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Oracle Goes Deeper Into The Cloud
Right on the heels of a similar acquisition last week, Oracle has announced it will pay $532 million to buy Opower, a provider of cloud services to the utilities industry.
Once a die-hard cloud holdout, Oracle has been making up for lost time by buying a foothold in specific industries through acquisitions such as this one. Last week’s Textura buy gave it a leg up in engineering and construction.
“It’s a good move on Oracle’s part, and it definitely strengthens Oracle’s cloud story,” said Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics.
Opower’s big-data platform helps utilities improve customer service, reduce costs and meet regulatory requirements. It currently stores and analyzes more than 600 billion meter readings from 60 million end customers. Opower claims more than 100 global utilities among its clients, including PG&E, Exelon and National Grid.
Opower will continue to operate independently until the transaction closes, which is expected later this year. The union will create the largest provider of mission-critical cloud services to an industry that’s worth $2.3 trillion, Oracle said.
Oracle’s Utilities business delivers applications and cloud services that automate core operational processes and enable compliance for global electric, gas and water utilities.
“Oracle’s industry organizations maintain unique domain knowledge, specialized expertise and focused product investments,” said Rodger Smith, a senior vice president who leads the Utilities global business unit, in a letter to customers and partners. “This model has proven highly successful across several industries, and we look forward to bringing these same benefits to the customers of Opower.”
Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/oracle-pushes-deeper-into-cloud-computing-with-another-acquisition.html
Are Quantum Computers On The Horizon?
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Austria’s University of Innsbruck claim to have put together a working quantum computer capable of solving a simple mathematical problem.
The architecture they have devised ought to be relatively easy to scale, and could therefore form the basis of workable quantum computers in the future – with a bit of “engineering effort” and “an enormous amount of money”, according to Isaac Chuang, professor of physics, electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.
Chuang’s team has put together a prototype comprising the first five quantum bits (or qubits) of a quantum computer. This is being tested on mathematical factoring problems, which could have implications for applications that use factoring as the basis for encryption to keep information, including credit card details, secure.
The proof-of-concept has been applied only to the number 15, but the researchers claim that this is the “first scalable implementation” of quantum computing to solve Shor’s algorithm, a quantum algorithm that can quickly calculate the prime factors of large numbers.
“The team was able to keep the quantum system stable by holding the atoms in an ion trap, where they removed an electron from each atom, thereby charging it. They then held each atom in place with an electric field,” explained MIT.
Chuang added: “That way, we know exactly where that atom is in space. Then we do that with another atom, a few microns away – [a distance] about 100th the width of a human hair.
“By having a number of these atoms together, they can still interact with each other because they’re charged. That interaction lets us perform logic gates, which allow us to realise the primitives of the Shor factoring algorithm. The gates we perform can work on any of these kinds of atoms, no matter how large we make the system.”
Chuang is a pioneer in the field of quantum computing. He designed a quantum computer in 2001 based on one molecule that could be held in ‘superposition’ and manipulated with nuclear magnetic resonance to factor the number 15.
The results represented the first experimental realisation of Shor’s algorithm. But the system wasn’t scalable as it became more difficult to control as more atoms were added.
However, the architecture that Chuang and his team have put together is, he believes, highly scalable and will enable the team to build quantum computing devices capable of solving much bigger mathematical factors.
“It might still cost an enormous amount of money to build, [and] you won’t be building a quantum computer and putting it on your desktop anytime soon, but now it’s much more an engineering effort and not a basic physics question,” said Chuang.
In other quantum computing news this week, the UK government has promised £200m to support engineering and physical sciences PhD students and fuel UK research into quantum technologies, although most of the cash will be spent on Doctoral Training Partnerships rather than trying to build workable quantum computing prototypes.
Courtesy-TheInq
Courtesy-TheInq
Is The Dollar Hurting PC Sales?
Worldwide PC shipments dropped 8.3 percent in the fourth quarter which was the worst sales have been since 2008,, beancounters at Gartner Group said.
PC manufacturers shipped 75.7 million machines in the fourth quarter compared with about 82.6 million a year earlier. Sales sank 3.1 per cent in the US to 16.9 million in the quarter.
Gartner forecasts a fall of a percent in 2016 with the potential of a soft recovery later in the year.
Mikako Kitagawa, an analyst at Gartner said that the fourth quarter of 2015 marked the fifth consecutive quarter of worldwide PC shipment decline. Holiday sales did not boost the overall PC shipments, hinting at changes to consumers’ PC purchase behavior.
Lenovo retained its leadership of the PC market with 20 percent of the global market in the fourth quarter. Its shipments dropped 4.2 percent. HP was the No. 2 global PC maker, increased its market share slightly to almost 19 percent. The company maintained its top position in the U.S., with 27 percent of the market, despite a decline of 8.4 percent in fourth-quarter shipments. Del increased its global market share to 13.5 percent from 13.1 percent and ranked third.
IDC released similar figures saying that it was all the fault of the strong US dollar hampered overseas sales. It thinks that the decline in PC sales may slow in 2016, with IDC projecting a fall of 3.1 percent compared with 10 percent drop in 2015. Greater commercial adoption of Microsoft Windows 10 operating system may help stabilize sales.
Courtesy-Fud
Seagate Goes 8TB For Surveillance
Seagate has become the first hard drive company to create an 8TB unit aimed specifically at the surveillance market, targeting system integrators, end users and system installers.
The Seagate Surveillance HDD, as those wags in marketing have named it, is the highest capacity of any specialist drive for security camera set-ups, and Seagate cites its main selling points as maximizing uptime while removing the need for excess support.
“Seagate has worked closely with the top surveillance manufacturers to evolve the features of our Surveillance HDD products and deliver a customized solution that has precisely matched market needs in this evolving space for the last 10 years,” said Matt Rutledge, Seagate’s senior vice president for client storage.
“With HD recordings now standard for surveillance applications, Seagate’s Surveillance HDD product line has been designed to support these extreme workloads with ease and is capable of a 180TB/year workload, three times that of a standard desktop drive.
“It also includes surveillance-optimized firmware to support up to 64 cameras and is the only product in the industry that can support surveillance solutions, from single-bay DVRs to large multi-bay NVR systems.”
The 3.5in drive is designed to run 24/7 and is able to capture 800 hours of high-definition video from up to 64 cameras simultaneously, making it ideal for shopping centers, urban areas, industrial complexes and anywhere else you need to feel simultaneously safe and violated. Its capacity will allow 6PB in a 42U rack.
Included in the deal is the Seagate Rescue Service, capable of restoring lost data in two weeks if circumstances permit, and sold with end users in mind for whom an IT support infrastructure is either non-existent or off-site. The service has a 90 percent success rate and is available as part of the drive cost for the first three years.
Seagate demonstrated the drive today at the China Public Security Expo. Where better than the home of civil liberty infringement to show off the new drive?
Earlier this year, Seagate announced a new co-venture with SSD manufacturer Micron, which will come as a huge relief after the recent merger announcement between WD and SanDisk.
Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/seagate-goes-8tb-for-surveillance.html
Is Canon Betting Its Future On IoT?
Canon has announced that it is joining the raft of technology companies attempting to take on the Internet of Things (IoT) through what it is calling the ‘Imaging of Things’.
Speaking at the firm’s EXPO 2015 event in Paris on Tuesday, Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai talked up the firm’s global vision for the future as the IoT becomes more pervasive.
“Canon is showing how the world of imaging is expanding rapidly in the age of the IoT,” said Mitarai.
“In the future nearly everything will be connected through smart devices. These rely on built-in cameras or sensors and the data they generate. As a result, Canon predicts that the IoT will largely depend on the ‘Imaging of Things’.”
To take on this future, Mitarai plans to overhaul Canon’s business structure to build a network of smaller Canon companies and thus create an “ecosystem of innovation”.
The CEO said that these companies have been designed to “harness innovation and creative talents from across the regions”, and will include more investment in what Canon does but on a more local level in different regions across the world, as opposed to all of the innovation being created in Tokyo, as it is at the moment.
This will allow “regional independence and international collaboration [to be] put into practice”, Mitarai said.
In this new “network of companies”, Mitarai explained that each regional headquarters will manage local R&D and manufacturing, as well as service and support customised to its market.
In Europe, the smaller Canon companies will focus on printing and network video surveillance, and the firm has already brought in specialists in these business areas such as Océ, Axis and Milestone Systems.
Mitarai said that, along with its global reputation for cameras, this will make Canon the largest printing and network video surveillance company in the world.
On a B2B level, the move is also about helping other firms build new competitive advantages and improve services for their own customers.
“We are changing our own operation model and go to market structure to build more expertise in these areas and connect with our customers,” said Jeppe Frandsen, head of the Production Printing Group at Canon Europe.
“Our customers are changing so we are now looking at a way customers are changing to what their customers want – new ways to do business together.”
Canon’s EXPO 2015 event was also an opportunity for the company to show off many of the latest projects from its R&D centre in Tokyo for the first time in Europe.
These tie in with the firm’s new focus as it launches smaller companies in more regional areas, and include a range of innovative practices such as responding to society’s monitoring needs, 3D printing as part of a partnership with 3D Systems in Europe, and graphic arts via investment in digital print technologies.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/technology-2/is-canon-betting-its-future-on-iot.html
Acer Shifts Focus To IoT
Acer is still churning out PCs, but the Taiwanese vendor is far more bullish about the Internet of Things (IoT), a market the company doesn’t want to miss out on.
Acer held a news conference not for a new consumer product, but to promote an upcoming miniature PC that will be sold to developers.
The PC, called the aBeing One, will arrive in the third quarter, and is aimed at developers working in the IoT area. It’s designed to connect to smart home and wearable products, and act as a hub that can analyze incoming data from the devices.
The PC vendor has spoken to many IoT companies looking for an affordable hardware system they can develop on, said Robert Wang, a general manager with Acer.
“Fast-moving IoT developers keep running into this issue,” he said after Acer’s news conference. “Now they can buy from us.”
It’s a big change for the vendor, given that it once focused on selling consumer notebooks. However, with PC sales sagging and competition rife in the mobile devices area, the company has been shifting toward enterprise products.
That emphasis was apparent at this week’s Computex show in Taipei. Acer notebooks and tablets were still on display, but equal billing was given to itscloud computing business, which is starting to power IoT devices, not only from Acer, but also its clients.
In addition, Acer is hoping to pave the way for more third-party IoT devices. It has partnered with Canonical to install a version of Ubuntu on its aBeing product, so that the hardware can serve Ubuntu developers working on smart connected gadgets.
Will A.I. Create The Next Industrial Revolution?
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Artificial Intelligence will be responsible for the next industrial revolution, experts in the field have claimed, as intelligent computer systems replace certain human-operated jobs.
Four computer science experts talked about how advances in AI could lead to a “hollowing out” of middle-income jobs during a panel debate hosted by ClickSoftware about the future of technology.
“It’s really important that we take AI seriously. It will lead to the fourth industrial revolution and will change the world in ways we cannot predict now,” said AI architect and author George Zarkadakis.
His mention of the “fourth industrial revolution” refers to the computerization of the manufacturing industry.
If the first industrial revolution was the mechanisation of production using water and steam power, followed by the second which introduced mass production with the help of electric power, then the third is what we are currently experiencing: the digital revolution and the use of electronics and IT to further automate production.
The fourth industrial revolution, which is sometimes referred to as Industry 4.0, is the vision of the ‘smart factory’, where cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralized decisions.
These cyber-physical systems communicate and cooperate with each other and humans in real time over the Internet of Things.
Dan O’Hara, professor of cognitive computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, explained that this fourth industrial revolution will not be the same kind of “hollowing out” of jobs that we saw during the last one.
“It [won’t be] manual labour replaced by automation, but it’ll be the hollowing out of middle-income jobs, medium-skilled jobs,” he said.
“The industries that will be affected the most from a replacement with automation are construction, accounts and transport. But the biggest [industry] of all, remembering this is respective to the US, is retail and sales.”
O’Hara added that many large organisations’ biggest expense is people, who already work alongside intelligent computer systems, and this area is most likely to be affected as companies look to reduce costs.
“Anything that’s working on an AI-based system is bound to be very vulnerable to the replacement by AI as it’s easily automated already,” he said.
However, while AI developments in the retail space could lead to the replacement of jobs, it is also rather promising at the same time.
Mark Bishop, professor of cognitive computing at Goldsmiths, highlighted that AI could save businesses money if it becomes smart enough to determine price variants in company spending, for example, scanning through years of an organisation’s invoice database and detecting the cheapest costs and thus saving on outgoings.
While some worry that AI will take over jobs, others have said that they will replace humans altogether.
John Lewis IT chief Paul Coby said earlier this year that the blending of AI and the IoT in the future could signal the end of civilisation as we know it.
Coby explained that the possibilities are already with us in terms of AI and that we ought to think about how “playing with the demons” could be detrimental to our future.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak added to previous comments from Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk with claims that “computers are going to take over from humans”.
Woz made his feelings on AI known during an interview with the Australian Financial Review, and agreed with Hawking and Musk that its potential to surpass humans is worrying.
“Computers are going to take over from humans, no question. Like people including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have predicted, I agree that the future is scary and very bad for people,” he said.
Can Linux Succeed On The Desktop?
Every three years I install Linux and see if it is ready for prime time yet, and every three years I am disappointed. What is so disappointing is not so much that the operating system is bad, it has never been, it is just that who ever designs it refuses to think of the user.
To be clear I will lay out the same rider I have for my other three reviews. I am a Windows user, but that is not out of choice. One of the reasons I keep checking out Linux is the hope that it will have fixed the basic problems in the intervening years. Fortunately for Microsoft it never has.
This time my main computer had a serious outage caused by a dodgy Corsair (which is now a c word) power supply and I have been out of action for the last two weeks. In the mean time I had to run everything on a clapped out Fujitsu notebook which took 20 minutes to download a webpage.
One Ubuntu Linux install later it was behaving like a normal computer. This is where Linux has always been far better than Windows – making rubbish computers behave. I could settle down to work right? Well not really.
This is where Linux has consistently disqualified itself from prime-time every time I have used it. Going back through my reviews, I have been saying the same sort of stuff for years.
Coming from Windows 7, where a user with no learning curve can install and start work it is impossible. Ubuntu can’t. There is a ton of stuff you have to upload before you can get anything that passes for an ordinary service. This uploading is far too tricky for anyone who is used to Windows.
It is not helped by the Ubuntu Software Centre which is supposed to make like easier for you. Say that you need to download a flash player. Adobe has a flash player you can download for Ubuntu. Click on it and Ubuntu asks you if you want to open this file with the Ubuntu Software Center to install it. You would think you would want this right? Thing is is that pressing yes opens the software center but does not download Adobe flash player. The center then says it can’t find the software on your machine.
Here is the problem which I wrote about nearly nine years ago – you can’t download Flash or anything proprietary because that would mean contaminating your machine with something that is not Open Sauce.
Sure Ubuntu will download all those proprietary drivers, but you have to know to ask – an issue which has been around now for so long it is silly. The issue of proprietary drives is only a problem for those who are hard core open saucers and there are not enough numbers of them to keep an operating system in the dark ages for a decade. However, they have managed it.
I downloaded LibreOffice and all those other things needed to get a basic “windows experience” and discovered that all those typefaces you know and love are unavailable. They should have been in the proprietary pack but Ubuntu has a problem installing them. This means that I can’t share documents in any meaningful way with Windows users, because all my formatting is screwed.
LibreOffice is not bad, but it really is not Microsoft Word and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is lying.
I download and configure Thunderbird for mail and for a few good days it actually worked. However yesterday it disappeared from the side bar and I can’t find it anywhere. I am restricted to webmail and I am really hating Microsoft’s outlook experience.
The only thing that is different between this review and the one I wrote three years ago is that there are now games which actually work thanks to Steam. I have not tried this out yet because I am too stressed with the work backlog caused by having to work on Linux without regular software, but there is an element feeling that Linux is at last moving to a point where it can be a little bit useful.
So what are the main problems that Linux refuses to address? Usability, interface and compatibility.
I know Ubuntu is famous for its shit interface, and Gnome is supposed to be better, but both look and feel dated. I also hate Windows 8′s interface which requires you to use all your computing power to navigate through a touch screen tablet screen when you have neither. It should have been an opportunity for Open saucers to trump Windows with a nice interface – it wasn’t.
You would think that all the brains in the Linux community could come up with a simple easy to use interface which lets you have access to all the files you need without much trouble. The problem here is that Linux fans like to tinker they don’t want usability and they don’t have problems with command screens. Ordinary users, particularly more recent generations will not go near a command screen.
Compatibly issues for games has been pretty much resolved, but other key software is missing and Linux operators do not seem keen to get them on board.
I do a lot of layout and graphics work. When you complain about not being able to use Photoshop, Linux fanboys proudly point to GIMP and say that does the same things. You want to grab them down the throat and stuff their heads down the loo and flush. GIMP does less than a tenth of what Photoshop can do and it does it very badly. There is nothing that can do what CS or any real desktop publishers can do available on Linux.
Proprietary software designed for real people using a desktop tends to trump anything open saucy, even if it is producing a technology marvel.
So in all these years, Linux has not attempted to fix any of the problems which have effectively crippled it as a desktop product.
I will look forward to next week when the new PC arrives and I will not need another Ubuntu desktop experience. Who knows maybe they will have sorted it in three years time again.
Salesforce Goes Healthcare
Salesforce Inc, one of the first cloud-computing companies, is turning its focus towards healthcare with new software and services aimed at the largest hospitals.
Salesforce has announced a strategic alliance with Amsterdam-based medical technology company Philips, which it envisions as the first of many partnerships. These companies will announce two new medical applications later in the summer, called Philips eCareCoordinator and Philips eCare Companion.
The software is designed to improve health and cut costs. The apps are intended to be used by physicians to monitor chronically ill patients between doctor visits.
Salesforce said the goal is to make it easier for hospitals to collect and analyze data from medical devices, which patients with chronic conditions often use at home.
“In the United States, care providers are facing increasing demands and decreasing reimbursement,” said Michael Peachey, a senior director of solutions and product marketing at Salesforce.
“We want to improve efficiency for physicians by transmitting patient data in real time.”
Peachey said the Salesforce software meets security and privacy rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA.
In the short term, Peachey said Salesforce intends to develop additional apps with other partners to help doctors and nurses monitor patients from the comfort of their homes.
“It’s an open platform,” he said.
Is Qualcomm In Trouble?
Qualcomm’s activities in China may lead to regulatory penalties for the chip vendor, this time from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over bribery allegations.
The company is currently facing an anti-monopoly probe from Chinese authorities for allegedly overcharging clients. Qualcomm has also said that the SEC may also consider penalizing the company, as part of an anti-corruption investigation.
The SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Office has made a preliminary decision to recommend that the SEC take action against Qualcomm for violating anti-bribery controls, the company said in its second quarter report. The accusations involve Qualcomm offering benefits to “individuals associated with Chinese state-owned companies or agencies,” the report added.
Both the SEC and the U.S. Department of Justice have been probing the company over alleged violations of the nation’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
In cooperation with those official investigations, Qualcomm said it’s found instances of preferential hiring, and giving gifts and other benefits to “several individuals” with China’s state-owned companies. The gifts and benefits amounted to less than US$250,000 in value.
If the SEC takes action against Qualcomm, penalties could include giving up profits, facing injunctions, and other monetary penalties, the company said. Earlier this month, Qualcomm filed a submission with the U.S. regulator, countering any claims of wrongdoing.
Qualcomm is facing the investigations at a time when China is increasingly become a bigger part of its business. The nation is the world’s largest smartphone market, and more Chinese device manufacturers are expanding globally.
Last year, however, Chinese regulators began investigating Qualcomm due to complaints from industry groups. The company was allegedly abusing its market position and charging higher fees for its patent licensing business. In November, Chinese authorities conducted two surprise raids of Qualcomm offices in China for documents.
Chinese regulators could decide to penalize Qualcomm by confiscating financial gains made, and even imposing a fine of 1 to 10 percent on its revenues for the prior year, the company said in its quarterly report.