Facebook went down for a few hours last night, causing people to turn to Twitter to complain, quip and mourn. But despite the outsized reactions from the site’s users the web itself barely felt the shock of losing the largest social network on the planet. Read more »
The adoption of tablets, social media and new interfaces and the changing nature of the TV itself mean the digital living room will continue on its path of rapid change, thanks to new ways of creating, viewing, bundling, distributing and selling content. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We’re on pace to send 1.3 zettabytes of data in 2016, about 4 times more than we send today according to data out from Cisco. To put that in perspective, that’s more than 38 million DVDs sent per hour. It’s a 1 followed by 21 zeros. Read more »
Citing employee preferences and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, Cisco is no longer investing in the Cius Android tablet it announced in 2010. I say bull: The product had “fail” written all over it and never gained traction for several reasons. Read more »
The future of TV may not be about apps, second screens and over-the-top at all but about new types of screens that fill entire walls and work together in a modular fashion. And the TV of the future may be a bit like your dog. Read more »
Many IT professionals find migrating corporate applications to the cloud a difficult, time-consuming and altogether painful task, according to results of a new survey from Cisco. While the majority of respondents expressed relative comfort with their cloud migrations, some took rather extreme negative positions. Read more »
Huawei, six months after creating its enterprise networking division here in the U.S. is ready to make a big splash at Interop this year. The Chinese networking gear maker is the one thing Cisco’s CEO John Chambers fears and today’s announcements show why. Read more »
The Open Compute Project is a coup by the buyers of servers to take control of their hardware destiny, but wisely it’s also leaving the vendors enough room to make a business for themselves. The nature of IT is changing. Here’s how companies adapt. Read more »
Zagster aims to bring shared bikes to a campus, apartment complex, or hotel near you. The startup (once called CityRyde) just signed Cisco and Hyatt Hotels to install its shared bike service in their locations, CEO Timothy Ericson told attendees of TechStars Boston Demo Day. Read more »
The networking world is changing in three fundamental ways, and all of them threaten Cisco. Cisco is responding to the threats with Insieme in the data center and a service-provider strategy. This story lays it all out for you. Read more »
This quarter saw Amazon Web Services finally relaxing its public-cloud-only stance and launching services to support hybrid-cloud deployments. Meanwhile, Hadoop players moved to make their platforms more accessible to mainstream BI analysts and database administrators. A new quarterly report analyzes these trends and provides a near-term outlook. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Five key technology sectors are enabling the smart city: smart grids, smart transport, smart water and waste management, smart building systems, and the enabling ICT platforms for the smart city. Key players like IT companies, telcos and utilities must learn how to harness those technologies, and quickly. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The normally staid and somewhat boring world of networking equipment focused startups is become a hotly contested minefield — thanks to the newest kid on the blog, Insiemi, a company started by Cisco veterans. Their hiring tactics have got rivals such as Arista Network hopping mad. Read more »
One solution to the big data skills shortage has been consulting firms that specialize in deploying big data systems companies need to make sense of their information. These companies will continue to play a vital role in helping us make sense of the the data deluge. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Big data now touches everything from enterprises to smart-meter startups, while Hadoop is fast becoming the leading tool to analyze that data, and debates around privacy abound. GigaOM Pro analysts offer insights on what to consider when it comes to big data decisions for your business. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
It has become increasingly clear to corporations that their networks can’t handle the many devices that employees are bringing into their offices. And this iPad has more elements that could make it a hit in the enterprise, such as a higher-resolution screen for video. Read more »
Growth phases at Web startups are invariably accompanied by attacks, as we’ve seen with sites like Facebook, Twitter and many other web-based companies. Here we look at which are the most brutal attacks and how companies and developers can guard against them in the future. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cisco and EMC have come up with a reference architecture featuring Cisco UCS server gear that’s designed to run the EMC Greenplum MR software, the company’s “enterprise-class” Hadoop distribution that features technology it OEMs from Hadoop startup MapR. Read more »
Mobile deals combine location-aware discounts with mobile marketing campaigns. What are the largest pitfalls in this promising space, though? Privacy and security issues must be addressed to assure consumers their purchases are secure and their location is being closely guarded. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A new survey has revived the fear that digital ad spending will shrink the overall pie. While newspapers have it tough, other big ad markets are still pretty healthy, and technologies like targeting and social media advertising could still increase the value of — and thus ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The Wi-Fi Alliance will begin certifying devices under its new Passport initiative, which ensures that mobile phones can log into Wi-Fi networks seamlessly. Now it’s the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s turn to take over, integrating those devices and the access points into the mobile operator’s network. Read more »
Although the goal for most startup founders might be to build your company’s value, many companies are inadvertently taking steps to kill it. Marty Wolf, the founder of Martinwolf M&A advisors, explains the 5 things you need to avoid. Read more »
Meter giant Itron has made a rare smart grid acquisition. On Wednesday afternoon Itron announced that it plans to acquire smart grid cellular networking company SmartSynch in a deal worth around $100 million. Read more »
AT&T is now claiming that its mobile data traffic is doubling every year, rather than increasing at a more modest 40 percent annual rate. The distinction is important because the faster AT&T’s networks become overloaded the more pressure it faces to find more spectrum. Read more »
At this year’s Mobile World Congress, you would expect LTE to hog the spotlight, but LTE might find itself overshadowed by a less sexy technology: Wi-Fi. As telecom vendors prep their new porfolios for MWC in two weeks, there is a preponderance of Wi-Fi products. Read more »
Large data centers are increasingly moving to converged infrastructure, and most of the chatter has been about this slick, new hardware. But it also has deep implications for enterprise employees and the CIOS and managers that must retrain them — or do away with them altogether. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
If you’re like many of us, you’re already thinking over some New Year’s resolutions that will make you a better “you” in 2012. But how are the tech industries’ thought leaders approaching the new year? We asked 12 of them for their resolutions. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Continuing a yearlong trend, the fourth quarter in big IT was all about big data, and Hadoop in particular. Still, many are beginning to recognize the software framework’s shortcomings, which is why this quarter also saw more attention for startups claiming easy analytics and real-time processing. Elsewhere in infrastructure, SaaS startups made out well and valuations for these companies are getting higher, and naturally there was news from the AWS camp. This quarterly wrap-up examines these events and more, including the quarter’s dark spot, the hike in prices in the hard-drive manufacturing space due to the floods in Thailand. Companies mentioned in this report include Calxeda, Heroku, Rackspace, Salesforce.com and Tier3. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The Internet Society is organizing a pow wow of big ISPs, web companies and networking equipment providers on June 6 to ceremonially bury the world’s current Internet protocol, IPv4, and permanently implement its successor, IPv6. Read more »
A group of tech companies led by IBM and including CA, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, NetApp, Red Hat, SAP — is throwing its weight behind a proposed standard to assure that applications can move between clouds. Amazon, RackSpace, Microsoft? They’re not on board, at least not yet. Read more »
As Cisco’s CTO Padmasree Warrior looks to the new year, she wants to ramp up being an advocate for women in technology. Check out her 2012 resolution: Read more »
Wi-fi has shown a remarkable ability to evolve, to meet increasingly higher expectations and requirements, and to become pervasively adopted in mobile devices. All of these factors are highly prized by the enterprise and public and safety agencies, as well as health and educational institutions that are increasingly deploying larger, high-performance and high-capacity Wi-Fi networks that have become fully integrated within the IT infrastructure. This paper follows the ascent of Wi-Fi and looks at how its expanding role within the enterprise drives more-advanced requirements. We also examine how these requirements will be met by further expansion in the Wi-Fi standards and by a new generation of Wi-Fi equipment and devices. And we discuss how the enterprise can benefit from the evolution of Wi-Fi by deploying future-proof networks that will organically improve performance. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Embrane, the not-so-stealthy startup that’s one of several hoping to make it big on the concept of virtualizing the network, launched Sunday. The company, founded in 2010 by Dante Malagrinò, has raised $27 million to provide firewalls, load balancers and more via distributed software. Read more »
The public Internet and the cloud shouldn’t mix, according to a paper out today. Cisco seems to agree if its CloudVerse suite of products is any indication. A growing number of endpoints and multiple services in web apps required dedicated and intelligent networks. Read more »
For the occasion of Siemens’ swallowing eMeter, we have pulled together our recurring smart grid acquisitions list, including the new ones we have seen in recent months. Read more »
Wikileaks today released a database of tech providers that are involved in government tracking around the globe and quite a few familiar names are on the list, including Alcatel Lucent, Nokia and Cisco. Called The Spy Files, the project includes 287 records. Read more »
According to data released today as part of Cisco’s Global Cloud Index, traffic over data center networks will reach 4.8 zettabytes a year by 2015, and cloud computing will account for one-third of it, or 1.6 zettabytes. That’s more than all the Internet will handle. Read more »
Here’s the smart grid world according to Cisco and nine points you should know about Cisco’s smart grid goals. Read more »
IBM is the latest amongst a growing list of hardware makers to release networking gear based on the OpenFlow network protocol. A new 10 GigE switch is going to target cloud/ datacenter markets and compete aggressively with rivals that would include HP and Cisco. Read more »
We often ascribe life-changing powers to high-speed Internet connections in our personal lives, but can they cure cancer? The Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Advanced Health thinks so, and it’s investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a nationally distributed computing system to make it happen. Read more »
