Here is my collection of trends and predictions for year 2014:
It seems that PC market is not recovering in 2014. IDC is forecasting that the technology channel will buy in around 34 million fewer PCs this year than last. It seem that things aren’t going to improve any time soon (down, down, down until 2017?). There will be no let-up on any front, with desktops and portables predicted to decline in both the mature and emerging markets. Perhaps the chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system: PC usage has not moved significantly beyond consumption and productivity tasks to differentiate PCs from other devices. As a result, PC lifespan continue to increase. Death of the Desktop article says that sadly for the traditional desktop, this is only a matter of time before its purpose expires and that it would be inevitable it will happen within this decade. (I expect that it will not completely disappear).
When the PC business is slowly decreasing, smartphone and table business will increase quickly. Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone: the mobile business is much bigger than the computer industry. There are now perhaps 3.5-4 billion mobile phones, replaced every two years, versus 1.7-1.8 billion PCs replaced every 5 years. Smartphones broke down that wall between those industries few years ago – suddenly tech companies could sell to an industry with $1.2 trillion annual revenue. Now you can sell more phones in a quarter than the PC industry sells in a year.
After some years we will end up with somewhere over 3bn smartphones in use on earth, almost double the number of PCs. There are perhaps 900m consumer PCs on earth, and maybe 800m corporate PCs. The consumer PCs are mostly shared and the corporate PCs locked down, and neither are really mobile. Those 3 billion smartphones will all be personal, and all mobile. Mobile browsing is set to overtake traditional desktop browsing in 2015. The smartphone revolution is changing how consumers use the Internet. This will influence web design.
The only PC sector that seems to have some growth is server side. Microservers & Cloud Computing to Drive Server Growth article says that increased demand for cloud computing and high-density microserver systems has brought the server market back from a state of decline. We’re seeing fairly significant change in the server market. According to the 2014 IC Market Drivers report, server unit shipment growth will increase in the next several years, thanks to purchases of new, cheaper microservers. The total server IC market is projected to rise by 3% in 2014 to $14.4 billion: multicore MPU segment for microservers and NAND flash memories for solid state drives are expected to see better numbers.
Spinning rust and tape are DEAD. The future’s flash, cache and cloud article tells that the flash is the tier for primary data; the stuff christened tier 0. Data that needs to be written out to a slower response store goes across a local network link to a cloud storage gateway and that holds the tier 1 nearline data in its cache. Never mind software-defined HYPE, 2014 will be the year of storage FRANKENPLIANCES article tells that more hype around Software-Defined-Everything will keep the marketeers and the marchitecture specialists well employed for the next twelve months but don’t expect anything radical. The only innovation is going to be around pricing and consumption models as vendors try to maintain margins. FCoE will continue to be a side-show and FC, like tape, will soldier on happily. NAS will continue to eat away at the block storage market and perhaps 2014 will be the year that object storage finally takes off.
IT managers are increasingly replacing servers with SaaS article says that cloud providers take on a bigger share of the servers as overall market starts declining. An in-house system is no longer the default for many companies. IT managers want to cut the number of servers they manage, or at least slow the growth, and they may be succeeding. IDC expects that anywhere from 25% to 30% of all the servers shipped next year will be delivered to cloud services providers. In three years, 2017, nearly 45% of all the servers leaving manufacturers will be bought by cloud providers. The shift will slow the purchase of server sales to enterprise IT. Big cloud providers are more and more using their own designs instead of servers from big manufacturers. Data center consolidations are eliminating servers as well. For sure, IT managers are going to be managing physical servers for years to come. But, the number will be declining.
I hope that the IT business will start to grow this year as predicted. Information technology spends to increase next financial year according to N Chandrasekaran, chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information technology (IT) services company. IDC predicts that IT consumption will increase next year to 5 per cent worldwide to $ 2.14 trillion. It is expected that the biggest opportunity will lie in the digital space: social, mobility, cloud and analytics. The gradual recovery of the economy in Europe will restore faith in business. Companies are re-imaging their business, keeping in mind changing digital trends.
The death of Windows XP will be on the new many times on the spring. There will be companies try to cash in with death of Windows XP: Microsoft’s plan for Windows XP support to end next spring, has received IT services providers as well as competitors to invest in their own services marketing. HP is peddling their customers Connected Backup 8.8 service to prevent data loss during migration. VMware is selling cloud desktop service. Google is wooing users to switch to ChromeOS system by making Chrome’s user interface familiar to wider audiences. The most effective way XP exploiting is the European defense giant EADS subsidiary of Arkoon, which promises support for XP users who do not want to or can not upgrade their systems.
There will be talk on what will be coming from Microsoft next year. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a series of updates in 2015 that could see major revisions for the Windows, Xbox, and Windows RT platforms. Microsoft’s wave of spring 2015 updates to its various Windows-based platforms has a codename: Threshold. If all goes according to early plans, Threshold will include updates to all three OS platforms (Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone).
Amateur programmers are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the IT landscape. A new IDC study has found that of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million (roughly 40 percent) are “hobbyist developers,” which is what IDC calls people who write code even though it is not their primary occupation. The boom in hobbyist programmers should cheer computer literacy advocates.IDC estimates there are almost 29 million ICT-skilled workers in the world as we enter 2014, including 11 million professional developers.
The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability will be more and more talked. Interfacing between languages will be increasingly important. You can no longer expect a nontrivial application to be written in a single language. With software becoming ever more complex and hardware less homogeneous, the likelihood of a single language being the correct tool for an entire program is lower than ever. The trend toward increased complexity in software shows no sign of abating, and modern hardware creates new challenges. Now, mobile phones are starting to appear with eight cores with the same ISA (instruction set architecture) but different speeds, some other streaming processors optimized for different workloads (DSPs, GPUs), and other specialized cores.
Just another new USB connector type will be pushed to market. Lightning strikes USB bosses: Next-gen ‘type C’ jacks will be reversible article tells that USB is to get a new, smaller connector that, like Apple’s proprietary Lightning jack, will be reversible. Designed to support both USB 3.1 and USB 2.0, the new connector, dubbed “Type C”, will be the same size as an existing micro USB 2.0 plug.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
6 Hot New IT Roles for 2015
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2603529/careers/6-hot-new-it-roles-for-2015.html
The breakneck pace of change in the IT industry is forcing you to change the way you think about attracting and hiring skilled workers. Here are six new IT roles for 2015 and advice on how to find talent to fill them.
A Continuing Talent Crisis
According to a report by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), a member-based advisory and consulting company, almost 80 percent of IT organizations don’t provide training, coaching or education for skills they expect will increase in importance, and 61 percent don’t have skills forecasts for IT as a whole.
“The IT talent crisis isn’t new, but there’s a considerable shift happening in the skills that are in demand.”
CEB says CIOs will need to fill these six critical IT roles to remain competitive in 2015 and beyond:
Collaboration and Social Media Evangelist
Technology Broker
Information Insight Enabler
User Experience Guru
Cloud Integration Specialist
End-to-End IT Service Manager
But identifying these roles isn’t the same as having a plan in place to develop and hire the talent to fill them, says Horne. Even the most innovative organizations will need a plan to develop talent from within and then to hire for what they can’t grow themselves.
“Now, you need a workforce plan – a forward-looking plan that takes into account the future roles, skills, competencies you need.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
REVIEW: RHEL 7 anchors enterprise-focused ecosystem
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2466011/opensource-subnet/review-rhel-7-anchors-enterprise-focused-ecosystem.html
Latest version of Red Hat focuses on containerized instances of the OS.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is more proof that operating systems aren’t dead, they’re becoming vessels for containerized applications. RHEL 7 performed well in our testing, but it’s worth noting that this no longer just a simple OS – it’s an increasingly abstracted component in the larger Red Hat ecosystem.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sin COS to tan Windows? Chinese operating system to debut in autumn – report
Development alliance working on desktop, mobe software
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/26/google_chinese_os_expected_to_debut_in_october/
A home-grown “China operating system” (COS) to challenge rivals such as Microsoft, Google and Apple could be available as soon as October 2014, the country’s state-run Xinhua News Agency has said.
According to Xinhua, Chinese Academy of Engineering academician Ni Guangnan told the People’s Post and Telecommunications News (PPTN) that the COS “will be first seen on desktop devices and later expanded to smartphones and other mobile devices”.
Ni told PPTN that “the end of Windows XP and a government ban on the procurement of Windows 8 have opened the door to domestic OS developers… our key to success lies in an environment that can help us compete with Google, Apple and Microsoft”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Software-defined’ IS just a passing fad: HP techie Fink Tank lays down law
CTO also drops hints about Memristor DIMMs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/08/hp_cto_martin_fink_software_defined_anything_passing_fad/
HP reckons this software-designed fad sweeping the storage world is just a swing of the fashion pendulum and we’ll go back to hardware soon enough.
Commodity public clouds haven’t attracted much enterprise work and HP’s Helion is well-placed for that.
There will be a pendulum-like shift back to hardware by the end of the decade, with Fink referencing The Machine, Moonshot, 3D printing and Apollo liquid-cooled servers.
Less than five per cent of enterprise workloads have moved to Amazon Web Services type environments. HP sees lots of opportunities for its Helion cloud service that competes with AWS, Google and Azure for enterprise workloads.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP Stream: A Windows Machine at a (Slightly High) Chromebook Price
http://gizmodo.com/hp-stream-a-windows-machine-at-a-chromebook-price-1631921840
Last month, HP gave us a good look at Microsoft’s upcoming Chromebook slayer, known as the HP Stream, after temporarily posting its specs on their own website. Now, HP is announcing the device in a more official capacity with models expected to be available in the U.S. as early as September 24. But it’s $100 pricier than expected.
Almost all the details we spied during HP’s small slip up still hold true.
The price turns out to be the biggest difference between fact and fiction. HP says the Stream will actually sell at a starting price of $300 rather than the $200 we expected. Although $100 bump doesn’t necessarily take it out of Chromebook territory by any means, it’s not quite as cheap as other Windows laptops like the 15.6-inch Acer Aspire ES1, which clocks in at $250.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel wants to modernize data centers with new Xeon server chips
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2604160/intel-wants-to-modernize-data-centers-with-new-xeon-server-chips.html
Intel has designed its latest server chips to provide the building blocks to modernize “legacy data centers” by providing more processing cores, throughput and power-saving features.
The Xeon E5-2600 v3 chips are the company’s fastest server chips to date, said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group, at a media event in San Francisco on Monday.
The chips are based on the Haswell microarchitecture and will replace the Xeon E5-2600 v2 chips, code-named Romley, which accounted for more than 80 percent of Intel server chips shipped in the most recent fiscal quarter.
Servers will deliver faster performance while consuming less power thanks to a number of CPU, storage, memory and networking enhancements, Bryant said.
Servers will also communicate faster, which could help increase performance output in data centers, Bryant said. The server chips are the first to support the faster-performing DDR4 memory and 40GB ethernet.
The goal is to modernize and automate data center deployment, Bryant said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rack-mount 24TB RAID 5 disk array for $5,000. Let’s just check the label here. Uh, it’s TiVo
Hoard about five months of 24/7 video in one box
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/09/hate_losing_your_dvr_shows_maybe_try_a_5000_tivo/
TiVo has unveiled a massive new digital video recorder that costs $5,000 and can hold nearly three years of SD video, or 24 weeks of HD material.
The TiVo Mega box is supposed to rid users of the pesky problem of ever actually running out of storage space by packing a 24TB RAID 5 system into a broadcast video recording box.
Less a set-top box than an appliance, the TiVo Mega ships in a rack-mount enclosure.
The Mega has six tuners for recording video and is designed to be used with multiple sets in various rooms of the house.
“People hate being forced to delete cool stuff from their DVR before they want to or finding a TV show they had recorded is now gone,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Job Solicitations Multiply for Tech Talent
http://www.cio.com/article/2599123/careers/job-solicitations-multiply-for-tech-talent.html
Most happily employed IT pros would consider a new job opportunity – and there are plenty more to consider these days as recruiters struggle to fill in-demand positions.
New survey data shows 81% of IT pros are open to new job opportunities even when they’re not actively seeking another job. IT staffing provider TEKsystems found that IT pros, on average, receive 34 solicitations per week. That’s an increase of 48% compared to 2012, when employees averaged 23 solicitations per week.
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“Most of the data really wasn’t unexpected. It’s more a validation of what we see on a daily basis in the IT staffing industry,” says Jason Hayman, market research manager at TEKsystems. “We know competition for talent is fierce. We know employers really need to work harder than ever to retain their best and brightest. We know that time, money, and resources are often wasted during the hiring process.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is It Time To Split Linux Distros In Two?
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/08/1925206/is-it-time-to-split-linux-distros-in-two
Desktop workloads and server workloads have different needs, and it’s high time Linux consider a split to more adequately address them, writes Deep End’s Paul Venezia. You can take a Linux installation of nearly any distribution and turn it into a server, then back into a workstation by installing and uninstalling various packages. The OS core remains the same, and the stability and performance will be roughly the same, assuming you tune they system along the way. Those two workloads are very different, however, and as computing power continues to increase, the workloads are diverging even more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s time to split Linux distros in two
http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/its-time-split-linux-in-two-249704
Desktop workloads and server workloads have different needs. Why address them in the same distribution?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Releases SD-Card-Sized PC, Unveils Next 14nm Chip
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/09/09/1934241/intel-releases-sd-card-sized-pc-unveils-next-14nm-chip
They’ve launched their Edison board, which features an x86 based SoC running at 100 MHz. The footprint measures 35.5mm x 25.0mm and offers a 70-pin connector to break out 40 pins for add-on hardware.
Intel is pushing to break into both wearable devices and household devices
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s Skylake chips set for PCs and tablets next year
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2604685/components-processors/intels-skylake-chips-set-for-pcs-and-tablets-next-year.html
Intel says Skylake will deliver better battery life and performance
Intel showed off the first PC containing a next-generation chip based on the upcoming Skylake architecture, set to be in PCs and tablets in the second half of next year.
A desktop PC with the chip was shown Tuesday running 4K video during an on-stage demonstration at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The manufacturer of the PC was not named by company officials.
The release date of Skylake came into question following the Broadwell delay. Skaugen spoke with a high level of confidence and tried to quash doubts about Skylake’s release, stressing that it will be in desktops, laptops and tablets by the end of next year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s next-next-gen Skylake chips set for 2015 launch despite Broadwell delay
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2604900/intels-skylake-chips-set-for-pcs-and-tablets-next-year.html
Intel showed off the first PC containing a next-generation chip based on the upcoming Skylake architecture, set to be in PCs and tablets in the second half of next year.
A desktop PC with the chip was shown Tuesday running 4K video during an on-stage demonstration at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The manufacturer of the PC was not named by company officials.
“You should expect a significant increase in performance, battery life and power efficiency,” said Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group, during the demonstration.
The reference design calls for putting a laptop on a dock to enable wireless charging. Intel is making a dock based on WiGig wireless technology—which is three times faster than Wi-Fi 802.11ac—so PCs can stream data wirelessly to monitors and exchange data with external storage devices. The new technologies could reduce the need for ports like DisplayPort, HDMI and USB 3.0 in PCs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DDR4 Ramps Up, Enterprise First
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323826&
With the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) in full swing this week, DDR4 is certain to be a popular topic of discussion.
Kingston Technology’s HyperX division has already demoed its next-generation HyperX Predator DDR4 Memory at PAX Prime and is shipping 16GB kits of four starting at 1.2V, with frequencies from 2133 MHz to 3000 MHz. Predator is designed for the Intel X99 chipset and the Haswell-E processor. It is targeted at advanced PC users, such as gamers, says Mike Mohney, senior technology manager at Kingston, and at those looking for high performance to support CAD and video editing applications.
Beyond Hyper-X, however, DDR4 will be very much an enterprise play in its early days, he says, which is a “flip-flop” from how DDR3 debuted and matured.
It was initially aimed at client devices, and then found its way into servers. He says Intel smartly predicted where computing would be in 2014 — specifically that datacenters would be dominant, with significant growth in part due to the demands of the cloud. These “mega” datacenters require increasingly more memory bandwidth.
Companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix began manufacturing their first DDR4 chips in early 2011, prior to the release of the JEDEC DDR4 DRAM standard in September 2012.
Tomi Engdahl says:
We lift the lid on Intel’s Pro 2500 SSD. Shock, horror: It doesn’t use its own NAND chips
Encryption and toolkit tinkering for all
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/10/review_storage_intel_ssd_pro_2500_240gb/
Intel has been busy of late launching SSDs for both the consumer market and for the data centre/enterprise segments
Intel offers the Pro 2500 in three formats and has a broad range of capacities. The 2.5-inch form factor has 120, 180, 240, 360 and 480GB storage options.
As befitting the market at which they are aimed, the Pro 2500 drives come loaded to gills with data protection. For a start, these are self-encrypting drives (SED) using 256-bit encryption that is hardware based. The drives have support for TCG Opal 2.0 (the Pro 1500 only supported v1.0) and IEEE-1667 for Microsoft’s eDrive, although this is turned off by default.
If you want to use IEEE-1667, it can be turned on by using the new Intel SSD Pro Administrator Tool, a command line utility that also allows IT administrators to perform a complete PSID revert, should the drive’s encryption key get lost.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SAN-free, NAS-free? Scottish PHDs lift kilt on how they’ll pull storage out of the aether
Arrays… who needs ‘em?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/10/storage_out_of_the_aether/
Two years back, The Reg took a look at a New York startup developing a tech it claimed would change the storage game for networked workstation shops that don’t want to buy a SAN or filer. Now the three graduates of Scotland’s University of St Andrews who run AetherStore say they are nearing product delivery.
The product provides shared storage in a network of peer-to-peer workstations, using their using spare disk capacity.
Pros: Pooling the storage resources of 100 machines with AetherStore will cost you less than $500.
AetherStore provides high-availability storage that requires very little time to manage. Data is automatically deduplicated and replicated between nodes. If nodes fail or leave the network the replica levels are built back up automatically, with no need for intervention.
AetherStore really can run over commodity hardware – everything from laptops to high-end servers
AetherStore is software. It’s two downloads: a node installer (for the computers with spare storage) and a dashboard installer (for the administrator). If you can’t get a multi-terabyte storage system up & running in 15 minutes you’ve done something wrong.
Unlike VSAN, AetherStore isn’t tightly coupled to any single technology stack. AetherStore can be installed not only on Windows workstations and servers, but also in VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines.
Tomi Engdahl says:
6 Strategies for Cancelling a Major IT Project
http://www.cio.com/article/2604010/project-management/6-strategies-for-cancelling-a-major-it-project.html
Credit: Thinkstock
Sometimes it’s better to walk away from an IT project, even a big one, than to fall further down the rabbit hole. These tips will help you cancel a project and keep your dignity (and reputation) intact.
What if your project fails?
Still, for those who manage a large IT organization, cancelled projects can cause great stress. They are complex, expensive and often interconnected. Yet, there are times when a project runs out of funds, there’s a change in company direction, or executives realize the project won’t be as valuable to the organization as everyone hoped. Here are six strategies for how to cancel a major IT project once you decide it’s the only course of action.
Get Support From Other Executives
Make Sure You Really Can’t Save the Project
Communicate About the ‘Why’
Know Your Contract
Learn From the Process
Be Specific About the Numbers
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s a pain in the ASCII, so what can be done to make patching easier?
Give us the tools
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/10/software_patching/
Like most of you reading this article, I neglect good patching hygiene.
There are very good reasons why we should all of us obsessively test every patch and patch our systems immediately, but patching is a pain in the ASCII.
The tools suck, rebooting sucks, and most damning of all, something usually breaks.
Each PC, and most servers, have more applications installed today than they did back when I were a lad. Everything is also far more interconnected and interdependent. In today’s world, patches cascade, and there are ever so many of them.
Multiple authentication and identity sources are baked into virtually everything – each a separate API, client application or server of its own to worry about.
Server applications are often a database, a web server of some variety and a set of binaries running on one or more operating systems spread across who knows how many hosts.
Rebooting is a huge part of the problem with patching. All operating systems have the issue to some degree, but Microsoft’s Windows causes the vast bulk of the frustration.
When you are patching a server you require one of two things. You can have an expensive high-availability infrastructure that ensures you can take down individual copies of whatever server application you are using without a loss in service; or you can schedule maintenance windows.
Companies, employees and customers expect 24/7 access to everything. For many of us, scheduling downtime takes almost as much time as the patching itself.
It is even worse on the end-user side. Rebooting desktops is a right royal pain.
Far too many of us simply don’t test patches. In some cases this is due to limited lab space, but often doing the update dance takes so long that it is worth taking a risk.
Rolling back changes because of a patch issue is something we have to do only every year or two. Patch testing can take days out of every month.
None of us is going to like patching, but if we get the proper tools involved, at least we can make it bearable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft nears deal to buy Minecraft maker Mojang : WSJ
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/09/us-mojang-microsoft-deals-idUSKBN0H42HY20140909
(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) is in serious discussions to buy Mojang AB, the Swedish company behind the popular “Minecraft” video game, The Wall Street Journal said, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.
The deal is be valued at more than $2 billion and could be signed as early as this week, the Journal reported.
“Minecraft” is a game where players build structures with blocks to protect against nocturnal monsters.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Devopsia referred to as a cultural movement and the phenomenon, because it requires a cultural change in the organization. In practice, devops consists of working methods and wholesaler of tools, which generates software production pipeline. In the role of continuous publication, the different areas of automation, infrastructure Exporting to the cloud and virtualization.
Source: http://summa.talentum.fi/article/tv/89309
Tomi Engdahl says:
NVIDIA hints at an HTC Nexus 9 tablet coming within weeks
http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/10/nvidia-hints-at-htc-nexus-9/
NVIDIA has revealed that it expects a Tegra K1-powered “HTC Nexus 9″ sometime within the third calendar quarter of the year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Information Technology makes things too complicated
CIO does not know how to simplify the page and it will remain part of the company’s Executive Board discussions, unimpressed by Microsoft’s Tim Hynes.
Business digitalized rapidly. In this turmoil IT department prominence to the importance you would think, but this is not the case. CIO has been part of the page, when the company’s top management is planning for the future digital strategies.
Why? As the IT people do not speak the language used by the management to understand, rumbles Microsoft EMEA region CIO Tim Hynes.
Hynes, the IT leaders would change their behavior radically.
“When the company management turns pulmissaan CIO’s advice, he has a tendency to make things complicated. The majority of IT managers have engineering education, they do not want to solve simple problems. This is the wrong way, the CIO must be able to simplify things, “Hynes calls.
In his opinion, should be helpful in simplifying cloud services. Cloud is an excellent tool for the IT reforms to accelerating implementations.
CIO has to be a vision
Hynes, the digitization of the most successful transition CIO’s, who have a clear vision of the future.
“The IT leader must have a vision of where we are going. Change, and a third of employees resist change fiercely, another third in favor of it and in the end view is somewhere in between. CIO’s want to focus on getting this over with, and the last third to convince them their vision of the operation, “he says.
A successful IT leader needs to actively follow in his opinion, more than just the latest technology trends. His keeping track of economic development, economic magazines and read professional literature in the field.
“Traditionally, information management role has been to be a business enabler. It is responsible for ensuring that the business needed equipment and systems operate”
According to him, this is no longer enough.
“Today, information management should be a role as a catalyst and a genuine business partner.”
Source: http://summa.talentum.fi/article/tv/uusimmat/89603
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big Companies, Big CIOs
http://www.cio.com/article/2605420/leadership-management/big-companies-big-cios.html
From IBM to HP to Deutsche Bank to AON, large companies are hiring new CIOs
Tomi Engdahl says:
No TKO for LTO: Tape format spawns another 2 generations, sports 120TB bigness
The road doesn’t end at LTO-8, folks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/11/lto_tape_extended_two_generations_to_120tb/
The LTO consortium has added two more generations to its tape format roadmap, extending it out to LTO-10 and a 120TB compressed capacity.
The roadmap used to finish at LTO-8, and that version of the LTO tape format future was announced in April 2010. Now, four-and-a-half years later, it has been extended again.
The new formats are LTO-9 and LTO-10.
Compression is reckoned to be 2.5:1. Basically raw capacity is doubling every generation with compressed capacity increasing 2.5 times per generation. Transfer speeds are increasing at less than 2X per generation.
LTO-6 is the current generation. As ever with LTO, “each new generation will include read-and-write backwards compatibility with the prior generation as well as read compatibility with cartridges from two generations prior.”
We might assume each generation leasts for 2.5 years before the next one is introduced.
An extension to 120TB capacity with a transfer speed reaching 2.75GB/sec is strong evidence that the three LTO consortium members – HP IBM and Quantum – see a continuing healthy demand for tape and its role as an archival data medium.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Seagate spins up new Cloud Systems and Solutions group
ClusterStor kit refreshed and ‘enterprise capacity’ two terabytes, two-incher revealed
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/11/seagate_spins_up_new_cloud_systems_and_solutions_group/
Seagate has announced a new “Cloud Systems and Solutions group” it says will deliver the planet’s very best storage rigs for cloud operators, a raft of new arrays and some new enterprise disk drives.
The company’s rolling out the “explosion in unstructured data” line to explain the need for the group, which it says melds the expertise it acquired when slurping Xyratex and Evault with stuff cloud operators have whispered in its ear, to produce kit those wrestling lots of data will want in their corner.
The result is four offerings: integrated solutions for HPC; “Scalable, modular components and engineered solutions” that build into either reference designs for object stores or bespoke storage rigs for those who like to tinker; custom systems for OEMs and; as-a-service cloud backup and archiving kit for those who can’t be bothered building it themselves.
Roland says:
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blog!
Tomi Engdahl says:
The State of ZFS On Linux
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/11/1421201/the-state-of-zfs-on-linux
“ZFS provides strong guarantees for the integrity of [data] from the moment that fsync() returns on a file, an operation on a synchronous file handle is returned or dirty writeback occurs (by default every 5 seconds). These guarantees are enabled by ZFS’ disk format, which places all data into a Merkle tree that stores 256-bit checksums and is changed atomically via a two-stage transaction commit.. .
Comments:
ZFS is a layer below LVM. It’s best to give it direct control over your drives (no hardware RAID). The reason for this is to allow it to do data integrity checks on the actual data being written. It’s similarly fast compared to hardware RAID but guarantees data integrity in a much more compete fashion. I use a striped mirrored setup which is similar to RAID 10 (over 4x 3TB drives with caches on a pair of SSDs). If you cache like this, frequent reads don’t need to go to the spindles. It also had built in compression and deduplication. The best thing IMO is instant snapshots though, that’s one feature I can’t believe I lived without.
The gist as far as I understand it is (again, take with huge helping of salt (it’s not that bad for your health any more!), I’m posting these partly to be told I’m wrong):
Pros:
- data integrity (checksums and more rigorous checks that something is actually written to the disk)
Cons:
- cpu and ram overhead (even by current standards, uses a tonne of resources)
- doesn’t like hardware raid (apparently a lot of the pros rely on talkign to an actual disk)
- expandability sucks (can be done, but weird rules based on pool sizes and such) compared to most raid levels where you can easily toss a new disk in there and expand.
There are so many pros for ZFS that I don’t even. Until you try it, you won’t “get it” – it’s more like trying to describe purple to a life long blind guy. But, I’d adjust your list to at least include:
Pros:
- Data integrity
- Effortless handling of failure scenarios (RAIDZ makes normal RAID look like a child’s crayon drawing)
- Snapshots.
- Replication. Imagine being able to DD a drive partition without taking it offline, and with perfect data integrity.
- Clones. Imagine being able to remount an rsync backup from last tuesday, and make changes to it, in seconds, without affecting your backup?
- Scrub. Do an fsck mid-day without affecting any end users. Not only “fix” errors, but actually guarantee the accuracy of the “fix” so that no data is lost or corrupted.
- Expandable. Add capacity at any time with no downtime. Replace every disk in your array with no downtime, and it can automatically use the extra space.
- Redundancy, even on a single device! Can’t provide multiple disks, but want to defend against having a block failure corrupting your data?
- Flexible. Imagine having several partitions in your array, and be able to resize them at any time. In seconds. Or, don’t bother to specify a size and have each partition use whatever space they need.
- Native compression. Double your disk space, while (sometimes) improving performance! We compressed our database backup filesystem and not only do we see some 70% reduction in disk space usage, we saw a net reduction in system load as IO overhead was significantly reduced.
- Sharp cost savings. ZFS obviates the need for exotic RAID hardware to do all the above. It brings back the “Inexpensive” in RAID. (Remember: “Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks”?)
Cons:
- CPU and RAM overhead comparable to Software RAID 5.
- Requires you to be competent and know how it operates, particularly when adding capacity to an existing pool.
- ECC RAM strongly recommended if using scrub.
- Strongly recommended for data partitions, YMMV for native O/S partitions. (EG: /)
The CPU and RAM overhead is relatively minimal. You can get away with very few resources, even after enabling compression.
I have a ZFS server ~5 years old right now, serving over 100 NFS and a handful of Samba/Netatalk connections simultaneously
It will off course eat as much RAM as you will give it but for the amount you spend on a halfway decent SAS RAID controller, you can easily buy 100GB of RAM and a set of SSD’s.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The care and feeding of a rockstar developer
Whether you’re a hiring company, an educator, or a developer, find out what you’re up against in the war for programming talent
http://www.itworld.com/software/433752/care-and-feeding-rockstar-developer
Developers rule in the current tech landscape and have their choice of prime positions at any number of major companies. They appear to be on a promised path, with companies fighting for their services. The world is their oyster, so it seems.
Not so fast — coders may be in high demand, but hiring companies and educators hold some of the keys as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chromebooks can now run some Android apps for the first time, including Evernote and Vine
http://thenextweb.com/google/2014/09/11/chromebooks-can-now-run-android-apps-first-time-including-evernote-vine/
We knew that Google planned to add support for running Android apps on Chromebooks since the company announced it back at Google I/O in June, but today we’ve had confirmation that the first Android apps to run on Chrome OS are now available to download.
Although jut a few months back the project was described as “in its early days”, it seems Google has got the system working smoothly enough to unleash the first four apps from the App Runtime for Chrome (beta) on the general public.
Of course, those are just the first four, but Google said it is working with ” a select group of Android developers to add more of your favorite apps”, so you can expect to see more in future.
As noted at the time, the move to bring Android apps to Chromebooks is important for Google as it offers the possibility to introduce hundreds of millions of Android users to its Chrome OS.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CS50 Logs Record-Breaking Enrollment Numbers
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/9/11/cs50-breaks-enrollment-records/
Nearly 12 percent of Harvard College is enrolled in a single course, according to data released by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Registrar’s Office on Wednesday.
The course, Computer Science 50: “Introduction to Computer Science I,” attracted a record-breaking 818 undergraduates this semester, marking the largest number in the course’s 30-year history”
CS50 instructor, David J. Malan ’99, and other computer science professors said that the boost in enrollment stems from increasing Harvard-wide and nation-wide interest in computer science.
“Harvard students are smart people,” said Harry R. Lewis ’68, former dean of the College and current director of undergraduate studies for Computer Science. “They have figured out that in pretty much every area of study, computational methods and computational thinking are going to be important to the future.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Western Digital unveils world’s first 10TB hard drive: Helium-filled, shingled recording
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/189813-western-digital-unveils-worlds-first-10tb-hard-drive-helium-filled-shingled-recording
In what can only be described as the hard drive equivalent of Game of Thrones, Western Digital’s HGST has announced the world’s first 10-terabyte hard drive: the helium-filled Ultrastar He10.
This comes just a few weeks after Seagate announced initial availability of its 8TB air-filled hard drive, which at the time was the largest hard drive in the world.
There’s no word on pricing yet but Western Digital says, somewhat unbelievably, that the 10TB drive will have the lowest cost-per-gigabyte and power consumption-per-gigabyte of any drive on the market.
Western Digital’s new 10TB hard drive uses the same HelioSeal technology that debuted with WD’s first 6TB hard drive in November 2013. HelioSeal essentially means that helium is hermetically sealed inside the drive — it can never get out, and air (and other contaminants) can never get in
Curiously, HGST’s 10TB drive uses shingled magnetic recording (SMR) to increase areal density, while the 8TB drive uses standard perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR).
While the 10TB drive is being sampled (meaning it won’t be on the market for a few months yet), WD also has a helium-filled 8TB Ultrastar He8 drive that’s being “qualified by Netflix, Promise, and “other top OEMs and cloud customers around the world.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chrome OS Can Now Run Android Apps With No Porting Required
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/12/0050206/chrome-os-can-now-run-android-apps-with-no-porting-required
Google “built an entire Android stack into Chrome OS using Native Client” in order to achieve this.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Security Tops CIO Worries; IT Budgets, Turnover on the Rise
http://www.cio.com/article/2606957/cio-role/security-tops-cio-worries-it-budgets-turnover-on-the-rise.html
Analytics and business intelligence top IT spending agenda, followed by data center infrastructure and ERP.
CIOs are spending more on IT, worrying most about security and privacy, and staying on the job a little longer, according to the latest data from the Society for Information Management (SIM).
The 2015 SIM IT Trends Study isn’t available in its entirety, but researchers released preliminary findings in advance of the full release in early November.
A key theme of the research is the need for speed — how IT groups are under pressure to keep pace with the business and deliver new technologies faster. “The business is changing, technology is changing, the pace of change is increasing, and IT is changing in order to keep up with it,” says Leon Kappelman, lead researcher for SIM’s annual poll of IT professionals.
“IT is becoming more federated. It’s more about the business, it’s more customer focused,” Kappelman says. “As IT becomes more federated, it becomes less focused on optimizing IT and more focused on optimizing the whole of the enterprise.”
SIM also asked how CIOs spend their time, and their answers reinforce a business-focused agenda.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linus Torvalds Says Linux Binary Packages Are Terrible, Valve Might Save the Desktop
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Says-Linux-Binary-Packages-Are-Terrible-Valve-Might-Save-the-Desktop-458087.shtml
One of the main problems with Linux platform fragmentation is that there are a number of concurrent binaries available for various platforms and they are not compatible with each other. Linus Torvalds explains why he thinks that the binary concept on Linux is broken and why he doesn’t use them for his projects.
Linus Torvalds doesn’t provide Linux binaries for his project, only for Windows and Mac OS X
One of the many things that have been said at that conference has to do with application packaging, which is actually a nightmare on Linux. If you are a developer and you want to make binaries, you really need to pick your battles and supported platforms.
All the packages rely on shared libraries that are already on the system or that can be downloaded from the repositories. This complicates things a lot and ensures that there will be multiple binary formats for a long time on Linux.
“I’ve seen this first hand with the other project I’ve been involved with, which is my divelog application. We make binaries for Windows and OS X, and we don’t make binaries for Linux. Why? Because building binaries for Linux desktop is a [expletive] pain in the [expletive].”
“You don’t make binaries for Linux, you make binaries for Fedora 19, Fedora 20, maybe RHEL 5 from ten years ago, you make binaries for Debian,” said Linus Torvalds at the conference.
Surprisingly, Linus Torvalds explained that the salvation for the Linux desktop might come from Valve, but not because of the games.
Tomi Engdahl says:
City of Turin To Switch From Windows To Linux and Save 6M Euros
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/12/229243/city-of-turin-to-switch-from-windows-to-linux-and-save-6m-euros
The municipality of Turin in Italy hopes to save 6 million Euro over five years by switching from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux in all of its offices. The move will mean installing the open source operating system on 8,300 PCs, which will generate an immediate saving of roughly €300 per machine (almost €2.5m altogether, made up from the cost of Windows and Office licences)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Robot Operating System To Officially Support ARM Processors
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/09/13/1452226/robot-operating-system-to-officially-support-arm-processors
The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), which maintains the open source Robot Operating System (ROS), has announced its first formal support for an ARM target.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SanDisk Releases 512GB SD Card
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/09/12/2120252/sandisk-releases-512gb-sd-card
SanDisk has announced the world’s highest capacity SD card, a 512GB model that represents a 1,000-fold increase over the company’s first 512MB card that it shipped a decade ago.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SanDisk beats rivals to 512GB SD card — at a whopping $800
http://www.cnet.com/news/sandisk-beats-rivals-to-512gb-sd-card-but-it-isnt-cheap/
The world’s first 512 gigabyte SD card is designed more for video and photo professionals than for the average consumer.
Revealed on Thursday at the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam, the new SanDisk Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I memory card offers a hefty 512 gigabytes of storage space. This far surpasses the capacity of the current crop of cards on the market, which generally range from 8GB to 128GB, though there are some 256GB SD cards available. The new SanDisk card is also fast, offering write speeds of up to 90 megabytes per second.
As SanDisk phrases it: “The new offering is designed to meet the demands of industry professionals who require the most advanced gear available for shooting 4K Ultra High Definition (3,840×2,160p) video, Full HD video (1,920×1,080) and high-speed burst mode photography.”
As such, the card can deliver a high enough recording speed, designated as UHS Speed Class 3, to ensure high resolution, real-world color reproduction, and stutter-free 4K ultra HD video.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fashion & Style | Disruptions
Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-apple-was-a-low-tech-parent.html?_r=0
When Steve Jobs was running Apple, he was known to call journalists to either pat them on the back for a recent article or, more often than not, explain how they got it wrong.
“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”
Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired and now chief executive of 3D Robotics, a drone maker, has instituted time limits and parental controls on every device in his home. “My kids accuse me and my wife of being fascists and overly concerned about tech, and they say that none of their friends have the same rules,” he said of his five children, 6 to 17. “That’s because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I’ve seen it in myself, I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.”
The dangers he is referring to include exposure to harmful content like pornography, bullying from other kids, and perhaps worse of all, becoming addicted to their devices, just like their parents.
So how do tech moms and dads determine the proper boundary for their children? In general, it is set by age.
Children under 10 seem to be most susceptible to becoming addicted, so these parents draw the line at not allowing any gadgets during the week. On weekends, there are limits of 30 minutes to two hours on iPad and smartphone use. And 10- to 14-year-olds are allowed to use computers on school nights, but only for homework.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft needs Minecraft to boost mobile ambitions
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/12/us-mojang-microsoft-idUSKBN0H72EV20140912
Microsoft’s impending purchase of Mojang, the Swedish developer with 100 million players of its open world Minecraft game, is more aimed at pulling users onto the software company’s obscure mobile platform than its better known PC system or Xbox game console.
The software company’s Windows Phone system has only 2.5 percent of the world’s smartphone market, and its Surface tablet barely more, according to tech research firm IDC. Growth is hampered because many app and game developers ignore it.
Enter Minecraft, which is the top paid app both on Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) iOS and Google Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Android systems. Microsoft will unveil a $2.5 billion deal to buy its owner on Monday, according to a source briefed on the matter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner ranks upstart trio ahead of EMC, HP and IBM in battle for flash array dominance
Analysts break down why some are ahead and some are behind
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/13/gartner_ranks_startups_ahead_of_emc_hp_and_ibm/
Gartner’s thrilling solid-state appliance critical capabilities report ranks three startups ahead of EMC, HP and IBM: SolidFire, Pure Storage and Kaminario.
This assessment is not reflected in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for solid-state arrays.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDF 2014: Affordable 4K Panels and AIOs
by Ganesh T S & Mahendra Lodha on September 11, 2014 10:25 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8521/idf-2014-affordable-4k-panels-and-aios
At Computex earlier this year, Intel had talked about 4K panels becoming more affordable (monitors around $400). The 4K All-in-Ones using those panels were on display at IDF. We grabbed a few photographs and they are linked in the gallery
Tomi Engdahl says:
Italy’s High Court orders HP to refund punter for putting Windows on PC
Top beaks slam bundled OS as ‘commercial policy of forced distribution’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/12/microsoft_hp_italy_windows/
Don’t want that preinstalled Microsoft Windows on your new Italian laptop? You’re entitled to your money back, according to Italy’s High Court.
In a ruling on Thursday, judges described the practice of only selling PCs with a non-free operating system as “a commercial policy of forced distribution”. They said bundling forces people into using additional non-free applications due to compatibility and interoperability issues, whether they wanted these programs or not.
In the case in question, HP was ordered to repay a customer in Florence €140 for the Windows license that he did not want.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gaming supremo creates maps that turn real world into Sim City
Complete with live cartoon buses that sync up with real-time bus arrivals
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/10/maps_make_the_real_world_look_like_a_game/
Ian Hetherington, formerly of games companies Realtime Worlds and Psygnosis – yes, the company responsible for ’90s legend Lemmings – and has applied games technology to mapping, making your 3D navigation feel like a trip to Sim City.
eeGeo’s maps can show weather conditions – so you can make it snow – and time of day, with night-time images.
The software has a cartoon-like feel, but uses real 3D models rather than pasted-on bitmaps.
There are hooks to show data in real time, so a bus mapping app might show where all the buses are or a delivery company might show where your delivery is
Tomi Engdahl says:
Net neutrality protestors slam the brakes on their OWN websites
Sites link up to protest slow lanes by bogging down pages
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2367430/one-third-say-pressure-from-their-companies-leads-to-coding-errors
OVER A THIRD of INQUIRER readers think undue pressure from companies is to blame for software errors.
34 percent of respondents said, “Firms that put too much pressure on their IT teams” were to blame for coding errors, suggesting a lot of frustrated coders among the INQUIRER readership, with pressure to deliver product on deadline sometimes leading to elementary errors.
One programmer told us, “Often technical decisions are made from a business point of view, and the two are very rarely in sync. The more an IT project is hindered by business decisions, the more it snowballs into something that can’t be unravelled later, therefore causing more time and effort in the future when the inevitable changes and enhancements are required.”
“Business logic seems to only take into account the current requirements, whereas anyone with development experience will think about the bigger picture.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to Ensure a Smooth IT Reorganization
http://www.cio.com/article/2604430/it-management/how-to-ensure-a-smooth-it-reorganization.html
If you spend enough time in the upper tiers of technology leadership, you will eventually reach a point where you need an IT department reorganization. Here are the key things to consider before you set the wheels of change in motion.
IT reorganizations are costly both in terms of resources and productivity. To minimize those costs, CIOs and IT leaders should understand the nature of the problems they are looking to solve, have a solid strategy and be sure that business strategy is at the heart of the reorganization efforts.
IT leaders need to ask themselves three questions when considering a reorg: ”
1. Are we outside-in?
2. Are we cloud-first?
3. Are we mobile-centric?”
A “no” to any of these questions is a major warning sign. In today’s era of mobile and the cloud, having an insular IT department isn’t enough to survive and succeed
Let’s look at common reasons an IT department gets reorganized.
1. IT isn’t delivering results
2. New leadership on board
3. New technology changes company mission
Be Aware of Team Morale
It’s hard to get things done in an atmosphere where people are worried about the unknown. Experts agree that communications is the key.
“Reorganizations can be stressful for employees – they’re waiting to see how things change and what that means for their day-to-day work.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDF 2014: Where is Thunderbolt Headed?
by Ganesh T S & Mahendra Lodha on September 14, 2014 7:45 AM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8529/idf-2014-where-is-thunderbolt-headed
The current market perception is one of Thunderbolt being relevant only to Mac users. But, a look at the products that Intel showcases, indicate that there are plenty of PC components (motherboards as well as workstations) that come with the technology integrated. Thunderbolt users on Windows have traditionally found that the technology doesn’t live up to its advertised potential. Common complaints include
Purchased peripherals don’t carry certification on Windows
Hot plugging peripherals doesn’t work reliably
Performance in terms of both bandwidth and latency end up being better on Mac compared to Windows for the same workloads
These issues have turned out to be a vicious circle – Mac users end up getting targeted with more Thunderbolt peripherals (for example, storage manufacturers pre-format their devices in HFS+ format), and this, in turn, lowers the appeal of these devices to Windows users.
In the process of migrating from the Z77 / Z87 to the Z97 chipset, Intel tried to drive up Thunderbolt adoption by allowing motherboard makers to provide support via an add-in card.
The reason for the far from optimal experience with Thunderbolt on PCs boils down to two different aspects, the hardware and the software. In terms of hardware, Intel has never allowed motherboard vendors to hang the Thunderbolt silicon / add-in card off the CPU’s PCIe lanes. These have to hang off the platform controller hub (PCH). On the other hand, Apple was allowed to hook up the Thunderbolt silicon directly to the CPU. The reason behind this leads us to the software side of things.
Apple has full control over the operating system. Hanging Thunderbolt peripherals directly off the CPU’s PCIe lanes requires extensive support from the operating system, particularly when it comes to hot plugging devices and/or waking up peripherals from sleep mode.
While Microsoft continues to twiddle its thumbs, Intel has decided to come up with less restrictive hardware suggestions to bridge the Thunderbolt experience gap between Macs and PCs.
Thunderbolt’s Future – X99 Brings Promise, Driver Features Add Utility
Tomi Engdahl says:
China, clouds, to kill data centre tech market growth
China, cloud operators and software-definers about to cannibalise shrinking market
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/15/china_clouds_to_kill_data_centre_tech_market_growth/
China’s data centre kit-providers will take two per cent of the global market from current suppliers, according to newly-released Gartner research titled “Four Highly Disruptive Factors Will Challenge the Survival of Incumbent Data Center Market Vendors.”
Gartner says China will advance because it is “buoyed by deep resources” offers “increasingly respected brands (such as Alcatel Lucent/Huaxin, Huawei and Lenovo)” enjoys good relationships with Taiwanese original design manufacturers, access to local manufacturers and has a nice well of local anti-US sentiment to tap.
China accounts for two of the four disruptors Gartner identifies, namely a Snowden-driven nationalistic tinge to procurement policy that sees local providers favoured. China-led Asian innovation efforts will also give the market a shake, drawing its centre of gravity Eastwards. That Asian nations are digitising services fast will help to accelerate this trend.
If that’s not bad enough, Gartner also says that move to building applications for delivery from the cloud cuts off another opportunity for conventional data-centre kit-makers because such apps will run on public IaaS and PaaS platforms, not on on-premises servers. “Traditional vendors,” the report says will “find it increasingly hard to compete”, as those designing kit with the OpenCompute and Project Scorpio templates scoop up cloud providers’ business.
One scenario Gartner offers is as follows:
“Amazon could decide to offer its own branded servers, storage, network and infrastructure software products to enterprises for installation on-premises. It has technology, scale, brand and the beginnings of a channel, as well as a history of disrupting established markets.”
Here’s another throw the first punch scenario:
“Another possibility would see Microsoft attempting to stop Cisco’s incursions into its collaboration business, by bundling a full SDN stack with Windows Server, and by certifying multiple ODM/whitebox switch vendors’ products.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chrome For Mac Drops 32-bit Build
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/09/14/1921246/chrome-for-mac-drops-32-bit-build
Google has revealed that it’s launching the finished 64-bit version of Chrome 39 for OS X this November, which already brought benefits in speed, security and stability on Windows. However at this point the 32-bit build for Mac will cease to exist.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Java and C ++’s popularity waning?
Software Tioben famous index measures the popularity of programming languages, the Web search engine search results. September, according to the figures, it seems that java and C ++’s popularity seems to be declining. Yet, they continue to rank among the top languages.
According to the company java and C ++ index have never been so low as it is now. C ++’s position seems to TIOBE index according to weaken the fastest pace (now at 4th place). Tioben, this does not mean that languages are disappearing anywhere. They are still a big demand.
By rating C is currently the most popular language.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1775:javan-ja-c-n-suosio-hiipuu&catid=13&Itemid=101