The event was opened and praised by Minister of State for the Department of Enterprise Sean Sherlock TD, who reaffirmed the Government's commitment to the technology sector through its Horizon 2020 initiative and investment programmes.

James Brown, business development lead, Amazon UK and Ireland, described how the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform was making hyper-scale computing and massively parallel processing available to all types of organisations. He gave the example of a molecular analysis job that would have required dedicated infrastructure costing some $20 million and taking time estimated in years that the AWS platform was able to accomplish in three hours at a cost of less than $5,000 per hour.

Brown said that such developments were removing barriers to innovation for business. "Cost of failure is one of the biggest barriers to innovation-we can reduce that risk to almost zero."

He also highlighted the resilience of the new infrastructure through the practices of one of AWS's customers, Netflix. Brown said that Netflix uses a tool called Chaos Monkey to randomly disable servers, switches and other virtual infrastructure to ensure that resilience measures and fail-over orchestration is working correctly. This aggressive practice, said Brown, allows the company to ensure that it maintains the highest standards of service to its users.

Rik Ferguson, global vice president of research, Trend Micro, characterised the change in enterprise security strategies by saying that what was now needed was not bigger castles but better dungeons.

By this Ferguson meant that the old focus on the perimeter is now insufficient and organisations need to ensure that if an attacker does penetrate defences that not only is it difficult to move around within the organisation, but that the information they seek is better protected, difficult to access and most importantly, difficult to exfiltrate.

Ferguson said that a Big Data approach to security, combining everything from personnel records to video monitoring and behavioural analysis would allow companies to make the correlations between what might at first seem innocuous, unrelated events, but that in a wider context may reveal an orchestrated attack.

"What can appear benign in isolation, in context, can be the pattern of an attack."
Looking farther forward, Brian O'Farrell, sales manager, SMB division, Google, cited Gartner research indicating that in 2013 mobile phones will become the most common way to access the Internet. But despite the near ubiquity of smart phones and other supporting technologies, O'Farrell predicted that "a big shift in tech will be making full use of the technologies available to us".

He elaborated by pointing out that there are very few companies have yet devised a strategy to leverage multi-screening-the now common phenomenon where people use a smart phone or tablet while watching television, interacting with others in the experience through social media.

Delving further into the realms of Big Data, Nigel Williams, vice president, field marketing and business development, OpenText, made the bold assertion that "structured information is done-unstructured is the future".

"Every business is an information business," argued Williams. "People are very focused on the information. There are two worlds of information, and they are not created equal-the structured and the unstructured. The latter is where the value is."

When asked if the tools to derive value from this unstructured data were up to the task, Williams was positive and optimistic.

"Yes, the tools are there, but the platform isn't. The industry needs to work harder to ensure the platforms to accommodate the data and the tools are made available," said Williams.

However, in light of Ferguson's assertions about making it more difficult for attackers inside an organisation, Brendan Moran, data scientist, EMC, said that currently, there is little provision for security in big data architecture.

"Security is absolutely zero in the big data space," said Moran.

Andrew O'Shaughnessy, CEO, Newsweaver, presented on social media in enterprise and highlighted the ability of social media to engage employees. He cited research by Towers Watson that said companies that are highly effective at employee engagement are 2.5 times more likely to outperform peers who are ineffective in this area.

O'Shaughnessy said that a culture of social communication and exchange needs to be led from the top and said that the most successful CEOs are the ones that are most social. He supported this with statistics which said that in 2012, among the world's top 50 performing companies, 66% of the CEOs had social media accounts.

Social media in enterprise can bring back that feeling for a company, irrespective of size, of everyone being in room talking, said O'Shaughnessy.

"We are overwhelmed with the support and attendance at this year's Technology Gathering event," said Denis Collins, chairman, it@cork. "We endeavour to create a platform between industry, government, public sector, and academia through cooperative collaboration and innovation. We strive to be innovative when hosting such technology-centric events and to be leaders in showcasing upcoming industry trends and knowledge".

TechCentral Reporters

At a gala dinner in the Ballsbridge Hotel, Dublin, hosted by journalist and broadcaster Matt Cooper, the ICT Excellence Awards honoured the best and brightest in Ireland's ICT industry.

The ICT Company of the Year, from a shortlist of Lincor Solutions, Integrity Solutions, Espion, TERMINALFOUR and Arkphire, was taken by Espion which has shown strong growth and leadership in the IT security market.

ICT Person of the Year was awarded to Frank Salmon of CMS Distribution, recognising his achievements in growing a major distribution business over 25 years in Ireland and the UK.

IT Professional of the Year, which is open to teams and individuals, was won by FBD and Version1. The project team comprised 14 different work streams across business and technical functions on the FBD "SmartDriver" initiative.

A particular highlight of the evening was the award for Young IT Person of the Year, which was won by the members of Bardahl Racing, a team formed to compete in the Irish Computer Society F1 in Schools Technology Challenge. The award was received by team members Joseph Moran and Christopher Lynch, along with their teacher Triona Brosnan of St David's Secondary School. 

The other winners were:

• IT Project of the Year-Public Sector: DataEdge and the Irish Aviation Authority
• IT Project of the Year-Private Sector: Arkphire for Easytrip
• IT Project of the Year-SME: Savenet Solutions
• Mobile Technology Project of the Year: Púca
• Web Development Company of the Year: Strata3
• Technology Exporter of the Year: Fleetmatics Group Plc 
• Best use of Technology in Education and Training: Camara Education
• Best Place to work in IT: Novosco
• Data Centre of the Year: Microsoft
• Specialist Distributor of the Year: Commtech Distribution
• Distributor of the Year: Wescoast
• Start-Up Company: Agile Networks 
• Vertical Market Reseller of the Year: Unity Technology Solutions
• Marketing Excellence Award: Sage Ireland
• Managed Service Company of the Year: Ergo

 

Dell reported another quarter of declining profits and revenue Thursday as CEO Michael Dell continues his fight to take the company private.??

Dell's profit for the quarter, ended 3 May, was $130 million, down 79% from $635 million a year earlier. Revenue declined 2% to $14.07 billion.

??Dell's PC division was particularly hard hit. Sales for the quarter were down 9% to $8.9 billion, Dell said, and the group's operating profit skidded 65% lower to $224 million. Laptop sales were hit especially hard.??

Part of the problem is that Windows 8 has failed to drive PC sales. "Windows 8 has been, from our standpoint, not necessarily the catalyst to drive accelerated growth that we thought it would be," CFO Brian Gladden said on a conference call to discuss the results.

??He expects PC demand to continue declining over the next few quarters, he said. ??The battle to take Dell private has also weighed on its results. The company incurred $90 million in expenses last quarter related to that effort, Gladden said.??

Dell's enterprise business showed mixed performance. Sales of servers and network gear were up 14% but storage was down 10%. Dell's services division reported a 2% increase in revenue.??Dell is trying hard to build an enterprise software business, which it hopes will eventually generate higher profits than its PC division. The software group reported an operating loss for the quarter, however, as Dell invested in new sales and R&D staff.

??Dell's earnings for the quarter on a pro forma basis, which excludes one-time items, were $0.21 a share, well off the analyst forecast of $0.35 a share, according to Thomson Reuters. The revenue figure was better than expected, however; analysts had forecast $13.5 billion.??

In a statement, Gladden said Dell's profits were affected by steps it took to improve its competitiveness. "We'll also continue to make important investments to support our strategy and drive long-term profitability," he said.??

Like last quarter, Michael Dell was absent from the earnings call, and a Dell spokesman said the other executives would not take questions about Dell going private.

??Michael Dell announced in February that he planned to take the company private in a deal with Silver Lake Partners valued at $24.4 billion. The company founder has said he wants some breathing room to focus on long term investments without the constant scrutiny from Wall Street.??

The plan has run into serious opposition from big shareholders, who think the company is worth more than Michael Dell and his partners have offered to pay.??

Shareholders may end up being asked to vote on the matter this summer. If a majority of shares are voted in favor of Michael Dell's plan to take the company private, Dell's biggest outside investor, Southeastern Asset Management, has indicated it might go to court to fight for a higher price.

IDG News Service

Dell has said for the last year or so that it plans to build a public cloud based on the open source cloud platform OpenStack, a project the company is an official member of. But, recent moves by the company could be part of a broader shakeup of the company's cloud plans, including for its OpenStack-powered public cloud.

Just this month, Dell bought Enstratius, a company that specialises in managing resources across multiple cloud platforms. Dell has also recently partnered with OnApp, which makes a platform for companies to launch their own public cloud services. Combined with a potential buyout to take the company private, some initiatives within the company may be in flux. Adding to the uncertainty, some members of the team working on an initiative to build a public cloud based on OpenStack have recently left the company.

A Dell spokesperson said company would have additional information about its cloud strategy in the coming weeks. "Dell is currently refining its cloud strategy in light of (the) recent acquisition of Enstratius," he said.

Dell's plans for an OpenStack-powered public cloud have experienced fits and starts. There have been reports that Dell has been testing it in beta, but the recent departure of several employees working on the project have some believing that the project is in jeopardy.

A Dell cloud official said earlier this year though that it was waiting for the OpenStack project to mature and that its public cloud may not be ready until at least the end of 2013. If Dell does decide to follow through with its plans for an OpenStack-powered public cloud, it would join HP and Rackspace as being brand-name tech companies with OpenStack public clouds.

Dell has been working on the OpenStack project for about the past two years, and has focused much of its efforts on creating a way for customers to launch private clouds on their own premises, using a combination of Dell servers, along with an OpenStack software distribution from Ubuntu, and Dell management software named Crowbar for implementing the service. There is no indication Dell is cutting back its plans to offer OpenStack private cloud solutions. Dell also remains an active member of the OpenStack project, including one of its workers sitting on the OpenStack Foundation's board of directors.

Dell already has an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) public cloud offering, based on VMware vCloud, which is a multi-tenant cloud hosting options housed Dell data centres. The OpenStack-powered public cloud that has been in development was seen as a complementary offering to the company's VMware cloud.

Mark Levitt, an analyst with Strategy Analytics, says given the pending discussion about the company's potential buyout and plans to go private, many initiatives within the company may be "in a holding pattern." Some aspects of Dell's strategy have been successful, such as the Dell Boomi cloud, which focuses on integrations between private and cloud-based resources, but any new initiatives are likely being examined very carefully. Given that OpenStack is still a developing technology, it wouldn't be surprising for Dell to take a more conservative approach compared to an aggressive one on that front, he says.

Krishnan Subramanian, an analyst at Rishidot Research who tracks the OpenStack market, says if Dell is mixing up its cloud plans, and perhaps even dropping plans to build an OpenStack-powered public cloud and he has heard rumours to that effect then it would be more of a commentary on Dell's strategy, rather than a black eye for OpenStack. "This has everything to do with Dell's internal problems, than the platform" he says.

IDG News Service

China has also warned the EU against any protectionist or restrictive measures.

The investigation will focus on China's alleged dumping and subsidising of telecommunications-related products, EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Cucht said. No companies were specified, but the commission had reportedly determined last year that both Huawei and ZTE received preferential financing from the Chinese government.

The European Commission, however, will first try to negotiate with Chinese authorities to reach an "amicable solution" before launching the investigation. It estimates that Chinese exports of telecommunications equipment to the EU reach a value of over €1 billion per year.

"We hope the EU will proceed with protecting the stable development of trade relations between China and the EU, and not take protectionist measures or restrictive actions." China's foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

Huawei responded on this morning, stating that the company "plays fair" in all markets, and wins business via its technology and services, not through pricing or subsidies.

"Huawei currently has broad cooperation with European enterprises in the field of innovation, which is creating considerable value for all parties," the company said. In 2011, Huawei purchased €2.9 billion in products and services from Europe.

ZTE has yet to receive a formal notice from the EU, but it denied dumping products or receiving illegal subsidies from the Chinese authorities, said company spokesman David Dai Shu. While the company does receive some financial support from China, the subsidies are small and on par with the backing other European vendors receive from their home countries, he added.

ZTE, however, said its market share of Europe's telecom infrastructure business is small, and expects the investigation to have little effect on the company.

"From our point of view, we hope the EU government will establish a healthy and fair environment for all vendors," he said.

The European Commission, the EU's executive body, is launching the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation "ex officio" on its own initiative, without an official complaint from an EU industry. Huawei said this was an unprecedented move.

The Commission described the option to investigate ex officio as "particularly important as it offers a 'shield' when the risk of retaliation against European companies asking for trade defence instruments is high."

If the investigation is carried out, inspected products would cover mobile telecommunication networks used by carriers to transmit and receive voice and data.

IDG News Service

Last week SAP announced that enterprise customers could deploy Business Suite on HANA as a managed service in a private cloud in a third-party data centre, which it hopes will drive the adoption of the in-memory platform.

It suspects that customers will be more willing to test transactions and analytics in-memory if they don't have to fork out money for expensive kit to run prototypes.

However, key to this is that it the cloud is available under a 'Bring Your Own Licence' model, which means that customers will have to purchase a full HANA licence before being able to migrate to the cloud.

Following the announcement Stefan Reid, principle analyst at Forrester, heavily criticised this approach and labelled it a ‘half-baked business model'.

Reid said: "The HANA Cloud is a very careful move to a new business model. It is not disruptive and will NOT accelerate HANA usage to the many more customers who have been struggling with HANA on-premises because of its licensing.

"The announced HANA Enterprise Cloud follows the 'Bring Your Own License' paradigm. While this is great for customers that already have a HANA license and would like to relocate it into the cloud, it is useless for customers that might have largely fluctuating data volumes or user numbers and might specifically use a cloud because of its elastic business model."

He added: "SAP could really disrupt the enterprise market-not only with the HANA technology but also with a disruptive cloud business model."

However, during a press Q&A session at the company's annual customer and partner event in Orlando this week, co-CEO Snabe rebuffed the criticism and insisted that the Bring Your Own Licence model is in place to ensure that enterprises can maintain control of the core ERP estate.

"We believe there are two kinds of cloud solutions. Firstly, [clouds with] narrow scope, many users, lots of collaboration happening-we have four of those," Snabe said, referring to SAP's public cloud offerings-SuccessFactors, Ariba, Cloud for Travel and Cloud for Financials. "These are relatively narrow in scope, they have many users, and they are relatively simple in nature.

"Then you have the core, which runs everything your company does except these extensions. Most of the larger companies that we work with want to control the core. So the HANA enterprise cloud is about simplifying the consumption of that core, without losing their control. What does it mean to control? That means that they upgrade when they want. They configure when they want. They decide how this system is being used for their business."

He added: "That's not what happens in the public cloud, there you get whatever is there and everyone gets the same."

Snabe finished by saying that it is in no way a ‘half-baked business model' and that it is ‘very logical' for SAP and enterprise customers.

"In the areas you want control, you want to buy a perpetual licence. You want to manage the build face of your infrastructure, but you don't want to build the infrastructure itself. We will do that for you," he said.

"With that you have a perfect combination of cloud."

IDG News Service

TechCentral Reporters

The self-scanning technology follows the launch of the SuperValu app, the first fully transactional grocery app in Ireland.

Seán Quish, managing director of Quish's SuperValu Ballincollig, said: "We have 34 self-scan units which are designed to make shopping quick and easy for people who would rather spend time elsewhere rather than in a checkout queue... It is also an important feature to build customer loyalty as consumers prefer stores which help them control their weekly grocery budget. Customers who have used the scanning system say that knowing how much your shop will cost before you get to the checkout is a real plus for the store."

TechCentral Reporters

With the 64GB model at an "estimated" retail price of €879 and the 128GB model priced at €979, the prices are somewhat higher than was speculated previously, when a German e-commerce site erroneously listed the Pro for €909 late last year.

The price does not include the Touch or Type keyboard covers, which are listed in the announcement as accessories, along with HD AV and VGA adaptors and the Wedge Touch Mouse Surface Edition.

"Surface Pro is a unique Windows 8 device which provides an amazing entertainment and business experience," said Patrick Ward, Windows Business Group Lead at Microsoft. "We're incredibly excited the Surface family is growing and that customers in Ireland will soon be able to experience and purchase Surface Pro first hand."

The Surface Pro is powered by the Intel Core i5 processor and boasts 4GB of RAM as well as solid state storage which means its performance is easily comparable with ultrabooks. As such, it can be used as a laptop replacement, with the right accessories.

www.surfacepro.com

TechCentral Reporters

Windows 8.1 will be an "update" for both Windows 8 and for Windows RT, the version of the OS designed for devices that run on ARM chips, said Tami Reller, the chief financial officer and chief marketing officer of the Windows Division.

As an update, Windows 8.1 will be more substantial than the regular patches Microsoft pushes out for the OS, but will not represent a dramatic leap like the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8, she said.

Moreover, Windows 8.1 will be "really easy" and "straightforward" for customers to install, Reller added.

Microsoft's decision confirms speculation from industry analysts who spoke recently about this topic.

Last week, Reller and the other Windows chief, Julie Larson-Green, a corporate vice president in charge of the operating system's development, provided more details about Windows Blue, including that it will be delivered before the end of the year and that a preview will be released at the end of June during Microsoft's Build conference for developers.

Larson-Green did not say what changes Windows Blue will feature, but conceded that Microsoft has discussed user complaints about the removal of the start menu on Windows 8 and that it might be useful to restore it.

Asked if she could be more specific about the final release of Windows 8.1, Reller declined to provide a more concrete date but acknowledged that Microsoft wants to give OEM partners a chance to load it into computers they release for the holiday season.

She also reiterated that OEM partners are working on smaller Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets with 7-inch and 8-inch screens, and disclosed that there are now more than 70,000 applications for the OS in the Windows Store.

She also said Microsoft is satisfied with the amount and variety of Windows 8 and Windows RT devices, including desktop PCs, low-priced laptops with touch screens, sophisticated convertible laptops with detachable keyboards that double as tablets, all-in-one PCs and other variations.

"We feel very good about the direction we're headed with Windows 8," Reller said.

Windows 8 has a drastically redesigned interface based on tile icons intended to make the OS optimised for touchscreen devices such as tablets. However, it has not been an unqualified success and the lack of uptake by users has been blamed in part for the dismal performance of the PC market overall.

The Windows 8.1 preview version that will be delivered in June will be available for anyone to download and test drive, not just developers.

 

 

IDG News Service

The idea is to make it possible for devices, such as machinery on a factory assembly line, to spot the problem unit and then isolate it from the network before it can do any damage, researchers from North Carolina State University said. The security mechanism would be used in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and programmable logic controllers.

Mo-Yuen Chow, co-author of the research and a professor of electrical and computer engineering, said the concept was like a "community watch," where neighbours watch each other's property for burglaries.

"Each device listens to its neighbouring device to see if they're misbehaving," Chow said.

SCADA and PLC systems are used in industries comprising the nation's critical infrastructure (CI), which includes power generation facilities, oil and gas pipelines, electric power transmitters and defence manufacturing. The networked machinery and electronic devices in these systems are increasingly under attack by hackers, according to US government officials. Much of the activity is originating from China and the Middle East.

Securing a nation's critical infrastructure is difficult because most of the electronics and machinery was built before the Internet evolved as a networking protocol in controlling systems. In tackling the problem, NCSU researchers have developed an algorithm that can be deployed in any networked device, either in software or as firmware in a microcontroller.

"We wanted to build a very simple security measure on each device, so when they work together they will bring security to the entire system," Chow said.

The algorithm would establish acceptable operational parameters, such as temperature or speed, for the networked devices. If a unit suddenly operated outside those parameters, then the other devices would stop all communications, so it could no longer operate.

The technology would augment traditional security systems used today, such as communication encryption and access controls, said Wente Zeng, a doctoral student and co-author of the research. It would also operate within SCADA and PLC systems used to monitor and manage devices.

IDG News Service

According to a Softpedia report, Apple is seeking a Mechanical Engineer with a "Broad understanding of materials and manufacturing process such as joining (press lamination, gluing, heat staking)," as per the job posting on Apple's website.

A search for Press Lamination brings up two Mechanical Engineer - DFx roles, one posed in April, one posted on 14 May, and one Mechanical Engineer - iPad role posted in April, hinting that the iPad could be one of the products to gain this expertise.

Over the past 12 months there had been numerous reports that Apple would use the technology in the next-generation iPhone and the MacBook Pro.

According to one of the inventors of Liquidmetal, Atakan Peker it's unlikely the whole case of a MacBook would be made from Liquidmetal. "It's more likely in the form of a small components such as a hinge or bracket," he said, back in May 2012. However, he didn't rule the idea out entirely, suggesting: "A MacBook casing, such as a unibody, will take two to four more years to implement."

That prediction could suggest that it is feasible that liquidmetal casing could be seen as early as next summer.

Apple could also use Liquidmetal for the next iPhone. This time last year reports were circulating suggesting that liquidmetal could replace the glass back of the iPhone 4S.

The technology is already used in the SIM card ejector pins that used to ship with iPhones.

Liquidmetal is a lightweight but durable alloy made from a mix of titanium, nickel, copper and zirconium, among other metals. It was developed by team at Caltech and is marketed by Liquidmetal Technologies.

It offers high tensile strength, excellent corrosion resistance, very high coefficient of restitution and excellent anti-wearing characteristics (e.g. it's resistant to scratching), while also being able to be heat-formed in processes similar to thermoplastics, according to a Wikipedia description. Liquidmetal is not liquid at room temperature, though crucially, the alloys have relatively low softening temperatures, allowing casting of complicated shapes without need of finishing. One of the first commercial uses of Liquidmetal was in golf clubs.

Last June a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Apple has extended its agreement with Liquidmetal Technologies, giving it an exclusive license to all of the company's Intellectual Property until February 2014.

Apple apparently paid at least $10.9 million in licensing fees to Liquidmetal Technologies to use Liquidmetal exclusively.

This isn't the first time Apple has sought expertise in the field. Back in 2010, Apple was seeking a number of experts on amorphous metals.

IDG News Service