*IT Exclusive News

Women in Digital Business

February 22, 2015February 22, 2015 enews

Numerous studies have shown that mixed gender teams are more creative, effective and competitive. And yet, overall the IT sector remains a male-dominated domain. In a world where even at Google only a fifth of the management positions are held by a woman, the Women’s IT Network believes that there is a definite need for action. WIN brings together women who hold positions of responsibility in digital business to encourage everyone who wants to be a part of the action at the top. After all, the IT sector itself is desperately…

Comments & opinions

Private cloud? Public cloud? Rackspace erases the difference

February 20, 2015February 20, 2015 enews

Rackspace is going to stop distinguishing between the money it makes from public cloud and what it derives from “dedicated” cloud, a category that encompasses a bunch of options. Rackspace President Taylor Rhodes Credit: Rackspace Well that’s one way to sidestep the whole “is private cloud dead?” debate. The move may show a fanatical obsession on managed cloud or indicate that Rackspace is giving up on public cloud where leader, Amazon Web…

Analysis

Hunting Desert Falcons

February 19, 2015February 20, 2015 enews

Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team has discovered Desert Falcons – a cyber espionage group targeting multiple high profile organizations and individuals from Middle East countries. Kaspersky Lab experts consider this actor to be the first known Arabic group of cyber mercenaries to develop and run full-scale cyber-espionage operations. The campaign has been active for at least two years. The Desert Falcons started developing and building their operation in 2011, with their main campaign and real infection beginning in 2013. The peak of their activity was registered at the beginning of…

Analysis

Western European Mobile Phone Market Shows Clear Signs of Saturation as Total Shipments Decline Again in 2014, but Smartphones Hit a Record High, says IDC

February 18, 2015February 18, 2015 enews

The Western European mobile phone market failed to grow in 2014 for the second consecutive year, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). Total shipments declined 5.2% year-on-year to 174.1 million units, according to IDC’s European Mobile Phone Tracker, published in February 2015. LONDON, February 17, 2013 —The feature phone segment continues in free fall, with shipments down 39% year-on-year to 28.4 million units and a total value of $USD1.4 billion. This is now a niche segment representing only 16% of total units shipped in the year and 2.2% of the total…

News

Azure adopts global data privacy standard

February 18, 2015February 18, 2015 enews

Microsoft hopes verification will strengthen Azure’s enterprise appeal. Microsoft claims its Azure service is the first major public cloud to adopt a new global international privacy standard. The ISO/IEC 27018 standard establishes a uniform approach around the world for protecting personal data in the cloud. It was developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Redmond’s cloud has now been independently verified as meeting the standard’s code of practice by the British Standards Institute, and it will hope its adoption of the standard makes its public cloud a more attractive proposition to enterprise…

Analysis

What’s Driving Mobile Data Growth?

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 enews

Ahead of Mobile World Congress 2015, which will be held on March 2-5 in Barcelona, Jessica Ekholm, research director at Gartner, shared her thoughts on what is driving the growth in mobile data traffic, and how communications service providers (CSPs) and mobile app developers will lead the market. Q: What is the outlook for mobile data use in 2015? A: Mobile data traffic will continue to show double-digit growth in 2015. Gartner expects traffic to grow 59 percent this year (see Table 1). Newer and faster networks, a rise in the number…

Comments & opinions

Private cloud’s very public failure

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 enews

Private clouds are doomed to fail, and OpenStack may not be the answer. Matt Asay explains. No wonder private cloud vendors have started calling themselves “hybrid” clouds: the private cloud vision has failed — utterly and completely. Gartner analyst Tom Bittman asked why 95% of private clouds are failing, but the answer seems clear: the very notion of a privately provisioned cloud service is contradictory and nearly always doomed. Unfortunately, the odds of failure may skyrocket when enterprises turn to OpenStack. Fail early, fail often Roughly five years ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS)…

Comments & opinions

CRM Success: Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

February 12, 2015February 13, 2015 enews

Implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system is no proverbial walk in the park. The failure rate for CRM adoption hovers between 47 percent and 70 percent, according to analysts. To be a part of the minority of businesses that do succeed in their CRM initiative, following best practices is crucial. What to Do and What Not to Do 1. Don’t Lump All of Your Customers Together: Instead, Focus Only on the Best Ones. Chances are, if you’re implementing a CRM system, you’re looking to adopt a customer-centric approach to business. If that’s…

Comments & opinions

New role, new responsibilities, same face

February 12, 2015February 13, 2015 enews

It’s that time of year again! Well not really, but it’s that time of my career at least. For those of you keeping track I’ve been at EMC now for a bit over 4 years. I was part of the vSpecialist team for 3 years, and last year around this time I moved into the Office of the CTO (and from Stockholm to Boston with my wife). I’m now moving to yet another interesting opportunity within EMC, but perhaps not a role traditionally associated with EMC. I’m sure you all have…

Analysis

Big Data: The 4 Layers Everyone Must Know

February 11, 2015February 12, 2015 enews

Big Data still causes a lot of confusion in people’s heads: What really is it? What is new and what is old wine in new bottles? In order to bring a little more clarity to the concept I thought it might help to describe the 4 key layers of a big data system – i.e. the different stages the data itself has to pass through on its journey from raw statistic or snippet of unstructured data (for example, social media post) to actionable insight. The whole point of a big…