app development toolset, made its way into hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of
  
  Read more

• IDG Contributor Network: What are your favorite project management tools?

  30-09-2015 13:55
  
  When I first started managing projects early in my career, the tool I was using was ABT’s Project Workbench. It had a graphical user interface (GUI), so to speak, but it wasn’t the Windows version…that was still a ways off. In fact, by the time there was a Windows version, I had moved on to Microsoft Project. I did, however, end up teaching the Windows version of Project Workbench in the early 1990’s to a room full of CAD designers even though I had never even used it my
  
  Read more

• Does security awareness training even work?

  30-09-2015 13:28
  
  The other day, I was in a room full of CIOs, CTOs and CISOs who -- as an ice-breaking activity -- were asked to share a bad security habit. One after the other admitted to bad password hygiene, such as reusing passwords.
  I was the only one in the room who used password management software, and that was only because I'd just written an article about it.
  If even well-educated security experts mess up when it comes to security, can we really educate average employees to be more security aware?To r
  
  Read more

• 6 things to leave off of your resume

  30-09-2015 12:33
  
  Things to leave off of your resumeImage by ThinkstockYour resume is the story of your life at work, but it shouldn't be a blow-by-blow description of your entire history -- save that for your autobiography. Making sure the most relevant details and experience aren't drowned out by extraneous details is key to grabbing and holding a recruiter or hiring manager's attention."Don't give [hiring managers and recruiters] a reason -- any reason -- not to hire you. They will automatically make assumptio
  
  Read more

• 11 El Capitan features that make upgrading worthwhile

  30-09-2015 12:30
  
  A little better all the timeImage by AppleEl Capitan adds some power under the hood, bringing Apple’s Metal APIs over from iOS, which lets apps take better advantage of your Mac’s graphics processor for increased performance. If that doesn’t sound very, well, exciting, not to worry: Apple tossed in some improvements for users like us, too. I’ve been using the public beta for a while. Here are the little changes that have made the biggest difference in my workflow—an
  
  Read more

• Review: Apple shines up OS X with 'El Capitan'

  30-09-2015 12:05
  
  Apple's new Macintosh operating system, OS X 10.11 "El Capitan," is named after a prominent rock formation in Yosemite National Park. That's fitting because the new OS is designed with rock-solid stability in mind. El Capitan is the 12th iteration of the OS powering Apple’s desktop computer lineup, and as the name implies, it stands on the shoulders of its predecessor.[ Related: 8 tips and tricks for OS X El Capitan ]Just as iOS 9 was built on the foundation laid by iOS 8 for mobile device
  
  Read more

• September's sizzling new PC hardware, from revolutionary SSDs to the most powerful router ever

  30-09-2015 12:00
  A cornucopia of computer gearImage by Gordon UngHeading into the month, it seemed like there was no way September’s new PC hardware releases could top August’s. Between Intel’s Skylake launch, Google’s router debut, and the full reveal of AMD’s itty-bitty Radeon Nano graphics card,August’s hot new hardwarewas ferocious.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
  Read more

• Review: The best 13-inch laptops for Windows 10

  30-09-2015 12:00
  
  With Windows 10 out but customized hardware only starting to appear, there may never be a better time to buy a discounted Windows 8.1 machine -- whether you intend to keep Win 8.1 or upgrade for free to Windows 10. With an eye toward making the upgrade, I put six of the best and most popular 13-inch laptops through my extensive, real-world, “can I really live and work with them” test.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
  Read more

• Low-cost 3D printers driving massive growth

  30-09-2015 12:00
  
  3D printer shipments are forecast to more than double every year between 2016 and 2019, by which time worldwide shipments are expected to reach more than 5.6 million, according to new research from Gartner.Last year, 106,761 3D printers were sold worldwide. This year, 3D printer shipments are expected to reach 244,533 units; next year, shipments are projected to reach 490,000.The primary market drivers for "consumer" 3D printers, with prices under $2,500, are acquisitions of low-cost devices by
  
  Read more

• Van elektriciteitsbedrijf naar leverancier van decentrale energiediensten

  30-09-2015 11:31
  De Eneco Groep, bestaande uit de bedrijven Eneco, Stedin, Joulz en Ecofys, wil flink innoveren en nieuwe business modellen ontwikkelen. Het bedrijf heeft daartoe een nieuwe samenwerkingsovereenkomst getekend met Capgemini.Door de nieuwe overeenkomst kunnen Eneco en Capgemini hun relatie, nu gericht op... lees meer
  
  Read more

• Open data wereldwijd op stoom

  30-09-2015 10:04
  De trend om (overheids)data open te stellen voor de publieke zaak levert wereldwijd allerlei interessante initiatieven op waar burgers iets aan hebben. De VS is in absolute zin koploper, gevolgd door Europa, waar Groot Brittannië vooroploopt. Nederland zit, zoals wel vaker, tussen het groepje aanvoerders van de... lees meer
  
  Read more

• Apple rolls out its music service in China

  30-09-2015 08:55
  Apple has launched Apple Music together with iTunes Movies and iBooks in China, which is already the company's largest market for app downloads.The company is braving competition from local players as well as the high piracy levels in the country. China's National Copyright Administration earlier this year, however, indicated a crackdown on piracy with a warning to streaming services offering unlicensed music.From Wednesday, users of PC, Macs and iOS devices in China can sign up to a three-month
  
  Read more

• 18 cardinal rules of systems administration

  30-09-2015 03:05
  
  Rules to live byImage by Thinkstock and flickr/PrayitnoIt's not just knowing how to set up and maintain your servers and understanding how system commands work that makes you a good system administrator -- or even knowing how to fix things when something breaks down, how to monitor performance, how to manage backups, or how to craft superbly clever scripts. It's knowing these things and holding yourself to a set of cardinal rules that help to keep your systems running smoothly and your users hap
  
  Read more

• Tim Cook on Apple and Microsoft partnership: 'It's what customers want'

  30-09-2015 03:03
  
  Close to $50 billion in revenue last quarter. 13 million iPhones sold in a weekend. So how does Apple CEO Tim Cook feel about his company’s record-breaking success?
  “We haven’t started yet,” Cook said. The Apple CEO sat down for a fireside chat with Box CEO Aaron Levie at the BoxWorks conference in San Francisco on Tuesday morning. A more contextual interpretation of that statement could be that Apple hasn’t really started in enterprise, but that’s certainly
  
  Read more

• Google announces two Nexus phones, Android 6.0

  30-09-2015 03:03
  
  Google on Tuesday announced two new Nexus phones, as expected -- the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P -- that will run the new, more capable Android 6.0 operating system, also known as Marshmallow.
  The phones will feature better cameras, bigger batteries, an improved fingerprint sensor on the rear of the case and power-saving features provided via Marshmallow software. One other important but little-known feature of the new OS should offer greater security to business users and IT managers, analysts said.
  
  Read more

• First Look: Android M, for Marshmallow

  30-09-2015 03:00
  
  Android 6.0Image by GoogleIt’s here and it’s much as described – Google made the official rollout of Android 6.0, or Marshmallow, on stage at its Nexus event today in San Francisco, alongside new Nexus phones, Chromecasts and a sneak peek at a convertible Chromebook. While Marshmallow doesn’t change the look of the Android operating system that much, there’s still plenty that’s new under the hood. Have a look.To read this article in full or to leave a comment,
  
  Read more

• Tim Cook says businesses need to step up where governments don't

  30-09-2015 02:56
  
  Since taking over from Steve Jobs as CEO, one of the things Tim Cook has brought to Apple is a greater push to address social problems. On Tuesday at the Boxworks conference in San Francisco, Cook said he wants other companies to do the same.
  "I think business has a very important responsibility to society," he said. "And that responsibility has grown markedly in the last couple of decades or so, as government has found it more difficult to move forward or get as much done that would please the
  
  Read more

Follow @ITExecutiveNews on Twitter!