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.
2,130 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big blues at IBM India
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1321032&
In one of the largest-ever lay-off drive among global technology companies, IBM is said to have started cutting jobs globally on Wednesday, with first casualties in India.
Worldwide, IBM employs 430,000 people and reports say some 13,000 jobs are likely to be cut as the tech major performs a “global rebalancing” act, termed “resource action” or RA, that could save about $1 billion in costs.
Last month IBM had agreed to sell its low-end server business for $2.3 billion to Lenovo, which had already bought company’s PC business. At STG, “even people with very high rating were asked to leave. Two weeks ago they were told there would be no salary hikes this year,” the report added.
IBM reported a 5 percent drop in revenue in the December quarter versus the year-earlier period
Tomi Engdahl says:
Deduplication & Compression Extend SSD Lifespans
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1321044&
The higher costs of SSDs (relative to spinning disks) and their lifespan limitations generally keep enterprises from fully embracing them for storage. The ongoing challenge is how to optimize them to get the best bang for the buck, while also addressing the endurance problem.
Deduplication and compression technologies not only help improve performance, but also play a role in lengthening the lifespan of the SSD drive. Commins said each SSD drive in the system can withstand 3.5 petabytes of write data before the drive exhibits signs of write wear.
More specifically, extending the life of the SSD is accomplished by minimizing the number of erasures in relation to the writes
All storage vendors are using techniques such as deduplication and compression to optimize SSDs for performance and endurance, said Zaffos
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft says OEMs can’t ship Windows 7 PCs beyond 31 October
Don’t panic, it’s ages away
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2329563/microsoft-says-oems-cant-ship-windows-7-pcs-beyond-31-october
SOFTWARE CHURN MERCHANT Microsoft has announced when it plans to stop selling most versions of Windows 7.
The Windows 7 PC operating system that remains prevalent on nearly 50 percent of Windows computers has already been withdrawn from retail sales as of the end of October 2013, and today Microsoft updated its Windows 7 life cycle webpage to show that OEMs will no longer be able to ship computers with Windows 7 preinstalled from 31 October 2014 .
Tomi Engdahl says:
Postnatal depression can be predicted by monitoring woman’s Twitter feed, scientists find
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/10645526/Postnatal-depression-can-be-predicted-by-monitoring-womans-Twitter-feed-scientists-find.html
Microsoft labs has discovered that it is possible to spot which pregnant women will struggle with motherhood based on the language they use before the birth
Tomi Engdahl says:
Big Data is like TEENAGE SEX
Everyone is talking about it, nobody doing it correctly….
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/02/20/big_data_teenage_fumblings/
The joke doing the rounds on social media compares big data to teenage sex: everyone’s talking about it, only a few know how to do it, they all think everyone else is at it and so pretend they are too.
Companies are ploughing money into big data projects “without knowing what they are doing” and handing projects to the IT department “far divorced from the business operations”, he claimed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel Drives Xeon to Big Data
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1321060&
Intel tripled the maximum memory capacity in its latest server microprocessor, aiming the part against high-end chips from IBM and Oracle for big-data analytics jobs such as running in-memory databases. The Xeon E7 v2 packs up to 6 TBytes main memory in a four-socket platform and 12 TBytes in an eight-socket platform.
The new family includes more than a dozen members.
Intel claims high-end parts in four-way systems deliver 40% to 80% more performance than similar servers using IBM’s Power 7+ processor and 16% to 28% more than servers using Oracle’s T5 chips.
Moorhead believes Xeon may disrupt the 5% of the server market Intel doesn’t own already.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Two-thirds of IT executives believe that the future of the shortage of the central machinery-related skills may harm their businesses.
According to the study of new technologies, such as cloud companies are popular, but still 81 percent of those surveyed IT executives believe that the central machinery remain at the heart of the business for at least another decade.
Source: Tietoviikko
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/cio/keskuskoneen+osaajien+pula+pelottaa/a969179
Tomi Engdahl says:
GTA 5 Sales Hit $1 Billion, Will Outsell Entire Global Music Industry
by Eric Bleeker, CFA, The Motley Fool Sep 28th 2013 6:37AM
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/09/28/gta-5-sales-hit-1-billion/
Video games don’t get much bigger than Take-Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto, otherwise known as GTA.
While games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds have attracted most mainstream attention on video games in the past year and have users in the hundreds of millions, the success of Grand Theft Auto 5 is a pointed illustration that big budget console games — the game reportedly cost roughly $265 million to develop and market — still drive global video game sales.
The biggest release in entertainment history
The end result of these megablockbuster games could be more concentration around the high and low-end of video games.
On the other end, low-end development of cheaper games will continue growing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
VMware hyper-converge means WE don’t NEED no STEENKIN’ OS…
…in our virtual machines, says Reg man Chris Mellor
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/21/vmware_reinventing_os_hypervisor/
With VMware converging storage – VSAN – and networking – Nicira – into the hypervisor, it’s re-inventing the server operating system.
He reckons that we’re seeing hardware convergence, mentioning flash coming into the server via PCIe and other technologies, and storage array controller software implemented as a server application using commodity hardware – aka software-defined storage.
Hollis blogs: “If infrastructure functionality is to be delivered as software, shouldn’t we be aspiring to software convergence models?”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digia Qt: Qt 5.2 Reaches 500,000 Downloads in Record Time
Qt framework established as major player for cross-platform application development
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140206005756/en/Digia-Qt-Qt-5.2-Reaches-500000-Downloads#.UwdcRIU1bpt
Digia has announced that the Qt cross-platform application and user interface (UI) development framework has exceeded 500,000 downloads since the launch of version 5.2 in mid-December 2013.
Interest in Qt 5.2 has been spread globally with the highest download rates occurring in US, China and Europe. Qt 5.2’s support for an extensive range of desktop, mobile and embedded operating system platforms,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft officially rebrands Office Web Apps as ‘Office Online’
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-officially-rebrands-office-web-apps-as-office-online-7000026561/
On the heels of its rebranding of SkyDrive to OneDrive, Microsoft has made another rebranding move — rechristening its Office Web Apps as “Office Online.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Said to Cut Windows Price 70% to Counter Rivals
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-22/microsoft-said-to-cut-windows-price-70-to-counter-rivals.html
Manufacturers will be charged $15 to license Windows 8.1 and preinstall it on devices that retail for less than $250, instead of the usual fee of $50, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details aren’t public.
Microsoft, which named Satya Nadella as chief executive officer earlier this month, is seeking to speed up development and introduction of new devices. It won’t require products that use the cheaper licensing to complete logo certification, a process that verifies hardware compatibility, one of the people said. Devices aren’t required to be touch-screen compatible, they said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ars walkthrough: Using the ZFS next-gen filesystem on Linux
If brtfs interested you, start your next-gen trip with a step-by-step guide to ZFS.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/ars-walkthrough-using-the-zfs-next-gen-filesystem-on-linux/
There are lots of options for running ZFS, and very little of this walkthrough will really depend on your use of Ubuntu in particular or even Linux in general.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft claims x86 hypervisor market lead
In Latin America. For one quarter
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/20/microsoft_claims_x86_hypervisor_market_lead/
Microsoft getting close to 50 per cent market share is no surprise: Hyper-V is an integral part of Windows Server and many organisations use more than one hypervisors these days.
VMware’s unlikely to be worried about this data, as Latin America remains a small market for now.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft asks pals to help KILL UK gov’s Open Document Format dream
Cabinet Office blasted for ‘ignoring benefits’ and ‘limiting choice’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/22/microsoft_uk_odf_response/
The UK Cabinet Office is close to adopting Open Document Format (ODF) as the official standard for government documents, but it hasn’t happened yet – and it won’t, if Microsoft has anything to say about it.
The software giant has issued an open letter to its partners in the UK, urging them to submit comments on the Cabinet Office proposal
Tomi Engdahl says:
Future storage tech should KILL all-in-one solutions, says CEO
DataCore boss waxes lyrical on software-defined storage
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/24/datacore_ceo_software_defined_storage_is_an_accelerator/
Software-defined storage represents a trend that his company is well-positioned to take advantage of and he reckons DataCore could soar this year.
Storage got complicated as flash technologies emerged for performance, while SANs continued to optimise utilisation and management – two completely contradictory trends. Add cloud storage to the mix and all together, it has forced a redefinition of the scope and flexibility required by storage architectures. Moreover, the complexity and need to reconcile these contradictions put automation and management at the forefront, thus software.
A new refresh cycle is underway … the virtualisation revolution has made software the essential ingredient to raise productivity, increase utilisation, and extend the life of … current [IT] investments.
Server-side and flash technology for better application performance has taken off.
The concept is simple. Keep the disks close to the applications, on the same server and add flash for even greater performance.
A software-defined storage architecture must manage, optimise and span all storage, whether located server-side or over storage networks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM gobbles CIA-backed NoSQL database upstart Cloudant
Big Blue furnishes cloud wing with NoSQL CouchDB system
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/24/ibm_cloudant/
IBM is creeping towards the cloud, picking up startups on the way, including a NoSQL database company to fill in some of the perceived shortcomings of DB2.
Cloudant’s software is based on the thinly used open-source CouchDB database. It is built to process JSON-formatted information, uses Apache Lucene for searches, provides cross-region replication, promises strong data durability, and supports single and multi-tenant clusters.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers
http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763
Conference proceedings removed from subscription databases after scientist reveals that they were computer-generated.
The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense.
Labbé developed a way to automatically detect manuscripts composed by a piece of software called SCIgen, which randomly combines strings of words to produce fake computer-science papers. SCIgen was invented in 2005 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge to prove that conferences would accept meaningless papers — and, as they put it, “to maximize amusement”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Knowledge-based programming: Wolfram releases first demo of new language, 30 years in the making
http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/24/knowledge-based-programming-wolfram-releases-first-demo-of-new-language-30-years-in-the-making/
Three months ago, Stephen Wolfram gave VentureBeat a sneak peak in into the future of the Wolfram Language, a totally symbolic, heavily natural, intensely knowledge-based, and extremely large computer programming language.
Today, he attempted to explain what it means again, in a long, detailed, and example-filled video
Wolfram Language is not yet released, but will be embedded on upcoming Raspberry Pi micro-computers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Network-Based Interpretation of Dreams
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/fb0160696bcd
By mapping the links between themes that appear in dreams, network scientists reveal the connections between dreams in different cultures for the first time
Tomi Engdahl says:
Infonetics: Get ready for ‘hybrid cloud’ in the data center
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2014/02/infonetics-hybrid-cloud.html
According to the survey, cloud adoption is impacting enterprise IT investments, with not only the WAN — but also the LAN — high on the list for upgrades. “Hybrid cloud is the next evolution in cloud architecture, with adoption among enterprises expected to more than double by 2015,” reveals Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., directing analyst for data center and cloud at Infonetics Research.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Servo: Inside Mozilla’s mission to reinvent the web browser for the multi-core age
http://www.zdnet.com/servo-inside-mozillas-mission-to-reinvent-the-web-browser-for-the-multi-core-age-7000026606/
Summary: Mozilla on how its Servo engine will throw away the 20th-century baggage that holds back current browsers and harness the power of modern multi-core smartphones and tablets.
“Basically all of the browser engines you are used to using were designed before the year 2000, and hardware at that time was very different. It usually only had one core, clock speeds were lower and you had much less memory available to you,” said Mozilla platform engineer Josh Matthews at the FosDem conference earlier this month.
“Things like multi-thread programming weren’t built in from the start and they’ve been bolted on after the fact. Existing engines are giant and there are various architectural decisions built into them that are very difficult to modify.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Browsers Work: Behind the scenes of modern web browsers
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software needs meaty cores, not thin, stringy ARMs, says Intel
But we’ll do ATOM for servers anyway because some people need it, says enterprise GM
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/26/software_needs_meaty_cores_not_thin_stringy_arms_says_intel/
Intel has offered another reason it doesn’t think ARM processors pose an enormous threat to its high-end chip business: software isn’t written to run across multiple CPUs.
That’s the opinion Gordon Graylish, Chipzilla’s general manager for enterprise solution sales, shared with The Reg yesterday at the Australian launch of the Xeon E7v2, Intel’s latest offering for the heftier end of the server market.
“The world has a big issue around vectorisation and parallelisation of code,” Graylish said. “99% of code isn’t written that way.” Graylish also feels “defining a workload that can run in 1000 cores is hard.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Use Windows’ sorting options to find just the right file
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2099946/use-windows-sorting-options-to-find-just-the-right-file.html
One of the biggest pains of using a PC is rooting around the file system to find very specific information.
Over the years, Microsoft has made it easier to find files with enhanced search capabilities for finding that one Word document, photo, or video you need. Search is great when you’re looking for a specific file by name, but sometimes you don’t care about words.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup’s Cluster Trumps InfiniBand
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1321178&
A3Cube Inc. has developed a network interface card that uses a variation of PCI Express to create large computer systems with lower latency than InfiniBand. The startup said its Ronnie Express technology in an FPGA implementation is connecting 128 servers with a 100-nanosecond latency.
A3Cube positions its approach as a new way to create high performance computer systems with a single pool of shared memory across CPUs, general-purpose GPUs, and DSPs. The memory pool can be a mix of flash and DRAM. Processors can execute load/store operations across a cluster, using the PCIe Gen 2 variant, it claims.
It claims the resulting fabric can create a single system image across a cluster of up to 10,000 nodes without congestion.
Ronnie Express takes a different approach than the technology under development at PLX for using PCIe as an interconnect inside a computer rack, said Billi.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linux-friendly Munich: Ja, we’ll take open source collab cloud
14,000+ Linux and Windows clients touched
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/26/munich_goes_kolab/
The City is going against the trend, particularly in the public sector, to float one’s groupware and collaboration in the cloud.
It was Munich that in 2004 said it was ditching Microsoft on the desktop for Linu
Munich swapped Windows and Office for Linux and OpenOffice
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Quietly Begins Pushing Its Photo Backup Software To Google+ Users
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/25/google-quietly-begins-pushing-its-photo-backup-software-to-google-users/
Google has begun pushing its “Auto Backup” photo archival software to Mac and Windows users via the company’s social networking platform, Google+. The promotion is new, we’ve confirmed, though the software itself was first launched back in December.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s JavaScript challenger nears 1.0, wins Visual Studio love
Next VS2013 update to make TypeScript a first-class citizen
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/26/typescript_support_in_vs2013u2/
Microsoft’s TypeScript web development language is almost ready for prime time, and by the time the next update for Visual Studio 2013 arrives, TypeScript 1.0 will be treated as a first-class language by Microsoft’s IDE.
“TypeScript is today being used to build products all over Microsoft, including Visual Studio Online, XBox Music and Video, parts of Bing, and the IE11 Developer Tools,” Somasegar said. “Outside of Microsoft, TypeScript is being used in projects like Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite.”
Developed at Microsoft by a team that includes language guru and C# architect Anders Hejlsberg, TypeScript offers web developers an alternative to idiomatic JavaScript, which has often been criticized as being bug-prone and difficult to maintain when used in large projects.
Google has been working along similar lines with its own Dart language. Like Dart, TypeScript code is compiled into ordinary JavaScript before being deployed, so it will run in any web browser. But unlike Dart, TypeScript doesn’t force developers to learn an entirely new syntax.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NO WONDER Big Blue dropped it: IBM server biz EXPLODED in Q4
Ta for the $2.3bn, Lenovo… just take IT OFF US
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/26/gartner_server_numbers_ibm_had_a_bad_q4/
There’s little wonder that IBM execs were so quick to snap up Lenovo’s $2.3bn offer for the sickly volume server biz. Factory revenues and shipments apparently crashed during Big Blue’s last full quarter behind the wheel.
Ending a thoroughly unpleasant 2013 for Big Blue server peeps, Gartner calendar Q4 numbers show revenues fell by 26.4 per cent to $3.61bn and unit sales dropped 16.3 per cent to a little over 231k.
Clearly Lenovo will again have its work cut out if it wants to convert Big Blue’s x86 division into a fast growing, profitable sales engine, at a time when cloud and white box builders in China are a growing threat.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Women missing out on lucrative careers in computer science
http://www.mercurynews.com/mike-cassidy/ci_25224467/women-missing-out-lucrative-careers-computer-science
The stubbornly low number of female computer science students in the United States has generated a pile of academic studies, ample hand-wringing and a wide-ranging discussion in tech and education circles about what can be done to boost the number of women choosing computing careers.
All of which raises a fair question: What difference does it make if women don’t join the tech workforce in the same numbers that men do?
It turns out it makes a huge difference. The dearth of women in computing has the potential to slow the U.S. economy
“Today, two and a half billion people are connected to the Internet,”
The damage starts with a problem that is already being confronted by the tech industry and other companies that rely on computing talent (which means practically all of them): The economy is creating far more computing jobs than U.S. schools are creating computer science graduates.
Without U.S. workers to fill those jobs, employers will face three choices: export the work, import the workers or leave the positions empty.
Right now, four of the 20 top-paying jobs for women are in computing, a broad field in which only about one-quarter of workers are female. The best tech jobs for women are positions such as computer programmer, software developer, information systems manager and systems analyst, with median pay for women ranging from about $60,000 to about $80,000. The figures are higher for men, ranging from about $71,000 to about $90,000.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tough times in the server market, even though more iron moved in ’13
Sadly it was teeny-to-medium, not lovely Big Iron
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/27/idc_server_piece/
The market dynamics were all wrong for folk building and supplying server boxes in 2013 – in the year that shipments reached a record nine million milestone, factory revenues tumbled.
As El Chan pointed out on a couple of occasions last year, nobody in vendor or channel land looks like getting mega rich in the current environment, as demand for heavy duty big iron systems ebbs.
“The market continues to be impacted by enterprise focus on 2nd Platform workload consolidation, which at this point in time is only partially offset by 3rd Platform hyper scale server deployments,”
Demand for x86 servers was up with revenues growing 7.8 per cent
Cloud infrastructure deployments continued to beef up Linux server demand, as hardware revenues jumped 14.4 per cent year-on-year in Q4 to $4.1bn, or 28.5 per cent of all server revenues.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Official FACT: Gadgets are giving YOU a wrinkly ‘Tech Neck’
Quick, fanbois! Put on a turtleneck! Oh wait, you have
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/27/tech_neck_wrinkle/
“We’ve identified a correlation between the rise of technology in recent years and the growth of the ‘Techneck’, so while there is little chance of the nation giving up technology, at least we can help people reduce wrinkles and keep their chin up.”
Josh Catlett, chartered physiotherapist, told the paper: “Our bodies are not designed to be in the same position for long periods and many people also get into bad postures when using these devices.
“As a result, physiotherapists are seeing patients with neck, back and shoulder problems and also pain in the hands and wrists.
“It is important that people recognise the need to take regular breaks from using such devices and also to consider their posture at all times.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Software containers for BYOD/mobile device management: Big Tin Can
This baby will never escape from the bit of string back to corporate
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/28/big_tin_can_mwc2014/
An environment which runs on a number of mobile platforms seeks to solve lots of the BYOD issues faced by corporates. It creates a balance between locking down a device so completely that people won’t or can’t use it and leaving the door open to miscreants.
Such environments these days are often known as “containers” (or “containerz” in one case). One such offering which we here on the Reg BYOD/Mobile Device Management desk have been having a squint at lately is known instead as Big Tin Can.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hey, IT department! Sick of vendor shaftings? Why not DO IT, yourself
Let go of the shopping trolley and skill up, popeye
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/28/oi_you_there_in_it_can_you_please_make_something/
Enterprise IT departments have been reduced to personal shoppers at best and checkout clerks at worst.
I say this because IT departments just don’t make anything anymore. When was the last time you were required to actually make a new thing as part of an IT project? As the application development world continues to commoditise, why do enterprise IT departments still live by the “buy it off the shelf” mantra?
Lack of skills is the main reason. There are no longer enough enterprise IT people who understand enough about how applications are built to know that when a vendor offers them comfortable memory gel knee rests, a barrel and some brightly coloured silk scarves that they’re about to sign a lock-in contract for a set of proprietary technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s 730 Series solid-state drive reviewed
An overclocked enterprise SSD for enthusiasts
http://techreport.com/review/26086/intel-730-series-solid-state-drive-reviewed
PC enthusiasts have a history of adopting and overclocking enterprise-grade hardware to suit their needs, and the same kind of thinking spawned the 730 Series. The first prototype of this drive appeared at the PAX Prime convention last year. It was essentially a server SSD with a couple of overclocking dials, allowing users to increase the clock frequency of both the flash controller and the accompanying NAND.
The response to the prototype was positive, but there were questions about whether overclocking would reduce the endurance of the flash, resulting in shorter drive life.
Based in part on that feedback, Intel took a slightly different approach with the final product. User control over clock frequencies was dropped in favor of so-called factory “overclocking.” Intel cranks the clocks itself, and the 730 Series is validated to run at the higher frequencies.
Jacking up the controller clock by 50% and the NAND frequency by 20% is no small feat. Only some silicon is up to the task, which is why Intel cherry picks the chips that go into the 730 Series.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google WLTM hard-working, cognitive-thinking experts
How to get a job at Google
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2331259/google-wltm-hard-working-cognitive-thinking-experts
“For every job, though, the [number one] thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not IQ. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information. We assess that using structured behavioural interviews that we validate to make sure they’re predictive.”
“It’s feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in,” said Bock.
How to Get a Job at Google
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google.html?_r=2
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to boost IT efficiency by 75% and create time for innovation
More Sharing Services
collinchau| February 17, 2014
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Grounded-in-the-Cloud/How-to-boost-IT-efficiency-by-75-and-create-time-for-innovation/ba-p/6378733
Big data. Mobile. Cloud. These intense forces are reshaping IT environments. The result? More systems and applications to manage than ever.
According to IDC research, the average number of Virtual Machines per physical server is predicted to double between 2008 and 2016. The percentage of data center IT operations costs spent on staff is up 40% in the last 5 years. On average, a substantial majority of IT budgets gets eaten up by maintenance — in other words, running to stand still.
The problem, of course, is that if you’re working hard to just stand still, you’ll eventually fall behind. IT organizations have become very focused on Improving IT staff productivity and operational efficiency, as well as implementing common tools, services, processes across cloud and non-cloud environments.
A growing number of forward-thinking IT organizations are aggressively investing in automation and orchestration solutions.
By orchestrating IT processes — coordinating automated tasks and activities across teams, tools, and environments — organizations reduce errors and improve consistency and reliability. They can also enable their team to deploy new infrastructure faster while responding more quickly to issues. A majority of IT organizations have reduced task and process execution time by 50% or more, and many achieve greater than 75% efficiency gains.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are You Too Old to Land a New IT Job?
http://www.cio.com/article/748862/Are_You_Too_Old_to_Land_a_New_IT_Job_
Age really is just a number. If you’re keeping current on new technologies and advancement, and show a willingness to keep learning and growing, there’s no reason it should be an impediment to your job search.
Looking for a job or a promotion and worried that your age might be an impediment? Don’t be. Age really is just a number, and especially in IT, that number isn’t as important as your accomplishments, your adaptability and willingness to learn.
“It’s about being able to demonstrate your accomplishments,” says author, career search expert and consultant Rick Gillis. “Most IT firms want to know one of two things: Can you make them money or can you save them money? Then they’ll want to hire you, regardless of your age,” he says.
Staying current on new technologies, advancements and methodologies can keep your skill sets relevant and will help you avoid becoming one of those ‘former masters of the universe’ who’ve faded into obscurity and can barely turn on their computer, he says.
“You have to be current. That is key, especially in IT,” Gillis says
“Age, in and of itself, doesn’t matter, but adaptability does,” says Capone. “That’s not always a skill you’re born with, but it can be learned,”
“Mentoring is a two-way street, and even when I, as the CIO, am paired up with employees who are much younger and lower on the corporate ladder, I learn something every day,” Capone says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
More and more data center today is filled with a small manufacturer of custom server, which has begun to show the traditional server manufacturers such as Dell and HP’s sales.
Research firm IDC’s figures, the global server market, net sales decreased 4.4 percent from one year ago to 14.2 billion dollars, or about 10.4 billion Euros. At the same time, the smaller the server manufacturers, sales were up 47.2 per cent from last year.
Small volume manufacturers such as Quanta and Inventec make servers such as Google and Facebook’s online giants who are planning to use for the servers themselves. Custom Server allows massive data center capacity is more convenient, and they are also cheaper.
Custom Server market seem seem to affect mostly sales of three largest server manufacturers: IBM, HP and Dell
Source: Tietoviikko
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/mittatilauspalvelimet+syovat+isojen+markkinoita/a971130
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM laying off up to 25 percent of ‘hardware’ division
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57619685-92/ibm-laying-off-up-to-25-percent-of-hardware-division/
Big Blue confirms it’s commencing workforce cuts, but declines to put a number on the job losses. A source tells CNET the layoffs entail up to 25 percent in the Systems and Technology group.
The company wouldn’t comment on the number of people being laid off or what divisions would be most affected. However, one source familiar with the plans told CNET that the layoffs entailed up to 25 percent in the Systems and Technology group — this is the group that makes IBM servers and is often referred to as the “hardware” division.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This Industry Is Completely Ridiculous. Let’s Hope It Stays That Way.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/01/this-industry-is-completely-ridiculous-lets-hope-it-stays-that-way/
It’s more like what famed screenwriter William Goldman once said of Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.” I’ve argued before that Silicon Valley is more like Hollywood than people realize — VCs as producers, founders as directors, most everyone desperate for blockbuster hits — and the Valley today is like the Hollywood that Goldman was talking about, the Hollywood of the 1970s, when nobody knew what might become a hit and so an anarchic wave of auteurs flooded the scene, Spielberg and Lucas and Coppola and Easy Rider and even, God help us, Zardoz, because producers were throwing money at everything, because nobody knew anything.
Let’s hope it stays that way. Because since then, Hollywood found formulas for success, and pretty much every tentpole movie follows them
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft culture must change, chairman says
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/27/microsoft-culture-must-change-chairman-says/
Fortune speaks with John Thompson, the newly appointed chairman of Microsoft’s board, about the company’s recent turmoil.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data March 1, 2014, 7:00 am
Some Tech Interns Make More Than U.S. Workers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/some-tech-interns-make-more-than-u-s-workers/
Here’s a quiz for you: Who makes more money, a median American household or an intern at Facebook? If you guessed the latter, the tech company, you’re right.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Traditional RAID is outdated and dying on its feet
Well, it sure is for large-scale data
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/03/is_traditional_raid_dead/
Disks today are bigger than ever, with enterprises deploying single drives with an astounding 4TB capacity. Unfortunately, durability isn’t keeping up. A modern 4TB drive isn’t any more reliable than a 1TB version of the same spinner.
When a 4TB drive fails, it takes a whole lot of time to rebuild. How long will depend on your array, how many drives are in it, and other factors, but I’ve seen estimates ranging from 20 hours to days for a single 4TB rebuild.
While the drive is being rebuilt your RAID array is still operating, but in degraded mode. The amount of degradation will vary according to your hardware, software, etc., but you could be operating 25% to 35% slower.
Add more drives, and you’ll have more failures, meaning yet more time in degraded mode during rebuilds. As rebuild times stretch out, you’re marginally more likely to see another failure on the same array, which could result in data loss.
IBM thinks so. It’s their homegrown GPFS (General Parallel File System)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Have Resume – Will Travel
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/have-resume-will-travel
“Enterprises are increasingly describing Linux as a core part of the business,” said Shravan Goli, President of Dice. “In turn, hiring managers are turning up the dial on the incentives offered to technology talent with Linux skills.”
Finding Linux talent is becoming more of a priority for hiring managers – 77% of hiring managers say hiring Linux talent is a top 3 priority
”While demand continues to grow for Linux talent, there remains a shortage of experienced Linux professionals on the market.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile apps overtake PC Internet usage in U.S.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/28/technology/mobile/mobile-apps-internet/index.html
Americans used smartphone and tablet apps more than PCs to access the Internet last month — the first time that has ever happened.
Mobile devices accounted for 55% of Internet usage in the United States in January. Apps made up 47% of Internet traffic and 8% of traffic came from mobile browsers, according to data from comScore, cited Thursday by research firm Enders Analysis. PCs clocked in at 45%.
Although total Internet usage on mobile devices has previously exceeded that on PCs, this is the first time it’s happened for app usage alone.
The shift follows a freefall in PC sales, which suffered their worst decline in history last year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to run Windows 8.1 for free for 90 days
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57609295-75/how-to-run-windows-8.1-for-free-for-90-days/
Microsoft offers a free 90-day evaluation version of Windows 8.1 Enterprise edition just as it did with Windows 8.
On the fence about Windows 8.1? You can take the new OS for a free 90-day spin before deciding whether you want a permanent relationship.
For Windows 8 users, the decision to upgrade to 8.1 is virtually a no brainer. The new version offers a host of benefits and improvements over its predecessor. And it’s free. So, there’s little reason not to upgrade. Windows 8 users can easily download and install the Windows 8.1 update through the Windows store.
But those of you running previous versions of Windows would have to shell out $120 for Windows 8.1 or $200 for Windows 8.1 Pro
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Testing Free Version of Windows 8.1
http://tablet-news.com/2014/02/28/microsoft-testing-free-version-of-windows-8-1/
Microsoft is experimenting with a new format, a free version of Windows 8.1, that could increase the number of people using the OS. Sources close to the Redmond firm told The Verge that the company is building a Windows 8.1 with Bing release.
This one will bundle key Microsoft apps and services and it’s merely an experimental project that intends to bring a low cost version of Windows to the average consumer. Microsoft is said to be positioning the product as a free or low cost upgrade for Windows 7 users that haven’t been convinced b Windows 8 till now.
This release could also be offered to PC makers as part of the recent license reduction for devices under $250.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows with Bing – Microsoft’s Trial with Free Windows 8.1
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/541322/20140303/windows-bing-microsoft-search-window-8-steve.htm#.UxSl5YVM0ik
Windows with Bing, a free trial version of Windows 8.1 is now being tested by Microsoft. It is bundled with the Bing search engine.