IT Executive news

• Google hires VMware co-founder as cloud chief, aiming for enterprise adoption

  19-11-2015 23:54
  
  VMware co-founder Diane Greene will oversee all of Google's cloud businesses, including its Cloud Platform and Apps productivity suite, the company announced Thursday. Greene, who has been on the company's board of directors for three years, took the position as the technology giant agreed to acquire Bebop, a stealthy startup that she co-founded. In a blog post announcing the news, Google CEO Sundar Pichai called the company's product "a new development platform that makes it easy to build
  
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• Intel's crazy fast Optane memory, storage products to hit enthusiast PCs first

  19-11-2015 22:59
  
  Intel's Optane products, promising much faster SSDs and memory, will reach enthusiast PCs next year, then spread to other desktops and mobile products.The news, bound to delight gamers in particular, came from Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of the Client Computing Group (CCG) at Intel, during the company's annual investor conference on Thursday.Optane is the brand name for a new class of memory and storage based on a technology called 3D Xpoint. 3D Xpoint memory media ca
  
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• Facebook building a 100-gigabit switch to keep up with video, VR traffic

  19-11-2015 22:34
  
  Facebook is more than doubling the speed of its Wedge open-source network switch, which is good news both for Facebook users and for anyone who may want to build a 100-gigabit switch.The Wedge sits at the top of a rack of servers to connect them to Facebook's network. It was announced in June 2014, and thousands are already deployed in the company. Plus, the social network made the design of the Wedge open source so other manufacturers could build switches like it.However, less than two years la
  
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• Windows Server 2016's latest beta brings first look at Microsoft's new containers

  19-11-2015 22:16
  Microsoft launched the fourth technical preview for the next version of Windows Server on Thursday, giving the public access to its new Hyper-V Container feature.It's a powerful tool that gives developers access to the flexibility and utility that comes with containerization while also providing isolation that is typically found in traditional virtual machines. One of the key tenets of that isolation is that the Hyper-V Container has its own Windows Server kernel that isn't shared with the host
  
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• Red Hat delivers more container love in its latest Linux update

  19-11-2015 21:51
  
  It's been a container-filled week thanks to the DockerCon EU show in Barcelona, but on Thursday Red Hat added its own voice to the mix with a new Linux release featuring expanded container support.Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2, which is the software's first big update since March, is now generally available, with new additions focusing on containers, security, networking and system administration.Included in RHEL 7.2 are updates for the Docker engine and container-management technologies includin
  
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• Intel envisions smarter autonomous cars with Altera FPGAs

  19-11-2015 21:25
  For decades, Intel processors have powered most of the world's PCs. But the company is now looking outside its conventional chips to FPGAs, or field programmable gate arrays, as it searches for ways to advance computing.As part of that effort, Intel is in the process of buying FPGA specialist company Altera for a whopping US$16.7 billion. The FPGAs could find a place in IOT devices and also in autonomous cars, said CEO Brian Krzanich at the company's annual investor conference Thursday.FPGAs are
  
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• Hottest application container products from DockerCon

  19-11-2015 21:23
  
  DockerConThis week application container enthusiasts descended upon Barcelona, Spain to see the latest and greatest from the fast-growing container industry. Here are some of the most important news announcements from the conference.Docker Universal Control PlaneManufacturer name: Docker, Inc.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Retailers rely more on mobile sales this holiday season

  19-11-2015 20:46
  
  This is the headline I expect to see this year as retailers in the US, especially, focus more of their sales through mobile devices. As consumers spend more time on their phones, and less in the stores, retailers are preparing targeted strategies to address the emerging ominchannel and online/offline (O2O) opportunity to include m-commerce. In countries that have lower at-home PC penetration it is already the norm.If anyone saw the recent sales figures from China’s “Singles’ Da
  
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• Message service blocks 78 ISIS-related encrypted channels

  19-11-2015 20:10
  
  Encrypted messaging app maker Telegram blocked 78 ISIS-related propaganda channels in reaction to abuse reports sent by users, Telegram tweeted late Wednesday.
  The Berlin-based company said in a statement that it took the action because "we were disturbed to learn that Telgram's public channels were being used by ISIS to spread propaganda. We are carefully reviewing all reports sent to use at [email protected] and are taking appropriate action to block such channels."
  Telegram also said it wil
  
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• Apple Pencil teardown reveals tiny logic board, pressure-sensitive trickery

  19-11-2015 20:09
  
  If you’re wondering exactly how the iPad Pro’s Pencil stylus works, a new look at its innards helps draw a clearer picture.
  Officially, we know the Apple Pencil connects to the iPad Pro via Bluetooth, and is not capacitive like a finger or generic stylus. Instead, it uses a pair of emitters to send angle and location data, and includes some sensors inside the case for pressure detection.
  A teardown by iFixit gives a little more detail: Inside the Pencil’s tip is a small metal
  
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• Sprint’s compelling new promo: Switch from another carrier, cut your bill in half

  19-11-2015 17:56
  
  There’s no need for complicated cost comparison charts with Sprint’s latest wireless promotion.
  Quite simply, Sprint is promising to cut bills in half for customers who switch from Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile. The deal runs from November 20 through January 7, 2016, and Sprint says it will lock in those lower prices until January 8, 2018.
  The savings apply to both the cost of data and the per-line access fees that AT&T and Verizon charge. For instance, a Verizon family plan wi
  
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• What’s going on at Citrix?

  19-11-2015 17:54
  
  Tim Walsh, senior IT Architect at the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant in Michigan, is a happy Citrix Systems customer. But he wasn’t surprised to learn this week that the company that makes most of its revenue from virtual client computing technologies is embarking on a major restructuring that will include spinning off of its GoTo Meeting family of collaboration products.
  “I never really saw where the GoTo Meeting business fit into their virtualization strategy,” said Walsh, who
  
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• How to save Windows Store apps to external storage in Windows 10

  19-11-2015 17:54
  Once the domain of a registry hack in Windows 8, the Windows 10 November update finally adds the native ability to save Windows Store apps to external storage as a built-in feature. Anyone who doesn’t want to take up precious internal storage space with Windows Store apps can now keep them on a thumb drive or a larger external hard drive left at home.
  External app saves were supposed to roll out during the big launch of Windows 10 in July, but Microsoft decided to hold back the feature at
  
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• Apple apologizes to Mac devs for App Store certificate screw-up

  19-11-2015 17:53
  
  Apple has apologized to developers for the snafu last week that sent Mac users scrambling to reboot and re-enter Mac App Store credentials when their apps refused to launch.
  "We apologize for any inconvenience to you and your customers," Apple said in an email to OS X developers, including Donald Southard, Jr., who posted an image of the email on TwitterTuesday. Southard is the creator of the Mac utilities Watermarker and Thumbtack.
  Apple also explained the cause of the Nov. 12 fiasco, saying t
  
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• Congress targets cybersecurity; you’re the victim

  19-11-2015 17:21
  
  We all want the world to be a safer place. We want to be protected from cyberattacks, security breaches and terrorism aided by the Internet. And so, in theory, a piece of legislation wending its way through Congress, called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing Act (CISA) should have plenty of support from the tech industry, academics, citizens and others.
  That it instead has been greeted as a dangerous, privacy-endangering proposal that would do little to keep us safe is a testament to just how shall
  
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• How tech led to the death of France's public enemy number 1

  19-11-2015 15:25
  
  When one of the terrorists involved in the Paris shootings dropped his smartphone in a trashcan outside the Bataclan concert venue on Friday night, he wasn't worried about encrypting his text messages or stored documents. Why would he be? With a bomb strapped to his waist, he knew he was about to die.But that telephone, and wiretaps on another, led police to announce Thursday that the suspected organizer of the shootings and a string of other attacks, Abdel Hamid Abaaoud, was dead.The phone disc
  
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• OpenDNS listens for malicious melodies

  19-11-2015 15:18
  
  Much like Pandora identifies patterns in music to come up with new songs that its users might like, OpenDNS is listening to the traffic patterns of the Internet as a whole in order to spot patterns of malicious activity.
  The company processes more than half a terabyte of traffic data every hour, 80 billion queries a day, or about 2 percent of all the traffic in the world, according to Andrew Hay, director of security research at OpenDNS.
  The company also has access to several years' worth of st
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Calculating the total cost of ownership for enterprise software

  19-11-2015 14:30
  
  The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for enterprise software is the sum of all direct and indirect costs incurred by that software, and is a critical part of the  ROI calculation. However, it is often ignored or woefully underestimated. In this article, we look at the lifetime costs incurred by the three main types of enterprise software, namely:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Rip and replace: When it pays to make a total systems change

  19-11-2015 14:01
  
  It's a phrase almost guaranteed to send chills down the spine of an IT leader: "Rip and replace."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Apple's $79 Apple Watch charging dock is here

  19-11-2015 14:00
  Well, that was quick: Less than a day after leaked photos of the Apple Watch charging dock spread around the Internet, Apple put the $79 dock up for sale online and in Apple Stores.
  Unlike third-party watch stands, which are essentially charger accessories, the official dock comes with the small inductive charging disc built in. You plug the whole dock into a wall charger using the Lightning cable it comes with. You can place your watch flat on top of the dock with the band undone, as you would
  
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• Some third-party apps are losing access to your Instagram feed

  19-11-2015 13:59
  An entire industry of apps have popped up around Instagram over the years, not including Instagram’s own apps like Hyperlapse, Layout, and Boomerang. Some of these apps help you edit and share photos to Instagram, while others give you a way to look at your feed on platforms Instagram doesn’t support, like Apple TV. It’s those latter apps that will be most affected by Instagram’s new API change, which cuts off access to any app that wants access to your entire Instagram
  
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• Apple Watch Link Bracelet Kit now available in Space Black

  19-11-2015 13:58
  
  The new Magnetic Charging Dock was not the only new Apple Watch accessory to hit online stores today.
  Apple has also begun selling a Link Bracelet Kit in Space Black for $49 in the Apple Store. Until today, Apple was only selling this kit for Silver Link Bracelets. These Link Bracelet Kits are designed for the 42mm Apple Watch and contain six additional stainless steel links. You can use these kits to replace missing links on your original bracelet or to expand it and accommodate bigger wrists.
  
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• The one thing you must do before upgrading to Windows 10 Mobile Build 10586

  19-11-2015 13:56
  
  After Microsoft's Gabe Aul teased the world via Twitter this morning, Windows 10 Mobile Preview Build 10586 released to fast-ring Insiders Wednesday afternoon. It comes with a slew of improvements—and one big caveat for Insiders who already have Build 10581 on their phones. 
  Or rather, a big bug: "After we released Build 10581 to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring," Aul explained in his blog post, "we discovered a bug in the build that will cause the filesystem to become partially cor
  
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• How 4 organizations connect veterans to IT jobs

  19-11-2015 13:55
  
  Making the transition from the military to civilian employment can be difficult. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, more than half of returning, post-9/11 veterans will experience a period of unemployment. Here are four organizations working to help returning service members leverage their skills and training to gain IT employment.V.E.T.S (Vocation, Education and Training for Service members)Karen Ross, CEO of executive search and staffing firm Sharp Decisions, started the Vocation
  
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• Happy 30th, Windows: What we've loved through the years

  19-11-2015 13:54
  
  Happy 30th, Windows: What we've loved through the yearsImage by Omer Wazir via FlickrLove it or hate it, Windows has exerted the single largest influence on one of the most important pursuits in human history. From its floppy disk origins to today’s automagic updates from the cloud, Windows has found its way into every pore of personal computing. And on the eve of its 30th anniversary, Microsoft’s flagship shows no signs of slowing down -- regardless of whether you like where it is g
  
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• CISOs learn 5 tough lessons about conveying security risks

  19-11-2015 13:53
  
  A CISO at a large manufacturing company walked out of a board meeting last year fully expecting to be fired after giving a presentation on security.
  He had spent about a year in the CISO role and had gone into the board meeting thinking he was doing the right thing – giving members the brutally honest truth about what was wrong with the company’s information security.
  “Success for them would have been for me to come in and say, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve got
  
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• App claims to cut onboarding costs and time

  19-11-2015 13:39
  
  After recruiting and hiring new employees, onboarding is the next most important step in the hiring process. However, onboarding involves more than signing W-2 forms and filling out a waiver for the on-site health facility. It's a crucial three-month window in which you can train new employees and help them assimilate into the company culture. By not investing in the onboarding process, you risk not only losing the invested time and money, but also your new hire, according to Chris Buttenham, CE
  
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• Why ‘rip and replace’ IT projects are worth the effort

  19-11-2015 13:38
  
  It’s no secret that IT budgets are tight, and that for most CIOs it takes every available dollar just to maintain the systems and staff they have. So the idea of scrapping it all and starting over again might hold the same appeal as a root canal. But for some CIOs, a so-called “rip and replace” effort just might be the least painful solution for old systems that have past their prime. Sure, the stakes are high, and the cost is usually huge. But the timeframe for which the
  
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• IT shops will pass the cloud tipping point in 2016, survey finds

  19-11-2015 13:00
  
  Despite the persistence of security concerns, companies are moving a variety of IT and business operations to the cloud at a steady pace. Indeed, on average, IT leaders expect slightly more than half of their IT environment to be cloud-based by the end of 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Corporates kunnen veel leren van startups

  19-11-2015 12:11
  Door Martin van der Meer – In een continue zoektocht naar nieuwe markten, en om disruptieve nieuwkomers op afstand te houden, moeten bedrijven zichzelf blijven transformeren. De oplossing is tegen zo laag mogelijke kosten het best mogelijke product in de markt zetten. Dat vereist geheel nieuwe manieren van... lees meer
  
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• Microsoft Dynamics AX: A new ERP is born, this time in the cloud

  19-11-2015 12:00
  
  Enterprise software has long been associated with clunky interfaces and a long learning curve, but Microsoft is aiming to change all that with Dynamics AX, the next generation of its flagship ERP system.Announced on Thursday, Dynamics AX differs from its predecessors in many ways. Certainly most notable is that it was born in the cloud; an on-premises option will follow next year. It also borrows heavily from the consumer side of technology, including a browser-based, HTML5 user interface.Dynami
  
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• Helft zorginstellingen neemt snellere en betere besluiten door BI & analytics

  19-11-2015 11:30
  Zorgorganisaties die BI en analytics inzetten verbeteren daarmee in pakweg de helft van de gevallen hun besluitvorming door de hele organisatie. Door BI nemen zij snellere en nauwkeuriger beslissingen, en ongeveer de helft bespaart ook kosten. Onderzoek in opdracht van Qlik, specialist in visual analytics, duidt... lees meer
  
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• Hacking group that hit South Korea may be at it again with new target

  19-11-2015 03:59
  
  A hacking group that crippled South Korean banks, government websites and news agencies in early 2013 may be active again, Palo Alto Networks said Wednesday.The firewall maker said it found strong similarities between malware used in a recent attack in Europe and that used in the South Korean attacks, referred to as Dark Seoul and Operation Troy.The organization in Europe that was attacked was likely a victim of spear-phishing, where an email with a malware attachment or a harmful link is sent t
  
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• Damballa finds tools related to the malware that hit Sony

  19-11-2015 03:20
  Security company Damaballa said it has found two utilities that are closely related to capabilities seen in the destructive malware that hit Sony Pictures Entertainment last year.
  The utilities were discovered as Damballa was investigating a new version of the "Destover" malware, which rendered thousands of computers unusable at Sony after attackers stole gigabytes of sensitive company information.
  One key question in the Sony breach is how the attackers were able to evade security systems. Wha
  
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• Why Microsoft’s data chief thinks current machine learning tools are like tailored shirts

  19-11-2015 02:48
  
  When Microsoft's data chief thinks about the future, he sees a world where developers create applications that leverage machine learning and predictive analytics without needing the help of a data scientist.Joseph Sirosh, the corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft's Data group, likens the current state of machine learning tools to an age decades ago when people bought tailored shirts. In a similar way that mass manufacturing now lets people grab a shirt off the rack, he says a similar t
  
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• Hottest Black Friday 2015 Windows PC & tablet deals

  19-11-2015 02:05
  
  Windows for the holidaysWe’ll soon find out whether Microsoft’s rollout of Windows 10 and its latest Surface tablets and hybrid laptops will translate into strong holiday sales and provide a challenge to Black Friday sales of Apple Macs, iPads and iPhones. If the Windows products – not to mention Xbox gaming systems -- don’t fly off the shelves this Black Friday and holiday shopping season, you won’t be able to blame retailers for their effort: they’re pricing
  
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• Volvo unveils self-driving concept car, promises fleet by 2017

  19-11-2015 02:03
  
  Volvo today released photos and details of a self-driving concept sedan that is a precursor to a "fleet" of vehicles the company said will be on the roads of Gothenburg, Sweden in 2017.
  Volvo's new Concept 26, named to reflect the average daily commute to work of 26 minutes, incorporates a new bucket-style seat design that actively cradles the driver during the transformation phase into one of the three modes: Drive, Create or Relax. VolvoIn "Relax Mode" the Volvo Concept 26's steering wheel re
  
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• Microsoft gets into sci-fi publishing with research-inspired short stories

  19-11-2015 01:54
  
  Microsoft is taking a novel approach to marketing its research projects with a series of free sci-fi short stories.
  The “Future Visions” anthology, available as a free ebook, includes stories from eight prominent science fiction authors, along with a short graphic novel and original illustrations. Microsoft Research served as the inspiration, and as a resource as the authors wrote their stories.
  The end result is a series of works that bear signs of Microsoftian influence. One story
  
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• Intel's first server chip with performance-boosting FPGA to ship early next year

  19-11-2015 01:52
  
  Intel will ship its first Xeon server chip with a programmable FPGA from Altera in the first quarter next year, some 18 months after announcing work on the product.FPGAs, or field programmable gate arrays, are specialty chips used to accelerate specific workloads. With Moore's Law starting to slow, some see the programmable chips as an important way to accelerate tasks like machine learning and data analytics in an energy-efficient way.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please c
  
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• Google's infrastructure czar predicts cloud business will outpace ads in 5 years

  19-11-2015 00:39
  
  Google may lag behind its two biggest rivals in the public cloud, but Urs Hölzle, the technology titan's senior vice president for technical infrastructure, sees Google's cloud revenue eclipsing its ad business in five years."I think cloud will actually turn out to be a huge business because it's a service business," he said during an interview on stage at the Structure conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. Asked what he would say to enterprises that are skeptical about using Googl
  
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• Dell-EMC deal will 'set back innovation,' Sun co-founder Vinod Khosla says

  19-11-2015 00:06
  
  While he thinks Dell buying EMC makes sense financially, Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla has little faith in the merged company's ability to innovate.
  "EMC and Dell merging is a really good financial move for Michael, but it will set back innovation and distract from innovation," said Khosla, now a prominent venture capitalist, in an onstage interview at the Structure conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
  Asked about the future for old-line technology companies like Cisco, IBM and
  
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