“The second quarter year-over-year growth for 2015 slowed compared with the annual growth of the first quarter of the year,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. “Currency exchange rate changes have started to show their impact by reducing relative spending power in regions like Western Europe. It is likely that in anticipation of further currency rate shifts that some organizations utilized their budgets earlier in the year rather than waiting until the third or fourth quarters when their purchasing power may be further reduced by these relative currency changes.

“x86 server shipments increased 8.3 percent in the second quarter of 2015 and revenue grew 9 percent. RISC/Itanium Unix server shipments declined 18.7 percent globally for the period, while RISC/Itanium revenue declined 9.7 percent compared with the same quarter last year. The ‘other’ CPU category, which is primarily mainframes, showed an increase of 7.8 percent,” Mr. Hewitt said.

From the regional standpoint, North America grew the most significantly in shipments with a 14.8 percent increase. The region also posted the highest vendor revenue growth at 14.7 percent for the period.

In server shipments, HP  remained the worldwide leader in the second quarter of 2015 with a year-over-year shipment increase of 2.5 percent. HP’s worldwide server shipment share was 21.7 percent, representing a 1.2 percent drop in share from the same quarter in 2014. Of the top five vendors in server shipments worldwide, all produced shipment increases except for Dell.

HP maintained its No. 1 ranking in the worldwide server market based on revenue with a 25.2 percent market share. Lenovo experienced the largest increase in the second quarter of 2015 with 526.5 percent growth in revenue. All of the top five global vendors had revenue increases for the second quarter of 2015 except IBM.

Courtesy: www.ciol.com/

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“We at cloudBuy expect transactions worth $3-5 billion on this platform in the near-term based on the initial response not only from the CII members but also from the non-member trade community,” cloudBuy India country head Nilesh Gopali said in a statement. 

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has roped in cloudBuy to recently launch a new e-commerce business gateway to global supply. 

The CII has around 8,000 strong members who cumulatively account for annual revenues of $80 billion. 

cloudBuy provides cloud solutions for buyers and sellers, and brings them together to trade securely and ethically via an increasing number of public e-market places and private purchasing portals powered by cloudBuy technology. 

According to a study conducted on companies listed on London Stock Exchange, it was concluded that FTSE 350 index companies can save up to 53 billion pounds via B2B online purchase. 

Using the same benchmark of 5% saving in procurement, the 3,300-odd BSE listed companies (excluding those in broking, software and finance) will be able to save around Rs 1,26,475 crore that will invariably add to the operating profit and subsequently to the bottomline, Gopali said. 

India’s manufacturing space can also boost its EBITDA or operating profit by 20% by ensuring a 5% savings in procurement through B2B online process replicating the global practice, he added. 

Manufacturing universe of 364 companies on the BSE 500 index excluding those like information technology, finance and broking that does not require raw material procurement can save around Rs 1,02,000 crore going by a similar case study on London Stock Exchange FTSE 350 around five years back, Gopali said. 

“Unlike a B2C online place, corporate purchases are done in a controlled environment without compromising on their ERP solutions. We have received enquiries from several large Indian corporates to establish a secured facade or solution between their ERP and a B2B online market place to provide a dynamic B2C style experience to meet their procurement needs” Gopali added.

Courtesy:timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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From November 2013 to June 2015, Microsoft went from being the fourth most popular service to passing Google Apps, Box and recently Salesforce.com to become the most-used app among the more than 2,500 companies that rely on Okta’s services. Those businesses range from large enterprises like Intel to smaller firms with fewer than 250 people.

Unsurprisingly, 74 percent of large businesses with more than 4,000 employees run only Office 365, while just 50 percent of businesses with fewer than 250 employees subscribe only to Microsoft’s office suite. It’s most popular in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe.

While Office 365 is ascendant, those gains didn’t translate into user growth for Yammer, the enterprise social networking service that Microsoft bundles with many editions of its office suite. That service’s user growth flatlined over the past few months, even as other applications exploded in popularity.  

Courtesy: http://www.infoworld.com/

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In a bid to meet these demands from telecom and cloud service providers, Juniper Networks has expanded its converged Supercore architecture with the introduction of the PTX1000.

“For telecom service and cloud content providers, the network is the lifeblood of their business. In developing the PTX1000, we recognized that these customers can increase performance while reducing operational complexity by distributing the load of serving up content across multiple peering points to deliver the high quality user experience that consumers expect,” informs Paul Obsitnik, Vice President, Service Provider Marketing, Juniper Networks.

While some providers consolidate their peering points to a limited number of network locations, today’s announcement gives customers the option to deploy a distributed peering architecture. Distributing peering sites across the network for access to cloud services improves the user experience by decreasing application response time and increasing reliability via fixed and mobile access. With the rise of machine-to-machine traffic and the advent of virtualized services becoming more distributed throughout the network, the need for increased IP/MPLS performance while maintaining cost control is in great demand, Juniper said.

According to Juniper , PTX1000 is the industry’s most compact 3 Tbps fixed configuration core router. The new two-rack unit (RU) router, like the PTX3000 and PTX5000 core routers, leverages Juniper’s ExpressPlus custom silicon for IP/MPLS performance applications.

The 28-nanometer chip can drive 5x100G interfaces and leverages 3D memory architecture, which reduces power consumption and space requirements. In addition, the PTX1000 features flexible port interface options to maximize investment protection and ensure smooth upgrade cycles.

Courtesy: http://www.ciol.com/

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Juniper Networks, the industry leader in network innovation, has found through a study commissioned with leading IT market research and advisory firm IDC that a majority of large enterprises in India were planning to deploy Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies as part of their network architecture by 2016.

The study reveals that most large enterprises in India plan to deploy SDN in 2016 – 63 per cent of large enterprises in India plan to deploy SDN as part of their network architecture in 2016.

It also found that 22 per cent of the respondents were “users,” defined as organizations that have deployed SDN in the pilot stage while the rest of the respondents were “intenders” who were planning to deploy SDN in the near future. Among the “intenders,” 40 per cent were planning to deploy SDN within the next year, while the other 60 per cent were aiming to deploy SDN after two years or more.

In terms of Budgets allocated, 42 per cent of intenders and 34 per cent of users do not have a specific budget assigned to the purchase of SDN solutions.

When benefits of SDN were tracked, improved network performance and efficiency emerged as the top benefit of adopting SDN. As to key concerns around SDN adoption, although 86 per cent of respondents projected that enterprise networks of the future will be a combination of SDN and traditional networks, they also cited initial concerns like difficulty in integrating SDN with already deployed or available infrastructure, security concerns, technical skill gap, total cost of ownership, and lack of management.

“SDN has the potential to transform the networking landscape. The networking architecture landscape in India is in a state of transition and the software-defined model can enable significant advantages, making it the logical solution every organization turns to for better efficiency and security,” said Sajan Paul, Director (Systems Engineering) – India & SAARC, Juniper Networks

“Innovations like SDN can enable the organizations with an unmatched capacity, flexibility and scale that can act as a worthy foundation to help achieve that business value.
As per the Juniper Networks-commissioned study by IDC, India is at a critical juncture where organizations now need to move forward and start adopting innovations like SDN to be able to adapt to the rapidly changing business environment. Currently, 86 per cent of the respondents felt that enterprise networks in future will be a combination of SDN and traditional networks and 48 per cent felt that SDN can provide value if implemented well. ” added Gaurav Sharma, Research Manager, Enterprise Computing, IDC India

Courtesy: http://www.ciol.com/

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Well, that’s exactly what Google is trying to do with the OnHub WiFi router that it’s launching on Tuesday. Working with networking gear company TP-LINK, OnHub contains 13 WiFi antennas in a circular design, a 1.4 gigahertz dual core processor and whole lot more. The companies claim the router will achieve speeds of up to 1900 megabits per second.

Shenzhen, China-based TP-LINK is one of the bigger consumer networking companies in the world and competes with the likes of Netgear and Belkin’s Linksys.

Users will manage the router with a new smartphone app from Google called “Google On” available on both Apple  iOS and Android. The app will help users with the setup process, manage devices on the network, prioritize which devices get more bandwidth, and give out guest login credentials. The app will also be able to provide information about network performance to check out what might be causing any slow Internet performance.

OnHub will also regularly receive updates with new features and security patches.

Although many details about the product aren’t entirely clear yet, there are some other interesting things going on inside the router. In addition to the 13 WiFi antennas, OnHub will also come with Bluetooth and ZigBee radios to connect with smart home devices. The ZigBee radio is using the Weave communication protocol, which is designed by Google-owned Nest. Nest uses Weave to connect up its own smart home products. Essentially, OnHub could work as a smart home hub.

OnHub also has a speaker built into it. No details on what kind of quality these speakers are. At this time, the speaker is mostly intended to aid in the setup process, said a TP-Link spokeswomen. But a speaker just for assisting in the setup process seems unlikely. Google could potentially integrate OnHub with its voice-enabled intelligent personal assistant OK Google.

Preorders for OnHub starts today for $200 and will be up in the Google Store, Amazon.com and Walmart.com.

Courtesy: http://www.forbes.com/

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BENGALURU: Wipro has set up an open data centre in this tech hub to help enterprises adopt new age Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI), the IT bellwether said. 

“As a centre of excellence the data centre integrates proprietary and open source solutions across layers, including network, storage, compute and cloud,” the software major said in a statement here. 

The centre also aims to transform client data centres by leveraging its adoption framework, comprising its IP (intellectual property) assets. 

“Our centre helps clients navigate through challenges associated with transformation of data centres. The centre of excellence will build, integrate, test and demonstrate customer aligned SDI solutions,” Wipro’s global infrastructure services chief executive GK Prasanna said on the occasion. 

The centre of excellence is linked to three data centres with dual data centre architecture and located in the company’s electronic city campus and Mountain View in the US. 

The outsourcing major has forged strategic and niche technology alliances with Silicon Valley start-ups and mid-size OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to offer comprehensive and future-proof solutions to customers.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Trygstad is a US-based IT consulting services and solutions firm and has deep expertise in areas of core engineering, Internet of Things, embedded systems and Intelligent Systems.

The financial value and terms were not disclosed.

“HCL Technologies has entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement to acquire certain assets of privately held Trygstad Technical Services Inc in an all cash deal,” HCL said in a BSE filing today.

With this strategic acquisition, HCL enhances its ability to provide additional value and turnkey solutions to ecosystems of large Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), it added.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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How Microsoft connected 4 unconnected school campuses in AP?

August 17, 2015

MUMBAI, INDIA: Four unconnected campuses of a school in Andhra Pradesh have been connected by using white space technology

In a first-of-its-kind pilot, Microsoft, DOT, DEITY and ERNET are working with the government of Andhra Pradesh to bring low-cost broadband Internet connectivity to four educational institutions in the district of Srikakulam which had no connectivity earlier.

With ZP High School at Voppangi as the base station, the other three campuses Singupuram, Fareedapeta and Sativada. were receivers located at distances of 10 kilometers or more from the base station.

Besides, Microsoft also deployed cloud-based machine learning solution it has built in collaboration with the AP’s Department of Education to help predict student drop-outs. This is being implemented in Chittoor district as part of Badi Pilustondi–flagship program of the government.

The project:
Microsoft has worked with the Andhra Pradesh government on TV white spaces project to deliver low-cost Internet connectivity to users.

The technology:
The technology utilizes the unused space in terrestrial TV spectrum to provide cheap Internet connectivity to remote areas. It allocates unused bands to Internet broadband transmission while regular TV transmissions go on uninterrupted.

By doing this, it provides opportunities of wide coverage and cheap license-free access. Unlike Wi-Fi that propagates to a 100M radius, TV White Spaces propagate the signal to a radius of 10 kilometres or more.

“As a proponent of technology, I have always experimented with technology to take services and welfare programs to people. With this pilot, Microsoft has shown that innovation and technology can make a society technologically advanced, eventually creating a knowledge-based economy,” the Chief Minister said.

Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, said, “We believe white space technology can be the affordable answer to last-mile connectivity challenges in India. Not only that, this technology can also be used during emergency or disaster scenarios. We are invested in India’s growth, and believe that such technologies can support the Government in realizing its vision for a Digital India.”

“We believe machine-learning technology can enable both educators and students in making insightful decisions by analyzing large volumes of data in today’s new mobile-first, cloud-first world. It also offers the potential to transform the future of skilled workforce in India,” said Anil Bhansali, Managing Director, Microsoft India (R&D).

Courtesy: www.ciol.com

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