Don’t feel bad your March Madness bracket died on the second day of round one, because everybody’s bracket joined yours in the trash can. The record for #16 teams versus #1 teams is 2-150. To add insult to injury, Fairleigh Dickinson was the shortest team in the tournament, and Purdue had the tallest player, Zach Edy, at 7’4″ (or 2.24 meters).
News from the continuing AI boom. Microsoft jumped into the artificial narrow intelligence races with GPT-4 in Azure OpenAI Service. This follows the announcement that the new Bing and Microsoft 365 Copilot already had GPT-4 added.
For the visual rather than verbal, Bing Image Creator (pictured), powered by an advanced version of the DALL-E model from OpenAI, will create an image you describe. Microsoft promises the AI teams are guided by Responsible AI principles.
Just announced, Adobe Firefly is a family of new creative generative AI, starting with images and text effects. For the text content-oriented, Adobe announced the Firefly-based Express for Enterprises to help create high-quality and colorful on-brand content, including social posts.
The new generation of smart software deserves new smart hardware, at least according to NVIDIA, hence new partnerships with Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and a range of other leading players. Yes, the first NVIDFIA DGX AI supercomputer was the engine behind ChatGPT.
Segue alert: Supermicro announced a new AI development platform, the SYS-751GE-TNRT-NV1 for developing and running AI-based software. The liquid-cooled system holds four NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs.
ServiceNow’s Now Platform Utah release boasts plenty of new features, not the least of which is AI-powered process mining with RPA capabilities.
The new 8×8 Intelligent Customer Assistant and 8×8 Supervisor Workspace for 8×8 Contact Center includes new AI-driven enhancements to improve customer experience.
Security news. Check Point Software introduced Infinity Global Services to expand Check Point’s end-to-end services across thirty areas to improve cyber resilience.
Beyond Identity formally released Zero Trust Authentication, along with the launch of the Worldwide Zero Trust Leadership series of events that will run through 2023.
KnowBe4 now offers a free Phishing Security Resource Kit to help fight the most common social engineering wedge that pries open companies in over 90% of successful data breaches and hacks.
CrowdStrike adds defense against three attack vectors with the new CrowdStrike Falcon Identity Protection.
IoT news. Aruba and reelyActive teamed up on a new open source data converter for Microsoft Azure (pictured, and thoroughly diagrammed) that enables IoT device support without custom engineering.
Qualcomm and Arrow Electronics teamed up to establish Edge Labs, an Arrow Center of Excellence to help customers speed development of intelligent IoT devices using Qualcomm products.
New technologies always need new engineers, techs, and developers, so the LoRa Alliance launched the LoRaWAN Accredited Professional Program.
Smarter locks are on the way for self-storage facilities. Onity, a Carrier company, and MachineQ, a Comcast company, collaborated to introduce the cloud-based Passport locking Solution.
Parks Associates research found that video devices are the leading edge of the smart home. Video doorbells, smart cameras, and straight security cameras all have strong market potential, and bundling with other devices will increase appeal.
Actility and Nova Labs (formerly Helium Systems) collabed to allow the Helium Roaming Console to travel any public LoRaWAN with the help of Actility’s ThingPark Exchange, the standard LoRaWAN peering hub.
UnaBiz, with the help of Senet, will interconnect LoRaWAN and Sigfox 0G to support massive IoT deployments easier.
Zebra has a new line of environmental sensors for manufacturers, wholesalers, transportation, and logistics operators in the food, pharmaceutical, and healthcare industries.
Other product news. Hornetsecurity takes another step for data protection with the launch of VM Backup v9 with immutable cloud storage. Tell ransomware criminals to pound sand.
An expanding Internet and increased cloud usage say it’s time to rev up routing. Arista Networks pulled the curtain on the Arista WAN Routing System, with goodies including the CloudVision Pathfinder Service, all based on Arista’s EOS.
Need bright, high-quality images? Of course. Need them for a conference room? Check out the new Epson PowerLite LS70U, L77OU, and L775U projectors with up to 7,000 lumens.
Distributed systems, and those on the edge, need power backup, of course. The new Vertiv Liebert PS15 Lithium-Ion TAA UPS (pictured) units have a single-phase system compliant with the Trade Agreement Acts.
The new GROW with SAP is a cloud ERP for midsize customers that provides the same best practices as the software for industry leaders.
Since we’re just coming to grips with Wi-Fi 6, it’s time for Wi-Fi 7, as supported by the new NETGEAR Nighthawk RS700 Router. Since everyone in every home in America has a dozen or two wireless devices in their pockets, it’s about time.
Dynabook (nee Toshiba PC Company) powered up its Portege X40L-K ultralight and two Tecra laptops to include the new hybrid-architecture 13th Gen Intel Core P-Series 28W processors. And Windows 11 Pro.
Non-product vendor news. Throw out the old business cards for James Griffin now that he’s moved up to CEO of Redstor from his chief product officer position.
Time for the double-wide red carpet leading to the door at Ivanti, with banners for VP Partner Sales, Americas, Steve Marconi and VP Strategic Alliances Dean Beaver.
The Welcome Wagon met Robert Gibbons (pictured) at NinjaOne as he joined to become the new CTO.
If you see Michael Guglielmi looking for the break room at Code42, help out the new vice president of channel sales and consulting partners, OK?
HPE will acquire OpsRamp, an IT operations management company, to move into that $39 billion market.
To help its channel partners, Ingram Micro is the first global AWS Distributor to achieve Amazon Web Services Migration Competency.
TD SYNNEX launched its new partner directory to enable and encourage peer-to-peer collaboration and let members build their own searchable profile.
Veeam signed the papers to partner with Carahsoft Technology as its preferred public sector distributor.
Eaton upped its sustainable practices profile by joining the Sustainable Procurement Pledge’s League of Champions program. Sounds like League of Champions needs a comic book series.
This week’s stats ticker:
Here’s news we could all predict: spending on cybersecurity remained strong in Q4 2022, but now we have numbers, thanks to Canalys’ Cybersecurity Analysis. The market grew 14.5% to $19.6 billion, and North America accounted for 52% of total spend, followed by EMEA, APAC, and Latin America. The U.S. total was $10.2 billion, up more than the total market at a 16.3% increase. Palo Alto Networks retained their cybersecurity vendor top position as Fortinet edged ahead of Cisco, followed by Check Point in fourth place. Cybersecurity platforms, including subscriptions, landed vendors new customers and expanded existing accounts through add-ons.
According to the State of Cybersecurity for Mid-Sized Businesses in 2023 from Huntress, almost half of businesses will budget more for cybersecurity this year, nearly a quarter have suffered, maybe, a cyberattack in the past 12 months, and nearly two-thirds do NOT have a dedicated cybersecurity expert in house. Over a quarter still don’t have cyber insurance, and a large portion didn’t deploy threat monitoring, EDR, vulnerability scanning, or, shudder, patch management. No surprise that cybersecurity shortcomings are blocking companies from purchasing cyber insurance, because carriers now demand clients protect themselves better.
The first-ever Cybersecurity Readiness Index from Cisco won’t make CISO and techs sleep better, since it found only 15% of companies are really ready to defend themselves against a range of cybersecurity threats. Compare that to the 82% of respondents who expect a cybersecurity incident to disrupt operations in the next 12-24 months. 6,700 private sector cybersecurity leaders across 27 markets responded, and 60% said they had an incident in the last 12 months which cost 41% of those at least a half-million bucks.
The god-given finger. We’ve all given the finger (you know what we mean) to deserving jerks, but one of those deserving jerks took the finger launcher to court near Montreal. Yes, to court, a real one, not some Canadian “Judge Judy” clone. Real court.
Judge Dennis Galiatsatos released a 26-page decision declaring, “To be abundantly clear, it is not a crime to give someone the finger. Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian.” If it’s good enough for the Canadian legal system, it’s good enough for the world.
Flip away. They deserve it.
