Mobility

High Tech R&D in the COVID-19 Era is Crucial

https://www.technewsworld.com/story/86977.html

Maintaining and increasing research and development (R&D) spending in the COVID-19 era is critical for high technology vendors to deliver new solutions and services, continue to innovate and position their businesses to rebound from the negative effects of the global pandemic.

The COVID-19 global pandemic has been disastrous for business around the globe. The nouvel Corona virus has disrupted and continues to upend every aspect of corporate and personal daily life. Analysts and financial advisors/investors concur that wherever possible vendors should continue to aggressively invest in R&D. That is: spend money to make money. …

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IBM, Lenovo Top ITIC 2016 Reliability Poll; Cisco Comes on Strong

IBM Power Systems Servers Most Reliable for Seventh Straight Year; Lenovo x86 Servers Deliver Highest Uptime/Availability among all Intel x86-based Systems; Cisco UCS Stays Strong; Dell Reliability Ratchets Up; Intel Xeon Processor E7 v3 chips incorporate advanced analytics; significantly boost reliability of x86-based servers

In 2016 and beyond, infrastructure reliability is more essential than ever.

The overall health of network operations, applications, management and security functions all depend on the core foundational elements: server hardware, server operating systems and virtualization to deliver high availability, robust management and solid security. The reliability of the server, server OS and virtualization platforms are the cornerstones of the entire network infrastructure. The individual and collective reliability of these platforms have a direct, immediate and long lasting impact on daily operations and business results. For the seventh year in a row, corporate enterprise users said IBM server hardware delivered the highest levels of reliability/uptime among 14 server hardware and 11 different server hardware virtualization platforms. A 61% majority of IBM Power Systems servers and Lenovo System x servers achieved “five nines” or 99.999% availability – the equivalent of 5.25 minutes of unplanned per server /per annum downtime compared to 46% of Hewlett-Packard servers and 40% of Oracle server hardware. …

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Parallels Access 2.0 Adds Android Support, Lowers Pricing

Parallels Access 2.0 remote desktop application for Android and iOS tablets and smart phones is a “must have” for anyone that needs seamless, efficient remote access to PC and Mac desktop applications from Android and iOS smart phones and tablets.

Desktops to Go

Parallels, a well established and respected vendor in the remote desktop access arena for the Apple Mac, iPhone and iPad market has upped its game with the 2.0 release of its Parallels Access application (www.parallels.com/access). The newest version of the remote access package now supports Android phones and tablets. It also delivers a slew of new features for a more improved and seamless remote access experience.

At the same time, Parallels also lowered the retail pricing on the product. Parallels Access 2.0 now lists for $19.99 annually or $34.99 for two years, for individual users (with up to five computers). And finally, the company introduced Parallels Access for Business (www.parallels.com/access-business) which enables organizations to centrally assign, manage, and secure remote access to their computers. …

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IBM z/OS, IBM AIX, Debian and Ubuntu Score Highest Security Ratings

Eight out of 10 — 82% — of the over 600 respondents to ITIC’s 2014-2015 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability survey say security issues negatively impact overall server, operating system and network reliability. Of that figure a 53% majority of those polled say that security vulnerabilities and hacks have a “moderate,” “significant” or “crucial impact on network availability and uptime (See Exhibit 1).

Overall, the latest ITIC survey results showed that organizations are still more reactive than proactive regarding security threats. Some 15% of the over 600 global corporate respondents are extremely lax: some seven percent said that security issues have no impact on their environment while another eight percent indicated that they don’t keep track of whether or not security issues negatively affect the uptime and availability of their networks. In contrast, 24% of survey participants or one-in-four said security has a “significant” or “crucial” negative impact on network reliability and performance.

Still, despite the well documented and high profile hacks into companies like Target, eBay, Google and other big name vendors this year, the survey found that seven-out-of-10 firms – 70% – are generally confident in the security of their hardware, software and applications – until they get hacked. …

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IBM Watson Takes Cognitive Computing to the Head of the Class

Pardon the pun, but there’s nothing elementary about IBM’s newly formed, New York City-based Watson Business Unit (BU).

IBM is committing $1 billion and 2,000 employees, as well as its considerable research and development (R&D) talents and marketing muscle to Watson, thus putting the full weight of its global technology and services brand behind the newly formed BU and initiative.

IBM CEO Virginia Rometty said that Michael Rhodin, most recently SVP of IBM’s Software Solutions Group, will take charge of the Watson Group. According to Rometty, the company established Watson as a separate BU based on the strong demand for cognitive computing. The IBM Watson Group will develop cloud-based technologies that can power services for businesses, industries and consumers.

Rometty also said the new IBM Watson Group notably integrates design, services, core functions, technologies, and a fully formed ecosystem which includes a design lab as well as hundreds of outside external partner applicants, foundations and advisors. All of these elements are crucial if Watson is to succeed. …

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Security is Imperative for BYOD, Mobile Deployments

Nearly two-thirds of businesses – 62% — now allow their end users to “bring their own devices (BYOD)” and use them as their corporate desktops or mobile devices to access organizational data including Email, applications and sensitive data. However, 71% of businesses that allow BYOD, have no specific policies and procedures in place to support BYOD deployment and ensure security.

That’s according to the latest independent joint survey conducted by ITIC and KnowBe4.com, a Clearwater, Florida company that specializes in security awareness training. The ITIC/KnowBe4.com survey, polled 550 companies worldwide in July and August. The survey survey found that only 13% of respondents said their firms have specific policies in place to deal with BYOD deployments, while another nine percent indicated they were in the process of developing BYOD procedures.

“These survey findings should act as a wake-up call to galvanize corporations into proactively managing and securing corporate data accessed by mobile BYOD devices before they suffer an expensive and potentially crippling loss or hack,” said ITIC principal analyst Laura DiDio. She continued, “Every firm regardless of size should conduct a risk assessment review and adopt strong security and management policies to deal with increasingly mobile BYOD deployments.” …

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Microsoft: Bullish or Bottoming Out? Part 2

According to some press and industry, you’d think that Microsoft was all but dead. Microsoft’s tactical and strategic technology and business missteps are well publicized and dissected ad infinitum. Less well documented are Microsoft’s strengths from both a consumer and enterprise perspective and there are plenty of those.

Microsoft Strengths

One of the most notable company wins in the past five years is the Xbox 360 and Kinect.

Xbox 360 and Kinect: Simply put, this is an unqualified success. The latest statistics released earlier this month by the NPD Group show that Microsoft has a 47% market share and sold 257,000 Xbox 360 units in the U.S. in June, besting its rivals the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii for the 18th consecutive month. But Microsoft and indeed all the hardware games vendors find their sales shrinking due to the sharp increase in the numbers of users playing games on their smart phones. In Microsoft’s 2012 third fiscal quarter ending in March, Xbox 360 sales dropped 33% to $584 million. The consumer space is notoriously fickle and games users are always looking for the next big thing. Microsoft’s ace in the hole is the Kinect motion-controller, which still has a lot of appeal. The company is banking on that as well as slew of new applications and functions like the Kinect PlayFit Dashboard which lets users track the number of calories they burn when they play Kinect games. …

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Facebook IPO Flops; Can it be Fixed?

The honeymoon is over for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, it ended before it began.

Facebook’s long-awaited and much hyped IPO is less than a week old and the blame game is on as the company has lost nearly 20% of its value since the initial offering.

After three days of trading Wall Street’s take on Facebook has gone from jubilant to jaundiced.

The stock ended its first full day of trading at $38.23 – essentially flat from its $38 opening price though it did manage to set an IPO record for the sheer volume of trades — 567 million shares on opening day last Friday. Investors hoped for a turnaround. That never materialized. On Monday, a selloff prompted the shares to fall by nearly 11%, ending at $34.03. The news worsened Tuesday. The stock sank another eight percent down trading in the $31 – $32 range. …

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ITIC 2010-2011 Infrastructure Trends Survey Shows Sharp Increase in Mobility & Use of Ipads, Smart Phones in the Workplace; Cloud Deployments Slow

The sharp increase in remote and mobile workers is spurring the fast adoption of iPads in the workplace. At the same time, public cloud computing deployments among mainstream users remain slow and steady. These are some of the other survey highlights of the latest ITIC/Sunbelt Software survey on Desktop and Infrastructure deployment trends.

No Rush to the Cloud — Yet

Users on the Move: Number of Mobile workers increases

The survey results also confirm what has been widely reported: that greater numbers and percentages of users are spending more time telecommuting, traveling and generally working outside the corporate offices.

Over half – 58 percent of businesses say that up to 25 percent of their employees work remotely; another 18 percent of respondents said that between 26 to 50 percent of their workers are remote; 11 percent said that 51 to 75 percent work outside the office and seven percent of respondents said that 76 to 100 percent of their employees work remotely. It is significant that only 7 percent of the over 400 businesses polled say that none of their workers are remote or mobile. …

ITIC 2010-2011 Infrastructure Trends Survey Shows Sharp Increase in Mobility & Use of Ipads, Smart Phones in the Workplace; Cloud Deployments Slow Read More »

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