If you’re a sports fan, you’ve got to love the way the summer season rolls into fall this year. The NBA Playoffs run as late as July 22 and then baseball continues over the start of the football season. The first pro game is August 5, but that’s really the first preseason game, and is more a televised audition for players. Lucky for us, these pro newstips already made the team, so put ’em in, coach.
News from the name brands. HPE will acquire cloud data management and protection player Zerto for $374 million and make it available as a service to expand the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform.
HP’s new Pavilion Aero is its lightest consumer laptop ever, weighing in at just under 1 kilogram (or 2.2 pounds American). The Arero comes in four colors, will run Windows 11, includes Wi-Fi 6, and provides over 10 hours of battery life. When stationary, pair it with the new HP M24fwa FHD or HP M27fwa FHD monitors (24 and 27 inches) with integrated dual speakers.
Remote/hybrid work options mean we’ll be talking to our webcams on the regular, so it’s time to upgrade. Smile for the new Dell UltraSharp Webcam (pictured), a 4K video camera with needle-sharp images and a variety of tools to improve image lighting control.
On the high-performance computing front, Dell released Omnia open source software to speed and simplify deployment and management of AI and other compute-intensive workloads. But wait, there’s more! HPC on demand services now offer pay-as-you-go resources, and Dell EMC PowerEdge servers add new NVIDIA accelerator options.
Google Cloud and Ericsson partnered to develop 5G and edge-to-cloud solutions to help communications service providers. Pilots in Italy are underway.
Security news. SonicWall rolls out three new high-performance firewalls (samples pictured). Check the NSa 4700, NSa 6700 or NSsp 13700 for enhanced throughput, better protection against cyberattacks, and higher port densities.
The new SD-WAN Router 3.1 from Untangle, which aims at small to medium companies, increases network security with new Threat Prevention functionality and more.
Welcome to the new PSA integrations in LastPass MSP, which link the password management system to ConnectWise Manage and Datto’s Autotask PSA.
Check Point revved up its software to R81.10 for its Quantum Maestro 175 and Quantum Smart-1 Security Management appliances. Faster, more automated, scalable, and higher level of threat prevention for the data center.
Insight launched Managed Security for Compliance to manage Microsoft 365 security, including implementation, update management, audit requirements, and end-user security.
Other product news. Epson has seven new Pro Series compact laser projectors for large venue situations, ranging from 6,000 to 10,000 lumens for bright displays. All include a 3-chip 3LCD and WUXGA resolution with 4K Enhancement Technology.
Remote and hybrid workers need to print, so Lexmark enhanced its Cloud Print Management for direct users and Cloud Fleet Management for its partners. Streamline costs and ease management overhead.
Supermicro boosts performance for HPC and AI on a wide range of servers with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable or 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors by integrating the new NVIDIA A100 PCIe 80GB GPU. Load up to ten single- or double-wide GPUs with some models.
Public safety agencies need network love, too. Cradlepoint launched FirstConnect 2.0, which offers grant assistance, a recycling program, and a charity contribution program.
Non-product vendor news. Shareholders approved the merger of SYNNEX and Tech Data. The deal should close in the second half of calendar year 2021, subject to regulatory approvals.
A new partnership will integrate the Kaspersky Scan Engine (pictured, kind of) with the ownCloud collaboration platform, thanks to the open-standard ICAP protocol.
Global connectivity and network provider Senet was the choice of ADTRAN to deliver LoRaWAN network services for IoT applications for enterprise and campus environments via ADTRAN’s IoT App and micro-sized 7310-08 8-channel LoRaWAN IoT gateway.
Jazzware teamed with Ooma to offer new unified communications and telephony options to the hospitality industry.
To better serve media companies, Seagate and axle ai teamed up their respective storage and search and management products to spiff up the Seagate Lyve edge-to-cloud mass storage platform.
Cloud-based monitoring platform maker LogicMonitor acquired Dexda for its machine learning predicted fault prowess.
Thanks to a new wholesale agreement, Granite Telecommunications will deliver local telephone service utilizing Cox Business’s network of more than 6.5 million customers in 18 states.
Agiloft’s Contract Management Suite is now available through AWS Marketplace.
This week’s stats ticker:
The latest 2021 IT Operations Report from Kaseya surveyed nearly 1,000 IT pros worldwide this spring about their priorities and challenges. No surprise, the top three priorities are improved IT security, cloud migration, and automation to increase IT productivity. The three top challenges will be painfully familiar: cybersecurity and data protection, lack of resources to meet IT demands, and legacy systems dragging down growth and innovation. 61% say improved security measures remain their dominant priority, and the top investment target for 2022. 53% plan to budget for ransomware protection and other email security tools, while 33% tag ransomware protection as their top priority. Good that 82% understand SaaS data from Microsoft 365 and more must be backed up, but bad that 60% believe the SaaS providers are responsible for data protection. Rarely true, so unless it’s in your contract, scramble now to get protected from the results of cyberattacks or user/admin errors.
Audio-visual pros globally saw a 17% drop in their revenue in 2020, says the new 2021 AV Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis from AVIXA. Revenue will climb from 2020’s $219 billion to $232 billion in 2021 and grow to $329 billion in 2026 for a 7.2% CAGR. While the pandemic and lockdown hurt AV pros in every country, China recovered significantly in the first half of 2020. The Americas saw a market drop of 16.7% despite a somewhat strong first quarter in 2020. Revenues should be up to $83.6 billion in 2021 from 2020’s $77.6 billion. Live event and performance/entertainment products were most impacted in 2020 with a combined annual decline of 49.7%. This area will have the slowest recovery to pre-pandemic levels but is expected to set new growth records over the next couple of years.
BetterCloud surveyed more than 500 IT and security pros for the Data Security Report 2021: Top Risks in File Security. Nearly half say their top security concern is the lack of visibility into SaaS data, so they don’t know where their data lives. That said, more than 70% said their biggest data loss risk remains well-meaning but negligent users, which is why only 35% of respondents trust end users to responsibly share and store company data. File security violations spiked 134% and are rampant throughout their organizations. Maybe that’s because less than half say they invest enough in SaaS file security. 55% of respondents plan to use SaaS management platforms within the next 12 months.
Greatly exaggerated. Sure, we’ve heard of people who’ve been greatly surprised to be declared dead by their city or county government. Ha, ha, such a bureaucratic snafu. So when that happened to Chandrashekhar Desai, a teacher in Thane, outside Mumbai, it perhaps made him laugh.
A municipal bureaucrat called Desai to inform him he was, officially, dead. No, I’m alive and talking to you on the phone, he replied. Nope, Desai was told, you’re dead, and worse, you must come to the office and pick up your own death certificate.
Surprise, the bureaucrat blamed another bureaucratic agency. At least Desai is still alive and well, despite the bumbling bureaucracy he must continue to live under.
Photo: The Indian Express
