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Turkey Revenge
The turkeys are pissed this Thanksgiving they are seeking revenge.
Germs Infest 60% of Americas Phones
60% of Americans sleep with their phones, harboring germs. Cleaning regularly with UV sanitizer or alcohol wipes can help keep your phone and bed germ-free.
Smartphone Sanitizing: A Practical Guide
Securely erase personal data from your old smartphone before recycling. Protect your identity from hackers—easy steps to follow.
Why Soft Skills Matter in Today’s Job Market
Boost your career with essential soft skills like communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence. Learn why they’re crucial for workplace success.
400 Gbps Ethernet Coming
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), launched an IEEE 802.3 “Standard for Ethernet” study group to explore the development of a 400 Gbps Ethernet standard. The new standard will look to efficiently support an ever-increasing, exponential network bandwidth growth. Ethernet which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year is defined by the IEEE 802.3 standard. Ethernet is a pervasive standard, driven by the ever-growing needs of the local area, access, and metropolitan area networks around the world.
Expanded reliance on Ethernet
Beyond traditional networks, Help Net Security reports that new application like industrial and automotive networking are expanding their reliance on Ethernet. To better address the needs of these areas, the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard is constantly evolving and expanding. John D’Ambrosia is the chief Ethernet evangelist, CTO office, Dell, and chair of the new IEEE 802.3 400 Gbps Ethernet Study Group. He says Ethernet must evolve. “Traffic is growing everywhere … and it’s critical that we move now to create a plan for the Ethernet ecosystem to evolve beyond today’s capabilities, in order to accommodate the burgeoning bandwidth tsunami.”
In August 2012, IEEE forecasted that networks will need to support 58% compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) on average. The growth will be griven by simultaneous increases in users, access methodologies, access rates, and services (such as video on demand and social media). IEEE report that networks would need to support capacity requirements of 1 terabit per second (Tbps) in 2015. That number grows to 10 Tbps by 2020 if current trends continue. Alan Weckel, vice president of enterprise and data center market research at Dell’Oro Group said in the article, “Ethernet is an arena of constant innovation, driven by the market demand for support of new ever-increasing bandwidth speeds, as well as new protocols, applications, and media types.”
Standards-based networking
Standards-based networking has worked so far and will be needed as 400 Gbps Ethernet evolves. Mr. Weckel adds, “Global bandwidth requirements are continuing to grow exponentially … Standards-based solutions are integral to maintaining business growth across the Ethernet ecosystem.”
David Law, chair of the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Working Group and distinguished engineer with HP Networking explains in the article, “An IEEE 802.3 study group is formed when there is interest in developing a request to initiate an IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standards-development project.”
Dell’s D’Ambrosia told Wireless Design Magazine that a host of new technologies and applications have proliferated in the marketplace since the most recent speed jump to 100 Gb/s Ethernet was ratified in 2010. He reminded NetworkWorld that “The iPhone didn’t exist when we started 100G.” Mr. D’Ambrosia concludes that the impact has been felt throughout the Ethernet ecosystem. Data centers, for example, where Ethernet is the primary interconnect technology, are at the center of the bandwidth storm. Pressure is intensifying from all directions:
- Outside the data center, driven by increasing numbers of users armed with more devices capable of ever-increasing bandwidth consumption;
- Within the data center, driven by more and faster storage and server technologies, and
- Across data centers, driven by new applications, new databases, and new architectures.
Related article:
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Microsoft Ending Windows XP & Office 2003 Support
Two of Microsoft’s (MSFT) flagship services are going to no longer have any support as of April 8th, 2014: Windows XP and Office 2003. Microsoft is warning suggesting that companies who have not migrated from Windows XP and Office 2003 start the process soon. MSFT released the OS more than a decade ago (October 2001 to be precise).
On their blog, Naked Security, Sophos says that Windows XP still holds a 39% market share on the desktop. What if you are still using XP or Office 2003? Microsoft simply says it means you should “take action.” There will no longer be any security updates or assisted support options, online or otherwise, through Microsoft.
The lack of any security updates means there will be “unchecked security and compliance risks” as well as a lack of support and updates that keep the software compatible with the newest technologies.
Sophos speculates that one of the security implications of the bad guys holding onto new Windows XP exploits until MSFT stops patching XP. There’s certainly the potential for a lot of havoc if 39% of the PCs get infected by new internet-propagating worms that target Windows XP systems. Even an increase in Internet Explorer 8 browser exploits that could open the doors wide for all kinds of malware infections.
It can take up to 18 months for the average medium to large business to install new programs, roll out all the updates, and import all customer data. Firms may need to upgrade their PCs and retrain their staff to use newer, more dependable Microsoft products.
Microsoft says this move comes after they introduced their Support Lifecycle policy in 2002. All of Microsoft’s products get 10 years of support – 5 Mainstream and 5 Extended – and once those ten years are up, the company encourages all users to move on to more recent products that will often fit the needs of an individual and a company more closely.
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In my world, we have started to migrate off of XP to Win7, due to state-mandated testing requirements. Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that the Gates Foundation is a backer of large-scale multi-state standardized online testing that forces school districts in 22 states to migrate off of WinXP, a known entity that most people have long gotten their ROI out of the perpetual licenses to a new OS Win7 (Win8 HA) that they are pushing as a subscription?
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2013, Microsoft, MSFT, Office 2003, Operating system, PC, Sophos, Windows, XP
Business PC Not Dead Yet
The BusinessInsider says that the PC market imploded last quarter. They cite data from technology prognosticators IDC who reported PC sales fell 14 percent in the first quarter, which is worse than their forecast of a 7.7 percent drop. IDC claims this is the worst quarter for PC’s since they started tracking sales.
IDC blames Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 operating system for alienating consumers. The new tile-based interface is too weird for consumers, says IDC. Instead of buying new laptops or desktops, people are buying tablets and smartphones which serve as good-enough alternatives claims the article.
Despite the wave of doom and gloom in the headlines from Gartner (IT) and IDC, Paul Mah at FierceCIO warns IT, managers and executives, to think before they ditch their existing PCs fleet in favor of tablets and smartphones; or perhaps reallocate their budgets to migrate existing business apps for a tablet-only environment future.
FierceCIO makes the point that the decline in shipments pertains only to the consumer section of the PC market. According to Mikako Kitagawa, at Gartner: “Unlike the consumer PC segment, the professional PC market, which accounts for about half of overall PC shipments, has seen growth, driven by continuing PC refreshes.”
What’s more, this growth is taking place even though some regions already have passed the peak of their PC refresh cycles. And at half of the overall PC shipments, the professional PC market is nothing to be scoffed at. On the other hand, the overall dip–despite the growth in the professional PC market–does speak to just how sharply the drop in consumer PC shipments has been according to the article.
Consumers are clearly moving their content consumption from PCs to connected devices, such as tablets and smartphones. As far as enterprises should be concerned though, businesses are still buying PCs.
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Despite what many people wish, I still don’t see many ways in which tablets can replace the office PC. How do you run a 40 column excel on a 9.5 inch Apple (AAPL) iPad screen? Can you use Access on a consumer-centric tablet like the iPad?
Related articles
- Put Away The Eulogy, The PC Is Alive And Well (techcrunch.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Enterprise Resisting Office 365
Microsoft has bet big on Microsoft Office 365 but CITEworld says so far, the big enterprises that make up the bulk of Microsoft’s revenue haven’t jumped on board. Microsoft channel boss Jon Roskill told Redmond Channel Partner that “90 percent” of Office 365 customers are from businesses with fewer than 50 employees, and explained, “small business is at the core of this product customer base.” Mr. Roskill also said that Office 365 “penetration is still in the low single digits” in other words, less than 5%.
Office 365 was originally introduced in June 2011, and the first focus was on Microsoft-hosted versions of servers like Exchange and SharePoint. But enterprise customers tend to have multi-year license agreements.
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: AAPL, Apple, Cloud computing, Microsoft, MSFT, Office, Office 2013, Office 365, SaaS
Dropbox Adds AD for SSO
When people talk about the consumerization of IT, Dropbox is invariably part of the discussion. Dropbox, like Box, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, and others is a cloud-based storage system that enables users to sync and share files. This can and often is done without IT intervention, potentially putting sensitive data at risk or organizations out of compliance according to Debra Donston-Miller at InformationWeek.
Hoping to land some street cred with corporate IT, the consumer cloud file storage leader Dropbox, rolled out Dropbox for Teams, with security tweaks designed to give companies more control over what their users do with Dropbox, (which I covered here).
Now Dropbox has announced a rebranding, from “Dropbox for Teams” service to “Dropbox for Business” with an eye toward business and its IPO. So it is taking notice of existing enterprise authentication infrastructure to grow its customer base into authorized corporate use.
The InfofWeek article says Dropbox will now add single sign-on (SSO) capabilities to its Active Directory integration and is working with several partners to ease that integration. “Active Directory is really core to IT architectures, security and compliance strategies,” Kevin Egan, Dropbox VP of sales, told InformationWeek. “It lies at the heart of security, so we’re going to make it a lot easier for customers to plug into their existing Active Directory infrastructures, and leverage things like secure sign-on.”
Thomas “Tido” Carreiro, growth engineering lead for Dropbox, explained in an interview that the integration with Microsoft’s Active Directory will let companies use the work they have already done in setting security and authentication policy. This helps end-users and admins alike, he said. “It’s good for the end-user not to have another password to remember — they can just use what they’re familiar with”
Mr. Carriero also claims the new Dropbox for Business will be good for IT Pros. “Admins can set up security policies depending on the nature of the data being stored, and they can do things like set password requirements, reset passwords as often as they’d like, set up two-factor authentication, set up other kinds of authentication — whatever they have decided on for their business.”
According to Dropbox’s Egan and Carriero, the firm will provide SSO out of the box. Dropbox SSO uses the industry-standard Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), so it will also integrate with any large identity provider companies are using or with companies’ own SAML-based federated authentication systems. DropBox SSO partners include Ping Identity, Okta, OneLogin, Centrify, and Symplified.
The author notes that Dropbox has some pretty stiff competition in the cloud-based storage space, including no less than Google (GOOG) Drive, SugarSync, Apple’s (AAPL) iCloud, Box,net, and Microsoft’s (MSFT) SkyDrive. But the SSO integration with Active Directory is an important step forward in making Dropbox a corporate tool, and not just a tool for consumers.
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The producers of these consumer-targeted technologies need to recognize that for deals in tens of thousands of seats, firms like Dropbox, Box, and Evernote need to offer those of us charged with protecting the firm’s assets assurances about security, privacy, and integration with Microsoft Active Directory.
Despite that, Box Enterprise GM Whitney Bouck also told CITEworld, “The premise of Box is to make it super-easy to share, communicate, and collaborate … At its most open, there should be as few controls as possible.”
And then there are the security breaches. In 2011, Dropbox accidentally pushed a code update that introduced a bug into the company’s authentication mechanism, allowing third parties to log in to user accounts and access files. Last year, hacks at other Web sites allowed attackers to penetrate accounts used by Dropbox employees, including a document from which they may have been able to harvest email addresses. In August, those email addresses were apparently used to send Dropbox users spam.
Related articles
- Get 7GB of Free Cloud Storage from Microsoft (savings.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2013, Centrify, Cloud computing, Consumerization, Dropbox, GOOG, Google, Microsoft, MSFT, Okta, OneLogin, Ping Identity, SAML, Security Assertion Markup Language, Single sign-on, Symplified