Xpertfeed

Enterprise to act as vanguard for proximity computing Summary: After chasing consumer-led computing for the past few years, enterprises are due to be the opening front in the next change to computing — an experience that depends on where you are, and which device you are using. At the start of this week everything was in a nice, settled place: most peripherals still needed a wire for best performance, saving to the cloud was the state of the art for passing documents between devices, desktop computers never took phone calls on a regular basis, and 2-in-1 convertibles were still a solution looking for a problem. But pairing the announcements out of Apple's WWDC conference, with those emanating from Computex in Taiwan this week, presents a computing future that suddenly cares a lot more about where devices are, and how close those devices are. The biggest switch though, is that once again, enterprises and business users wil...

Self-learning Humanoid Amelia poses existential threat to BPOs Summary:  IPsoft's self-learning computer software algorithm Amelia could be ruinous for the Business Process Outsourcing industry but the company says that it wants to partner with them instead The world of self-learning Bots has finally arrived with IPsoft's Amelia Somewhere up there, both science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick are chuckling upon reading that Robotic engineers, or 'Bots' are finally beginning to threaten the human order. Those who may not be quite so tickled are companies in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) arena who may face extinction if the world of Bots takes over the world of process—stuff like back office accounting and finance to tech support voice calls—which has been their meat and potatoes so far. India has been the heavyweight champ in this area with the Philippines also asserting its dominance. In the same year that audie...

Microsoft makes Azure ExpressRoute,a hybrid-cloud networking technology available Summary:  Microsoft has made its Azure ExpressRoute private-networking service available to enterprise users who want a more secure way to connect their datacenters to Microsoft's cloud. Microsoft is making generally available to enterprise users as of May 12 its  Azure ExpressRoute networking technology . Microsoft is playing up ExpressRoute as a key piece of its hybrid cloud strategy. Officials announced the general availability of ExpressRoute during the kick-off keynote at TechEd 2014 in Houston on May 12. ExpressRoute, codenamed "Golden Gate,"  offers users private and dedicated network connections that don't use the Internet. Microsoft is delivering ExpressRoute via partnerships with telecommunications providers like AT&T, Verizon, BT, Level 3, Equinix, Telecity and  also storage-as-a-service provider Zadara. By circumventing the Internet and making connecti...

Cloud adoption among Indian SMBs to soar Summary: Number of small and midsize businesses heading toward cloud services is expected to climb 20 percent between 2012 and 2016, as the workforce drops in age and more Indian companies embrace technology. More small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in India are heading toward cloud services as the workforce drops in age and companies increasingly turn to technology. According to a report by EY and Assocham, the number of Indian SMBs adopting cloud computing is expected to climb at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20 percent between 2012 and 2016, reported The Times of India . Smaller enterprises in the country were beginning to embrace technology as a business driver, but adoption had remained low compared to other nations with larger SMBs.   The report noted: "SMBs will play a leading role in the adoption of social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) in India, giv...

Enterprise cloud spending to hit $235B by 2017: IHS Summary: Expenditure cloud architecture and services will jump by 35 percent from the US$174 billion expected for this year, according to IHS. Architecture and services by 2017 — a 35 percent gain from the US$174 billion projected to be spent this year.  “Enterprises today are trying to create faster, more efficient I.T. environments to ensure more responsive, agile and successful businesses,” said Jagdish Rebello, senior director for information technology at IHS. "In these cloud-based settings, enterprises also want to integrate the deep analytical power of big data, which will give them competitive advantages through insights about present and prospective customers." This year alone, cloud spending is pegged to rise 20 percent from US$145 billion last year, as shown in the attached figure. (source: IHS) Enterprises are simultaneously augmenting their on-site services and capabilities with the...

Microsoft takes control of Nokia's phone business and acquires 25,000 new employees Summary: It's official as of today, April 25: Nokia's Devices and Services business is now owned by Microsoft. Microsoft Mobile Oy Microsoft Mobile Oy is now the subsidiary of Microsoft responsible for Lumia, Asha and Android-based Nokia X phones, and other unspecified devices. The new name and status is the culmination of Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's handset business, which cost Redmond $5 billion (plus another $2 billion for a 10-year associated patent-licensing agreement). Microsoft Mobile Oy is now part of the Microsoft Devices Group headed by Executive Vice President Stephen Elop. The Mobile Devices Group is now responsible for Lumia smartphones and tablets, Nokia mobile phones, Xbox hardware, Surface, Perceptive Pixel (PPI) products, and accessories. Under the patent piece of the deal, Microsoft acquired 8,500 design patents covering phone manuf...

Amazon AppStream now available for all developers, including Mac Summary: AppStream, Amazon's streaming application is now open to all developers of applications and games, the company said on Thursday. This will allow all developers, including those working on OS X , to build and run streaming applications through Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon AppStream allows developers to stream resource-intensive applications and games from the cloud. The service was first launched in November last year. The previews were not available to Mac users at the time, a restriction that the company has now lifted. The most significant change from today's announcement is the introduction of the g2 instance type Elastic Block Storage (EBS). AppStream applications now run in a Windows 2008 R2 environment on an Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance and can make use of native Windows APIs and AWS resources such as relational and NoSQL (Amazon...

Heartbleed: Serious OpenSSL zero day vulnerability revealed Heartbleed OpenSSL zero-day vulnerability. Summary: New security holes are always showing up. The latest one, the so-called Heartbleed Bug in the OpenSSL cryptographic library, is an especially bad one.Lets hope every company would try to increase their security measures While Heartbleed only affects OpenSSL's 1.0.1 and the 1.0.2-beta release , 1.01 is already broadly deployed. Since Secure-Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) are at the heart of Internet security, this security hole is serious. The flaw can potentially be used to reveal not just the contents of a secured-message, such as a credit-card transaction over HTTPS, but the primary and secondary SSL keys themselves. This data could then, in theory, be used as a skeleton keys to bypass secure serve...

Microsoft releases a preview build of its mysterious 'Project N' Summary: Microsoft's 'Project N,' now officially christened '.Net Native' -- a new compiler for building faster Windows Store apps -- is available now as a developer preview. Microsoft has released a first developer preview build of .Net Native , the technology formerly known by its codename "Project N." .Net Native allows Windows Store/Metro-Style apps to start up to 60 percent faster and use 15 percent to 20 percent less memory when compiled with .Net Native, according to Microsoft officials. In short, NET Native compiles C# to native machine code that performs like C++. "Our compiler in the cloud compiles the app using .Net Native in the Store, creating a self-contained app package that’s customized to the device where the app will be installed," explained officials in an April 2 blog post. Microsoft officials showed off a brief sneak peek ...

Microsoft Office for iPad sets the gold standard for tablet productivity Summary: It took four years, but Microsoft has finally released full-featured Office apps for the iPad. As expected, the new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps are free to install but require an Office 365 subscription to unlock the full set of features. Here's what you can expect. Microsoft today released native iPad apps for its flagship Office programs—Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The three new apps join the existing iOS apps from the Office family: OneNote, Lync, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and an OWA app for Exchange-based email. Gallery: A closer look at Microsoft Office for the iPad After four years’ worth of speculation and anticipation, today’s releases are a welcome arrival for longtime Office users who’ve had to deal with incompatibilities and unsatisfying alternatives every time they picked up an iPad. Make no mistake about it: These th...