It’s Friday and lately that means it’s time for the weather to get mean. A new storm system stretches from Houston, Texas, to Syracuse, N.Y. Thunderstorms, some with hail and some with tornadoes, will dump two to three inches of rain over the weekend. Stay in and stay dry and catch up on the fascinating newsbits we missed this week.
Big news from big names. HPE is responding to the COVID-19 business environment by stressing agility and its edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company. A new go-forward Executive Committee will chart the path. Five global function leaders will help guide the committee.
Intel’s new 10th Gen Intel Core vPro processors for mobile and desktop platforms are ready to go. Integrated Wi-Fi 6, more reliable performance, and new manageability technologies for IT and scattered users. Intel’s Project Athena innovation program will deliver improvements over a range of form factors.
Big problems need big systems, and these days that means building exascale systems (as in a billion billion, or 10^18). Lenovo and NVIDIA have teamed up to develop some of the building blocks for these systems. “”From Exascale to Everyscale”” means combining Lenovo’s Neptune Liquid Cooling tech and the latest NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core CPUs and more.
In a process that started last summer, boffins at Google and VMware announce the new Google Cloud VMware Engine. Yep, end-to-end support to migrate and run your VMware environment in Google Cloud. New t-shirts for everybody!
VMware started the acquisition process for Octarine, makers of a security platform for Kubernetes applications. Even bigger teamup is the Next-Gen SOC Alliance with VMware, Splunk, IBM Security, Google Cloud’s Chronicle, Exabeam, and Sumo Logic.
Microsoft also pulled out the checkbook (explain checks to the young’uns) to acquire Metaswitch Networks. The virtualized network software company and telco solutions maker builds on the Redmond Gang’s recent acquisition of Affirmed Networks and its high performance cloud-native communications software.
Speaking of collaboration, Microsoft and Aruba have integrated the Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager with Microsoft endpoint protection platforms.
Telos integrated its security Xacta product into Microsoft’s Azure Government and Azure Government Secret to accelerate risk management and compliance.
Security news. Remember the good old days when coffee shop wireless was your big security concern for mobile employees? Now the kitchen table of every employee is a compute location. To help, Gigamon shipped a new version of its ThreatINSIGHT network detection and response tool (pictured).
Asigra and Priseda pulled the curtain on the new GridObserver (GO) on-demand DR and network management services tool. And disaster recover-as-a-service as well.
Wireless IT and IoT security player 802 Secure just released AIRSHIELD Wireless IT and IoT for executive remote workers. Hope it’s VP proof.
Open source Sudo project sponsor One Identity added security measures and more effective management for privileged access in Sudo 1.9. Better logging, auditing, command approval, and Python plug-in support among the goodies. Not to be confused with the Sudoku your mother does.
Other product news. Unified communications provider BVoIP integrated its 1Stream product with Hudu. Enables all sorts of customer info to display automatically on inbound calls.
Supermicro genned up two new systems optimized for AI, deep learning, and data science. The new 2U system implements the new NVIDIA HGX A100 4 GPU board (formerly codenamed Redstone) and a new 4U system is based on the new NVIDIA HGX A100 8 GPU board (formerly codenamed Delta), delivering 5 PetaFLOPS of AI performance.
Graphics folks get touchy about monitor color. They should gripe less when they get a look at the new Acer ConceptD CM2241W (pictured). The 1920 x 1200 24-inch monitor provides color accuracy covering 99% of the Adobe RGB color gamut. Available now.
VoIP pioneer Vonage upgraded its Vonage Contact Center to seamlessly integrate with ServiceNow. Agents no longer need to toggle between applications among other advancements.
According to Cradlepoint, its new E3000 Series is the industry’s first 5G-Optimized, all-in-one wireless edge router for enterprise branch deployments.
Also from Cradlepoint: You can now order its wireless edge solutions and have them fulfilled and billed directly from AT&T.
Lenovo has introduced Virtual Rounding, a telehealth solution that lets doctors meet with patients virtually from a safe social distance at their office.
Blancco and Carbon Neutral Technology jointly developed a calculator to determine both carbon credit and cash values for end-of-first-life IT equipment. Hello to the Data Erasure Carbon Credits Calculator.
Wrangle those remote workers a little more easily with the new LogMeIn Remote Deployment for GoToMyPC. Remotely deploy, install, and configure across any number of computers simultaneously. Also new from LogMeIn: Rescue Live Guide, which provides instant and secure co-browsing capabilities for customer service agents.
The new ERP1 from EnGenius Technologies is a universal wireless repeater with speeds up to 1.3 Gbps that comes in a low-profile wall-plug. On the shelf now.
Managed cloud company 2nd Watch released its Cloud Disaster Recovery service. Offers a low-cost disaster recovery failover environment. Uses CloudEndure Disaster Recover from AWS.
Non-product vendor news. Order new business cards for Christian Alvarez (pictured), newly promoted to head of worldwide channels at Nutanix.
There’s a red carpet at NetApp for new President Cesar Cernuda.
Security player Illusive Networks welcomes Nicole Bucala as VP of business development.
CompTIA reframed its Channel Advisory Board into the new Channel Development Advisory Council, now one of seven CompTIA advisory councils. Jason Bystrak of D&H and Robert McFarlane of Sirius Computer Solutions are co-chairs. Juan Fernandez of ImageNet Consulting is vice chair. 19 other top executives from all corners of the IT industry are involved too.
Speaking of D&H, its catalog now includes Vade Secure and its predictive email defense software.
SYNNEX signed up to offer Bitdefender’s Cloud Security for MSPs.
Major Tom launched an eCommerce site that offers bite-sized marketing services. IT services from partners like Eleven Eleven Talent, Ook, and Bellrock Benchmarking are also on tap.
This week’s stats ticker:
The pandemic and stay-at-home orders are showing up in spending reports now. “”Gartner Market Databook, April 2020 Update“” gives us a good look at the actual numbers. Worldwide expected IT spending is down 8% from 2019 to $3.4 trillion. Emergency “”cost optimization”” plans from clients mean softening demand. Data center systems outlays will be down around 9.7%, enterprise software will drop 6.9%, devices will slump 15.5%, IT services will drop 7.7%, and communications services will dip moderately by 4.5%. Recovery through 2020 will be slow, especially in hard-hit verticals like entertainment, air transport, and heavy industry.
Kaseya’s 2020 MSP Benchmark Survey asked 1,300 MSP folks in more than 50 countries about pricing and service delivery trends. Number one concern? Security. While the survey was finalized before the coronavirus shutdown, security remains a top concern. MSP system security has become more critical since they have RMM access to multiple customers. 37% worry that they’re more prone to cybercrime now than before. 95% report customers have turned to them for help on cybersecurity plans and best practices. And, oh yes, the need for compliance services keeps growing.
Sophos released The State of Ransomware 2020 and found that paying cybercriminals to restore data lost during a ransomware attack almost doubles the total cost of recovery. Over 5,000 IT decision makers in 26 countries took part. Paying the ransom made little different in the recovery burden. Often, several encryption keys are used, and it’s a complex and time-consuming recovery process. More than half (56%) of IT managers reported they were able to recover data from backups without paying the ransom. The public sector seems to have particularly bad success. 13% of public sector victims were never able to restore their encrypted data, compared to 6% overall.
Monkey heist. A monkey got trapped in an ATM kiosk lobby in New Delhi and did what monkeys do: jumped around and tore stuff up. The video even shows the little fellow taking a nap.
But it also shows the monkey pulling the front panel off the ATM machine. Then it used the open panel like a trampoline to bounce around a bit.
Finally, the monkey attacked the door in a way that opened it, and he escaped. Luckily, he didn’t bring a bag with him, so all the loot was left behind.
