Microsoft has announced the general availability of its SQL Server 2016 product, after releasing a preview build late last year. The offering comes with a couple of novelties, including the updateable in-memory column stores and advanced analytics through deep integration with R Services.

SQL Server 2016 also offers advanced analytics and machine learning models in the database, which Microsoft says will have a hundred-fold speed-up in time to insight, compared to similar deployments outside the database.

Continue reading →

Microsoft won’t be building its own autonomous vehicle, but it will be present in the market, it was confirmed at a conference recently.

Speaking at the Converge Asia conference, Microsoft’s head of business development, Peggy Johnson, made these claims. Instead of building its own car, the company will team up with existing car makers and see to it that the devices get powered by Microsoft’s products.

Continue reading →

It seems that the not so distant future will soon resemble a scene from I, Robot with everyone from car manufacturers to tech companies developing their own model so they can take a stake in an industry that is expected to be worth $2.81 billion by 2022.

While the prospect of a sci-fi fantasy becoming reality is whipping up excitement for many, the driving industry has been thrown into uncertainty with many predicting that fully automated vehicles will push millions into unemployment, but how realistic is this vision? Considering the current roadblocks ahead, it would appear that the idea of implementing automated only vehicles will soon be parked.

Continue reading →

PhishMe, a security company providing anti-phishing solutions, has released a new report, analyzing the state of phishing attacks worldwide, and the numbers are staggering, though expected.

The first quarter of 2016, compared to the last quarter of 2015, has seen an incredible 789 percent jump in the number of phishing emails containing malicious code, mostly ransomware.

Continue reading →

During the IOActive IOAsis event in San Francisco, security professionals were asked on their opinion on the state of security among Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and the results are not encouraging.

According to the IOActive Internet of Things Security Survey, based on this poll, almost half (47 percent) of respondents felt less than 10 percent of IoT devices have appropriate security measures. Almost nine out of ten (85 percent) believe less than half of IoT devices are secure.

Continue reading →

Apple Pay may be doing well in the US, but a new report from Reuters suggests that Apple’s mobile contactless payment service has not seen the same success rate outside of its home territory.

The service became available for US consumers in October 2014 and has since gained a great deal of traction and users in its home country. Outside of the US, Apple Pay is currently available in the UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore and China. However in these countries technical issues, resistance from banks, and consumer indifference have plagued the service from the start.

Continue reading →

There have been significantly more data breaches this year, compared to the year before, new figures from Egress Software Technologies suggest.

The company cross-checked data from security breaches in the past three years and says that 66 percent of the business sectors surveyed reported an increase in data breach occurrences. It would have been even higher if healthcare organizations haven’t had "just" a 13 percent increase.

Continue reading →

Leveraging on possible opportunities on identity systems, Microsoft is looking into building a blockchain-based identity system and it has recently sealed a partnership to further this goal.

The tech giant has made an open source collaboration with companies Blockstack Labs and ConsenSys for their current Bitcoin and Ethereum-based identity solutions, together with various developers globally.

Continue reading →

Gartner has released new figures about the state of server shipments worldwide, and even though growth has been recorded, that’s not real a success story yet.

According to its figures, global servers shipment increased 1.7 percent year-on-year, but revenue declined 2.3 percent. The research company says this means that servers which were being sold same time last year were more expensive than the ones being sold now.

Continue reading →

Before we reach 2021, there will be more internet-connected devices (IoT) than smartphones, Ericsson said in its latest Mobility Report.

Projected growth of these devices is 400 percent in the next five years, with a total of 16 billion devices expected by that time.

Continue reading →

In late 2013, news of a massive data breach at Target surfaced. Hackers stole personal and credit card information of nearly 70 million shoppers, and the breach ended up costing Target $162 million and the resignation of the CEO and CIO. While this was one of the largest and most widely publicized data breaches, it’s by no means one of few.

Just recently, LinkedIn came clean about its 2012 data breach – a few days after it was discovered some of the information was being sold online. While LinkedIn originally reported the email and passwords for 6.5 million people were compromised, it just admitted the real number is as high as 117 million accounts. Though LinkedIn advised people to change their passwords when the attack was first made public, it wasn’t until four years later that the company decided to cancel passwords that were affected.

Continue reading →

Salesforce has announced that it has agreed to purchase enterprise cloud commerce solutions provider Demandware in a $2.8 billion cash deal.

Salesforce will commence a tender offer for all outstanding shares of Demandware -- which boasts the likes of L’Oreal and Marks & Spencer as customers -- for $75.00 a share, with the transaction expected to close at the end of July 2016.

Continue reading →

As more people are switching from HDDs (hard disk drives) to SSDs (solid state drives), more data loss is occurring, a new report by Kroll Ontrack suggests.

SSD disks might be solid in their state, but don’t seem to be more reliable than HDD disks. Still, it doesn’t stop their popularity growth. Out of 2,000 global respondents to the Kroll Ontrack survey, 92 percent are using SSD technology, with more than a third (38 percent) having experienced an SSD failure. Of those failed disks, almost a quarter (23 percent) lost data.

Continue reading →

The Open Source Initiative (OSI), the steward of the Open Source Definition (OSD), announced today it has created a machine readable publication of OSI approved licenses.

According to the organization, the API will allow third parties to "become license-aware", giving businesses everywhere the means to determine if a license is open source or not.

Continue reading →

A growing number of organizations are moving to hybrid networks as a means of meeting their business and technical needs. Hybrid networks let companies connect a variety of locations from large offices and data centers to branch offices and remote workers. And the ability to select the service and performance levels needed by various business activities and enterprise applications make for an agile enterprise.

Your network is the central nervous system of your business. Traditional networking solutions are rigid, hard to manage, and lack visibility and control. Pure "over the top" solutions that make exclusive use of the internet certainly make life easier, but the performance required for business critical applications can’t be guaranteed. Getting it right "most of the time" isn’t an option. The market for hybrid network services is growing rapidly, which is being driven by and large by the increase in enterprise bandwidth consumption -- growing by 30 percent a year, according to Gartner’s market research. This is due to the increase in the number of devices connecting to corporate networks, the types of business critical applications and the increasing use of video communications.

Continue reading →