Discover how mastering email communication can boost business efficiency, avoid common pitfalls, and ensure secure, respectful online interactions.
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.
Chinas Internet Giants are Massive
Derrick Harris, writer for GigaOM recently gave us a peek inside China’s Internet giants and their massive scale. The author describes China’s big four internet companies as huge, but not technological innovators like their American counterparts – yet.
China’s Internet market
The Chinese Internet market is very, very big despite the Great Firewall that cuts Chinese citizens off from many popular U.S. web services. The article states there are more Chinese netizens than all the citizens of the United States and European Union combined. And they use social media and e-commerce just like the rest of us. The author gives some examples of the scale of the companies providing social media, e-commerce, and information-discovery needs to China’s 1.3 billion people.
Alibaba Group
Taobao, the eBay-like e-commerce line of business from Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group, does a lot of business. On a single day — Nov. 11, 2011 — the company did a whopping 19 billion yuan (about $3.05 billion) in sales. According to Alibaba Group CTO and Alibaba Cloud Computing President Wang Jian, the company site surpassed the 1 trillion yuan (about $160 billion) mark for 2012 revenue at the end of November. Alipay, the company’s version of PayPal, handles about 3 billion yuan (about $480 million) in transactions every day.
By comparison, eBay (EBAY) posted $3.4 billion in revenue for the entire third quarter this year. Amazon (AMZN), with which Taobao also competes (although Alibaba also has a business-to-consumer division called Tmall), closed its third quarter with $13.8 billion in revenue. Of course, Taobao and Alipay are just two of Alibaba’s expansive portfolio of services, which includes a troubled partnership with Yahoo (YHOO).
That type of business means Alibaba needs a lot of servers. In a single year not too long ago, Jian told the author, the company bought more servers than it had in the previous five years combined. If you charted Alibaba’s server count now versus five years ago, he added, the previous number would look like zero. How big is its database? Enough to store data for more than 800 million items for sale.
Baidu
The Chinese search giant is ranked fifth in the Alexa internet rankings, which is evidence of its popularity. All those users, I’m told, result in an annual server growth about equal to the previous three years combined. It is reported that Baidu (BIDU) is planning possibly the world’s largest data center — spanning 120,000 square meters, costing $1.6 billion, housing 100,000 servers (totaling 700,000 CPUs and 3 million cores), and storing 4,000 petabytes of data.
Tencent
Sometimes compared with Facebook (FB), Tencent (TCEHY) boasted more than 717 million users for its popular QQ messaging service as of September 2011. That number has surely grown. The company says its highest-ever number of concurrent users was more than 176 million, although there are often tens of millions (if not more than 100 million people) using it at any given time. An individual with some knowledge of the company’s infrastructure told me Tencent adds about 100,000 servers per year.
The Twitter-like platform from internet new-school internet company Sina had more than 400 million users as of April 2012. That’s about twice the number Twitter claims. And the Chinese use Weibo a lot, for everything from micro-blogging to self-publishing. It might actually be a more important tool in China than Twitter is in the United States, sources told the author, because while the government can censor official news outlets, it can’t possibly control the stream of information coming off Weibo. And that will mean even more growth.
Mr. Harris concludes that, despite their sheer scale, Chinese internet companies are, by most accounts, less technologically inclined than their American counterparts. The biggest reason, the author says is that these companies tend to view themselves as traditional businesses and not technology companies. Another factor mentioned is that employees often strive to work up the management ladder not remain career engineers. This inevitably affects R&D budgets, makes companies less willing to take risks, and reduces the pool of employees that really, deeply understand complex systems.
The blog cites the server situation within China’s big four internet companies. Alibaba’s Jian told the author that although his company is running all white boxes in its data centers now, it had a lot of legacy IBM (IBM) gear in its data centers five years ago. The same thing is reported about Baidu. Tencent, had 10,000 webscale servers fail in six months last year and is considering a move back to traditional boxes.
Open Compute Project
The article speculates that these companies are coming around on innovation beyond just buying more efficient gear. Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba, for example, are all members of the Facebook-led Open Compute Project for designing webscale hardware. Tencent and Baidu actually created their own rack-design specification, called Project Scorpio, which is being merged into Open Compute’s Open Rack design in 2013. They still don’t build their own servers like Google and Facebook do, preferring instead to push their custom specs on server makers, but many innovative American companies, including eBay, do the same thing.
Facebook VP Frank Frankovsky told PCWorld, “We compete with those guys, but on the infrastructure side, if we can make our infrastructure more efficient, it makes everyone that much better. Where we differentiate our business is in the service we provide to our end users.”
That differentiation comes in large part from an incredible investment in research and technology. If they want to be considered thought leaders in their field — and if they want to expand significantly into cloud computing (as Alibaba and Sina clearly want to do) — China’s internet companies will have to start matching their immense scale with demonstrated technology.
Related articles
- China’s M-Commerce Shopping Spree to Hit $27.1 Billion in 2014, Surpassing US Mobile Shoppers (Infographic) (techinasia.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.
Tablet Info
Outside the office, workers turn to the tablet over the PC
Tablet computing is not overtaking smartphones or PCs in the enterprise, but they’re definitely carving a new business niche for themselves a survey conducted by cloud content management firm Alfresco shows. According to the data cited by GigaOM, tablets have replaced the PC as the go-to workstation for working at home and on the road.
The Alfresco study found that staff is using tablets:
- 48% of enterprise employees are using tablets after hours at home,
- 55% of respondents use tablets at business meetings (vs. 24% using PCs),
- 50% are turning first to slates at conferences, compared to 13% using their laptops.
Alfresco reported that employees prefer the smartphone at more informal business functions
- 57% using them at business lunches and
- 51% using them in coffee shops.
But the tablet is also starting to become commonplace even in those more casual settings: 34% of respondents said they would haul out their slate at a lunch meeting, while 43% would do the same in a coffee shop.
The Alfresco data indicates that the 3-screen reality is coming true. Tablets aren’t replacing either smartphones or laptops, but are instead creating a new space in-between. The vendor says it’s pretty clear that laptops are increasingly tethered to the desk or cube, while tablets are the tool of choice on the go.
RB- This has huge implications on the support side of the equations
Incorporating Tablets into Enterprise Security
Enterprise information security hasn’t caught up with the consumerization of IT according to Lenny Zeltser in a recent article on the Lenny Zeltser on Information Security blog. The author states that the urgency with which organizations need to account for consumerization is driven by modern mobile devices such as Apple iPhones and iPads.
Enterprises are coming to terms with the idea of employees connecting to the corporate network over a VPN. Be it from personal laptops and home workstations according to the article. However, most organizations haven’t looked at the effect that the proliferation of powerful mobile devices has on enterprise security architecture.
Mobile devices sometimes have VPN-like access to the corporate network. In most cases have access to the company’s email contents, calendar, and address book. The devices are as powerful as laptops were just a few years ago. Yet, their operating system’s security has not benefited from the test of time. Tablets and mobile devices lack most of the security controls we’d expect to find in a “legacy” workstation OS.
Mr. Zeltser argues we need to understand how to model the threat vectors related to mobile devices and how to adjust the security of the enterprise architecture accordingly. The measures will probably involve:
- Greater segmentation of the company’s network,
- Treating any device that users interact with, whether it’s a desktop or a mobile phone, as an untrusted node,
- Standards and tools to lock down the configuration of mobile devices,
- Practices and technologies for managing vulnerabilities in applications and the OS of mobile devices,
- Incident response plans that incorporate both “legacy” IT infrastructure assets and mobile devices.
BYO tablet? Three ways business is getting it all wrong
Silicon.com had an article describing Three ways businesses are getting BYOD all wrong. The author claims the days of the standard work-issued laptop are numbered as businesses let staff use their own computers and gadgets in the workplace.
However, in the rush to adopt bring-your-own tech, businesses are placing too many restrictions on how personal devices can be used at work according to Anthony Vigneron, collaboration services global manager at global law firm Clifford Chance. He estimates that about 10 percent of firms’ 7,000 staff share the same device at home and work.
Mr. Vigneron described for silicon.com three ways businesses get it wrong when it comes to letting staff use personal devices at work.
Use sandboxing
Businesses are often advised to provide personal devices with secure access to corporate systems using sandboxed virtual machines. Sand-boxed machines allow remote access to corporate info via a virtual desktop that is run from the business’ data center.
He says it is better to let users access corporate data and apps from their device’s own OS. “Trying to deliver applications within a sandbox is not what users want. That’s not consumerization, that’s just another way of providing the same apps on different hardware,” he said.
“People want to use the native applications. They don’t want to have to log in through some other system.” He concludes “The business should be able to control some of the applications staff use but you don’t want all those things inside another application.”
Give them a choice
Mr. Vigneron argues that the line where work life ends and private life begins is becoming increasingly blurred. So it doesn’t make sense to treat them as two separate entities. By not allowing workers to merge their work and home calendars, contacts, and emails, businesses are imposing an artificial distinction on their staff. He explains, “You do want some separation … People want the choice of being able to work with the same interface.”
Costs matter
Letting staff use their personal smartphone while working may seem like a good idea. However, employees might be in for an unpleasant shock when they get their phone bill. Mr. Vigneron said “For companies to allow for consumerization, the price has to get to an equivalent of what we can get as a corporate. They’re not doing that at the moment.”
Related articles
- U.S. Tablet Ownership Doubled this Year (cio-today.com)
- 10 steps for writing a secure BYOD policy (zdnet.com)
- Marc Andreessen: BYOD Isn’t Going Anywhere (ceo.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: Tablet computing |
Tags: 2013, BYOD, Consumerization, Information security, iPad, iPhone, Laptop, Personal computer, Post PC era, Tablet computer, Virtual Machine, Virtual private network
Detroit Tech City
Detroit has become the only two-time winner on the top five list of fastest-growing tech cities, says Dice.Com. According to MiTechNews, Detroit was No. 5 on the Dice list this year, with year-to-year growth of 10 percent in tech job listings. The Motor City was No. 1 on Dice’s list in 2011.
Back in 2011, Dice said Detroit had more than 800 tech jobs posted on any given day; now it’s more than 1,100. Automation Alley ranked the greater Detroit region among the best for its strong record of students completing science, technology, engineering, and math degrees.
The article says that annual salaries for Detroit-based tech pros are rising at above-average rates, up 7 percent from last year to $76,515 on average.
Dice says St. Louis, Mo. was No. 1 on this year’s Dice survey at 25 percent year-over-year growth in tech job listings, followed by:
Charlotte, N.C. (22 percent)- Austin, Texas (16 percent)
- Phoenix, Ariz. (13 percent).
“Detroit is a great place to be, and that’s what’s driving it,” said Dice.com senior vice president Tom Silver. “I think what’s contributing to it is a growth in opportunity as well as a pretty good cost of living. Increasingly, people are moving from more traditional tech centers like the Valley and NYC where it’s really expensive, to cities like Detroit, which are a great place to live.”
Employers are also discovering a “rich pool of talent” in cities like Detroit too — that they can get for more reasonable salaries, given the lower local cost of living.
Dice noted that Quicken Loans, Domino’s Pizza (DPZ) and New World Systems are high-profile Motown-based companies with listings on Dice.com.
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I have covered what I have called the Detroit Miracle for a while here and here.
Related articles
- Detroit Electric Returns After 74 Years, Teases New Sportscar (autoevolution.com)
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2013, Automation Alley, Business, Detroit, Dice.com, Michigan, Quicken Loans
What Happens To Old Smartphones
The Business Insider has some new stats on what happens to old smartphones when people are done with them. The article says, for the most part, they just sit around. The author cites a survey by Gazelle, a site that takes trade-ins of old smartphones, tablets, and laptops. As you can see in this chart, 51% of people put old smartphones in a drawer or closet, according to Gazelle’s research.
MarketWatch estimates that all of those old phones sitting around are worth $34 billion. (That’s all phones, not just smartphones.) Companies like Gazelle are trying to get people to sell their smartphones to Gazelle, so they can resell the phones around the world and make a nice profit.
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I’ve cover electronics recycling a number of times on Bach Seat.
Related articles
- Samsung resale prices rival iPhone’s – MarketWatch (marketwatch.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, AAPL, Apple, Business Insider, Cell phone, EBay, eWaste, Green, iPhone, Smartphone
Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation
Nilofer Merchant recently posted the article Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation at Harvard Business Review. In the article, Ms. Merchant argues that the amount of time spent sitting in meetings and watching TV has a negative impact on our health, akin to the preventable risk of smoking.
The author says people spend more time sitting than anything else throughout the day. She cites some statistics: “… we sit more than we do anything else. We’re averaging 9.3 hours a day, compared to 7.7 hours of sleep. Sitting is so prevalent and so pervasive that we don’t even question how much we’re doing it. “
There are big problems caused by sitting according to the article, health studies conclude that people should sit less, and get up and move around.
- After 1 hour of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat declines by as much as 90%.
- Extended sitting slows the body’s metabolism affecting things like (good cholesterol) HDL levels in our bodies.
- Lack of physical activity is directly tied to 6% of the impact for heart diseases, 7% for type 2 diabetes, and 10% for breast cancer, or colon cancer.
The New York Times reported on another study, published last year in the journal Circulation that looked at nearly 9,000 Australians and found that for each additional hour of television a person sat and watched per day, the risk of dying rose by 11%. In that article, a doctor is quoted as saying that excessive sitting, which he defines as nine hours a day, is a lethal activity.
The author points out some trends to combat the negative impacts of sitting. The first is the mainstreaming of the standing desk. She concludes that, while it gets you off your duff, won’t help you get real exercise.
Additionally, Ms. Merchant describes a change she has made to her routine. “… I switched one meeting from a coffee meeting to a walking meeting… I now average four such meetings, and 20 to 30 miles each week.”
She also cites the work of James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis’s, book Connected. They observed that obesity spreads according to network effects; if your friend’s friend’s friend who lives a thousand miles away gains weight, you’re likely to gain weight, too. And if that extended friend also loses weight, even if you’re not in the same city, you’re likely to lose weight, too. Her goal, ” is to be someone who socializes the idea that physical activity matters, and that we each matter enough to take care of our health.”
The author says that her walking meetings had some unanticipated side benefits. She reports walking helps her listen to her participants. “… I can actually listen better when I am walking next to someone than when I’m across from them in some coffee shop. There’s something about being side-by-side that puts the problem or ideas before us, and us working on it together.”
Secondly, she reports that the meetings are more focused, because the iTimeWasters stay in the pocket, “the simple act of moving also means the mobile device mostly stays put away. Undivided attention is perhaps today’s scarcest resource, and hiking meetings allow me to invest that resource very differently.”
The authors claim that the results of these off-beat meetings are positive. “The number one thing I’ve heard people say is “That was the most creative time I’ve had in a long time” And that could be because we’re outside, or a result of walking. Research certainly says that walking is good for the brain.”
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The author concludes that if you want to get out of the box thinking, you need to literally get out of the box.
If nothing else, when sitting for long periods, standing up every 20 minutes produces significant positive health benefits. I wrote about the link between inactivity and health back in 2009.
Do you believe that sitting to the smoking of our generation?
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, Business, Cancer, Diabetes, Healthcare, Heart disease, Meeting, Physical exercise, Sitting, Walking meeting