Top 10 Tech stories 2014: Backlash! Disrupting the disruptors

Blowing up entrenched business models and picking up the profits that spill onto the floor is a time-honored tradition in tech, these days known by the cliche of the moment, “disruption.” This year everyone was trying to push back against those upstarts, whether by buying them like Facebook did, reorganizing to compete with them like HP and Microsoft have done, or just plain going out against them guns blazing, as it seemed that every city and taxi company did with Uber. European courts fought the disruptive effect Google search has had on our very sense of the historical record. But meanwhile, legions of net neutrality supporters in the US spoke up to save the Internet’s core value of disruption against the oligopoly of a handful of communications carriers. Here are our picks for the top stories of a very, well, disruptive year.
year in review 2014

Nadella aims Microsoft toward relevancy in a post-PC world
Taking over from Steve Ballmer in February, CEO Satya Nadella faced several uncomfortable truths, among them: Windows powers only 15 percent of all computing devices worldwide, including smartphones, tablets and PCs, meaning Microsoft is no longer at the center of most people’s computing experience. Nadella says he wants Microsoft to be the productivity and platform company for a “mobile first, cloud first world.” Under Nadella, Microsoft has launched Office for the iPad, embraced open source software for its Azure cloud and launched the beta for Windows 10, which promises to smooth out Windows 8’s confusing, hybrid user interface. Shortly after closing the Nokia acquisition he inherited, Nadella announced 18,000 job cuts, 14 percent of its global staff. The bulk of those cuts are in Nokia, which has been relegated to the “other” market share category in smartphones. Microsoft’s sales looked good last quarter, jumping 25 percent year-over-year to $23.2 billion, though profit was hurt by the Nokia buy. Nadella claimed the company is “innovating faster,” which had better be true if he is to succeed.

HP says breaking up is hard, but necessary
Agility appears to be more important than size these days. In an about-face from the direction CEO Meg Whitman set three years ago, Hewlett-Packard announced in October that it will split up, divorcing its PC and printer operations from its enterprise business. When Whitman took the reins from former HP chief Leo Apotheker in 2011, she renounced his idea to split up the venerable Silicon Valley company, saying PCs were key to long-term relationships with customers. But shedding assets is becoming a common strategy for aging tech giants. IBM has focused on enterprise technology and services after selling first its PC operations years ago, and then its server business this year, to Lenovo, and agreeing in October to pay GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion to take over money-losing chip facilities. Symantec announced this year that it would spin off its software storage business, the bulk of which it acquired 10 years ago from Veritas Software for $13.5 billion. The big question for HP is whether it can avoid alienating users and distracting its hundreds of thousands of employees.

Uber’s bumpy ride shakes up the “sharing” economy
Legal challenges and executives behaving badly marked the ascendancy of Uber this year as much as its explosive growth and sky-high valuation. The startup’s hard-driving, take-no-prisoners culture has made it an unlikely poster child for the innocuous—and perhaps misleadingly labeled—“sharing” economy. Announcing the company’s latest billion-dollar cash injection in December, CEO Travis Kalanick bragged that Uber had launched operations in 190 cities and 29 countries this year. The service is now valued at $40 billion. But the company’s army of private drivers face legal challenges, inquiries and preliminary injunctions against operating, from Germany and the UK to various US states. Executives have made matters worse by threatening to dig up dirt on critical journalists and bragging about a tool called “god view” that lets employees access rider logs without permission. Rival app-based ride services like Lyft and Sidecar, whose operations are also the target of inquiries, are distancing themselves from Uber. Added to all this, there are complaints about the legality of other sorts of so-called sharing services, like apartment-rental site Airbnb, which has spawned not just opportunities for regular folks with an extra room and a hospitable nature, but created a class of real-estate investors who are de facto hoteliers. All this suggests that Web-based companies seeking a “share” of profits using middleman tech platforms to disrupt highly regulated businesses like taxis and lodging have some real battles against entrenched interests still to fight.

Facebook gambles $16 billion on WhatsApp
Established companies are snapping up upstarts at a pace not seen since the dot-com boom days, but in February Facebook’s plan to buy WhatsApp for $16 billion had jaws dropping at the price tag. WhatsApp has hit about a half billion users with its mobile messaging alternative to old-school carriers. Facebook already had a chat feature, as well as a stand-alone mobile app called Messenger. But people don’t use them for quick back and forth conversations, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, he confessed that he could not prove in charts and figures that WhatsApp is worth the money he spent, but said that not many companies in the world have a chance at cracking the billion-user mark, and that in itself is incredibly valuable.

Mt Gox implodes, deflating Bitcoin hype
Last year, Bitcoin seemed poised to disrupt conventional currencies. But this year the high-flying cryptocurrency hit some turbulence. The largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, Tokyo-based Mt Gox, fell to earth amid tears and lawsuits after an apparent hack cost the company about 750,000 bitcoins worth about $474 million. The company said a flaw in the Bitcoin software allowed an unknown party to steal the digital currency. A few weeks later Flexcoin, a smaller site, closed after it got hacked. The closures sent tremors of fear through the fledgling Bitcoin market. The leaders of Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, BTC China, Blockchain and Circle all signed a statement lambasting Mt Gox for its “failings.” But the incidents took the luster off Bitcoin. Still, New York’s proposed Bitcoin regulations may establish a legal framework, and confidence, to help exchanges grow in one of the world’s biggest financial centers. Bitcoin concepts may also spur spinoff technology. A company called Blockstream is pursuing ideas to use Bitcoin’s so-called blockchain, a distributed, public ledger, as the basis for a platform for all sorts of transactional applications.

Apple Pay starts to remake mobile payments
Apple’s ascendance to the world’s most valuable company came on top of market-defining products like the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad. This year, it was not the iPhone 6 or the as-yet unreleased Apple Watch that came close to redefining a product category—it was Apple Pay. Apple Pay requires an NFC-enabled Apple device, which means an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, but by early next year, Apple Watch as well. Businesses need NFC-equipped payment terminals. With Apply Pay, you can make a credit or debit card payment simply by tapping your iPhone to the NFC chip reader embedded in a payment terminal. As you tap, you put your finger on the iPhone 6’s biometric fingerprint reader. Apple was careful to line up partners: while Google stumbled trying to get support for its Wallet, more than 500 banks and all major credit card companies are working with Apple Pay. The potential security benefits top it off: When you enter your credit or debit card number, Apple replaces it with a unique token that it stores encrypted. Your information is never stored on your device or in the cloud.

Alibaba’s IPO marks a new era for Chinese brands
In their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange in September, Alibaba shares opened at $92.70, 35 percent over the $68 initial public offering price, raking in $21.8 billion and making it the biggest tech IPO ever. Alibaba is an e-commerce behemoth in China, now looking to expand globally. But don’t expect a direct challenge to Amazon right away. Its strategy for international dominance depends not only on broad e-commerce, but also on carving out different niche marketplaces. Shares three months after its opening are going for about $10 more, suggesting that shareholders have faith in that strategy. The IPO also marked the ascendancy of Chinese brands. After scooping up IBM’s PC business years ago, and this year spending $2.3 billion for IBM’s server business as well as $2.9 billion for Motorola, Lenovo is the world’s number one PC company and number three smartphone company. Meanwhile Xiaomi, the “Apple of China,” has become the world’s number-four smartphone vendor.

Regin and the continuing saga of the surveillance state
Symantec’s shocking report on the Regin malware in November opened the latest chapter in the annals of international espionage. Since at least 2008, Regin has targeted mainly GSM cellular networks to spy on governments, infrastructure operators, research institutions, corporations, and private individuals. It can steal passwords, log keystrokes and read, write, move and copy files. The sophistication of the malware suggests that, like the Stuxnet worm discovered in 2010, it was developed by one or several nation-states, quite possibly the U.S. It has spread to at least 10 countries, mainly Russia and Saudi Arabia, as well as Mexico, Ireland, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Belgium, Austria and Pakistan. If Regin really is at least six years old, it means that sophisticated surveillance tools are able to avoid detection by security products for years, a chilling thought for anyone trying to protect his data.

EU ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling challenges Google to edit history
The EU’s Court of Justice’s so-called right to be forgotten ruling in May means that Google and other search engine companies face the mountainous task of investigating and potentially deleting links to outdated or incorrect information about a person if a complaint is made. The ruling came in response to a complaint lodged by Spanish national insisting that Google delete links to a 1998 newspaper article that contained an announcement for a real-estate auction related to the recovery of social security debts owed by him. The complaint noted the issue had been resolved. But while EU data-privacy officials cheer, free-speech advocates say the ruling’s language means that people can use it to whitewash their history, deleting even factually correct stories from search results. As of mid-November, Google had reviewed about 170,000 requests to delist search results that covered over 580,000 links. The headaches are just starting: Now the EU says the delinking must be applied to all international domains, not just sites within the region.

Obama weighs in as FCC goes back to the drawing boards on net neutrality
In January, a U.S. appeals court struck down the FCC’s 2011 regulations requiring Internet providers to treat all traffic equally. The court said the FCC did not have the authority to enact the rules, challenged in a lawsuit brought by Verizon. The ruling reignited the net neutrality debate, with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposing new rules in April. President Obama in November made his strongest statement on net neutrality to date, urging the FCC to reclassify broadband as a regulated utility, imposing telephone-style regulations. Obama’s move, which critics say is an unprecedented intrusion on an independent government agency, puts political pressure on Wheeler, who reportedly favors a less regulatory approach. The proposal from Wheeler earlier this year stopped short of reclassification, and allowed broadband providers to engage in “commercially reasonable” traffic management. Public comments on Wheeler’s proposal had hit nearly 4 million by September. The ball is now back in Wheeler’s court, as he negotiates a resolution to the whole affair with his fellow commissioners.

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Cisco patches traffic snooping flaw in its networking gear

The vulnerability affects the OSPF routing protocol implementation on Cisco networking equipment

Cisco Systems said attackers could disrupt or intercept traffic in many of its networking products unless a new security update is applied to the software they run.

The issue affects the implementation of the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing protocol and its Link State Advertisement (LSA) database in particular. This protocol is used for determining the shortest routing paths inside an Autonomous System (AS) -- a collection of routing policies for IP (Internet Protocol) addresses controlled by ISPs and large organizations.

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The OSPF protocol is commonly used on large enterprise networks. It gathers link state information from available routers into a database in order to built a network topology map which is then used to determine the best route for IP traffic.

"This vulnerability could allow an unauthenticated attacker to take full control of the OSPF Autonomous System (AS) domain routing table, blackhole traffic, and intercept traffic," Cisco said in a security advisory.

Exploiting the vulnerability doesn't require authentication and can be achieved remotely by sending specifically crafted OSPF LSA type 1 packets via unicast or multicast to the vulnerable device. The packets could contain false routes that would then get propagated throughout the entire OSPF AS domain.

However, the attacker does need to determine some information in advance in order to launch a successful attack, Cisco said. This information includes the network placement and IP address of the targeted router, the LSA database sequence numbers and the router ID of the OSPF Designated Router (DR).

The vulnerability affects networking devices running most versions of Cisco IOS, IOS-XE and NX-OS operating systems if they are configured for OSPF operations. It also affects the software running on the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA), Cisco ASA Service Module (ASA-SM), Cisco Pix Firewall, Cisco Firewall Services Module (FWSM) and the Cisco ASR 5000 carrier class platform.

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What happens next in the Cisco suit against Arista?

Although the outcome is uncertain, the case will likely go to trial

Arista Networks’ stock took it on the chin when Cisco slapped the company with patent infringement and copyright law suits last Friday, losing almost 20% of its value at one point as investors and others mulled the long term implications of the suits.

The short answer: this is going to take a long time and could get pretty ugly for Arista.

One of the suits accuses Arista of violating 14 Cisco patents, while the second is for extensive copying of Cisco’s user manuals and multi-word CLI commands (see Cisco slaps Arista Networks with patent, copyright infringement suits).

Arista has been fairly mum on the suits, but did post a piece by board member Dan Scheinman, who formerly worked for Cisco, saying “Arista’s EOS was developed from the ground up as a next generation network operating system for the cloud based upon the pioneering technologies invented by Arista” (see Arista fires back at Cisco's suits).

Scheinman ends his post posing the question, “Why now? The answer to that question speaks volumes about the real motivation going on here.”

The conclusion we are apparently expected to reach is that Arista has unique technology and its growing success is a thorn in Cisco’s side, hence the suits. Sales growth would support that notion. When Arista filed for its IPO last June it said sales in 2013 were $361 million, up more than 90% compared to 2012, and according to some estimates, the company will finish 2014 with sales leaping another 60% to $577 million (across that magic $500 million line that proves to be the limit for many network startups).

“Arista has good products and obviously a strong engineering staff,” says Joel Snyder, a senior partner at tech consulting firm Opus One, and a longtime product reviewer for Network World. “People are starting to take note, and obviously they are making some noise that Cisco is noticing.”

One large financial services company I spoke with this summer said they are installing Arista equipment to complement their largely Cisco network environment, adding anecdotal evidence that Arista is making inroads in critical accounts. Asked if this lawsuit will make them reconsider adding Arista equipment, the company said it will proceed as planned.

That’s at least some good news. The bad news: Arista will have its hands full with these suits, says Charles Steenburg, an associate at Wolf Greenfield, an intellectual property law firm in Boston. While Arista might file a motion to dismiss the complaints, “in a case like this, dismissal is highly unlikely,” he says.

While trials are the exception rather than the rule in patent infringement cases, especially in cases brought by patent trolls who are just after cash settlements, “cases involving competitors more often go to trial,” Steenburg says.

Discovery and the claim construction phase, in which the judge asks for input from the parties and outlines certain key patent terms, can take about a year, he says. Using the Apple/Samsung trials as a gauge, which were filed in the same California district, Steenberg says these cases might start in 16 to 26 months.

Asked how dire a situation this could create for Arista, Steenburg says “the nuclear scenario would be for Cisco to get an injunction that prohibits Arista from selling the products in question.” But at the very least, the cases are “certainly going to make life difficult” for Arista.

“The discovery process itself is not just expensive, but also time consuming and can sap morale,” Steenburg says. “It stinks to have engineers and other employees being deposed or gathering documents instead of doing constructive work. That is often an unappreciated cost and risk of litigation.”

Snyder says he thinks “Cisco has a legitimate beef. They may or may not prevail, but it opens up enough FUD to give the Cisco sales team something to use in competitive deals. Right now Cisco is fighting hard to keep its place in the enterprise, and one of their tools is pricing. If they can force others to have higher costs, either through engineering or litigation or both, then this is a competitive edge.”


Should potential customers worry? “I would counsel any client thinking of doing business with a company that has been sued for patent infringement to ask to be indemnified in case the company goes after them,” Steenburg says. “That said, presumably Cisco does business with most of Arista’s customers, so it would be unusual for Cisco to go after customers.”

In the copyright suit Cisco says that, among other infringements, Arista has copied 500 of its multi-word command line instructions. While Google and others argue copyright protection shouldn’t address interfaces, some observers see it otherwise.

“’Ip host’ all by itself isn't copyrightable,” writes Florian Mueller, an intellectual property activist with 25 years of software industry expertise in his blog Foss Patents, “Same with ‘show inventory.’ Arista could have copied one or two of those and Cisco couldn't complain if that were the case. But when one looks at the whole list of 500 multi-word commands, many of which truly involve creative choices (for example, ‘show ip igmp snooping querier’ or ‘spanning-tree potfast bpdufilter default’), the threshold for copyrightability is easily met.”

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Internet goes ad-free for an hour as Google ad server fails

Websites around the world lost their ads after DoubleClick for Publishers outage

A Google ad server went down Wednesday morning, leaving many websites without advertising. Sites like Computerworld and CNBC.com were affected.

The ad server, known as DoubleClick for Publishers, is an advertisement software-as-a-service application.

"DoubleClick for Publishers experienced an outage this morning impacting publishers globally, across their video, display, native and mobile formats," Google said in an email to Comuterworld. "Our team has worked quickly to fix the software bug and [DoubleClick for Publishers] is now back up and running, so our publisher partners can return to funding their content."

According to multiple accounts, the ad server was down for about an hour.

Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said the outage likely cost companies across the world millions of dollars.

""First of all, I'm very surprised that Google's DoubleClick service could go down so completely and for so long. This service is Google's cash cow, with huge revenue and high margins," he added. ""This outage won't be devastating to any particular company or set of companies, but it's a shot to Google's reputation and I'm sure that some companies will be looking to see if they have any recourse."

The failure, though short lived, could cause a lot of pain for any company that was launching new products or running specific sales this morning.

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13 Tips to Achieve Cloud Success

Sixteen CIOs and IT leaders shared lesson learned on cloud deployment, use, skills and more.

We interviewed 16 CIOs and IT leaders about their public and private cloud deployments, usage trends, skills requirements, lingering obstacles and future plans. Here are some nuggets of advice from these cloud giants.
giants in the cloudmain

1. Don’t get too caught up in cost savings. “If you make it a money thing, you're making a mistake,” says Joe Spagnoletti, CIO at Campbell Soup. “It's an option to deliver capability. You have to get it at the cost commensurate with the capability. You can't do it for cost savings or management efficiency.”

2. Don’t just ‘lift and shift’ -- that is, don’t simply take your existing infrastructure and move it wholesale to the cloud. “Don’t move to the cloud just because it’s trendy,” says Chris Drumgoole, chief operating officer for cloud services at General Electric. “Sure, it might save you some money -- but you’ll miss the opportunity to transform how you do business, and those don’t come around that often.”

3. Understand that it's an iterative learning process. "Being successful isn't really about the technology. The technology is there and it works pretty well. The hard part is understanding the problem you're trying to solve,” says McKesson CIO and CTO Randy Spratt. “One size doesn’t fit all. You need to understand what your users are trying to do."

4. Embrace change management. Cloud is a big change for people and organizations, says McKesson’s Spratt. Change management becomes an “evangelical” function, he says. “Just building and deploying isn't enough. You need to educate businesses about what they have. It's like an internal sales job.”

5. Vet your partners. Campbell’s has developed very formal processes, reviewed monthly, for the acquisition, management and recertification of its cloud partners, Spagnoletti says. The program, which involves the internal audit department, examines the risk a process could potentially introduce.

Choose your cloud partners wisely, echoes Paula Tolliver, CIO and corporate vice president, business services, at Dow Chemical. Make sure you’re working with cloud service providers that share the same values and requirements that you do, and that they’re working with you to mature and evolve to standards. “We’re encouraging our service providers to get standardization across industry so that we live up to the ultimate cloud promise of being able to move services and capabilities at will and as needed,” Tolliver says.

In addition, Dow chooses to avoid specialty players. “We’re steering around niche players,” Tolliver says. Dow wants “mature,” established vendors with proven prowess in key enterprise areas such as compliance, reliability and security.

6. Have an exit plan. “Make sure you get a prenup in place,” says Steve Phillips, CIO at Avnet. The relationship might be great when you sign the contract, but make sure the contract addresses separation in the future, he warns.

7. Avoid customization. It’s best to limit the amount that you’re tailoring a cloud service for your organization, says Rich Adduci, CIO at Boston Scientific. “The more you build around it, the more best of breed you’re doing, the more you’re moving away from the cloud’s value proposition,” Adduci says. The better approach, he says, is to establish a strong relationship with your vendor to help them evolve the platform.

“Before you sign that dotted line, you really need to understand that software and how it will work in your environment,” says Avnet’s Phillips, who also recommends not making changes to cloud software.

8. Feed the network. “Your network has got to be Class A,” says Wayne Shurts, CTO at Sysco. The food distributor is in the middle of a three-year network upgrade project to increase bandwidth, provide more complete redundancy, and improve traffic prioritization capabilities. “The network really becomes even more important and a huge point of failure in your infrastructure than it ever was before,” Shurts says.

9. Don’t forget management. As an infrastructure provider, Amazon has demonstrated it can handle large scale hosting and has geographical backup resiliency, which allows you to mitigate risk, says Family Dollar CIO Josh Jewett. Plus Amazon will take care of operational details like load balancing and server capacity. “But you’re on your own to manage it,” he cautions. “If you’re looking for someone to keep an eye on it, you’re mistaken. You still have the management challenge of the apps and data. You still own that.”

10. Take the time to develop “carrier-grade” services. In legacy setups, if you lose your identity-management service a few apps might go down -- it’s a pain, but it’s fairly isolated, says GE’s Drumgoole. But when your entire IT architecture revolves around providing services, losing ID management means everything goes down, in multiple businesses around the world. “You need to take the time” to make those services absolutely bulletproof, or ensure your providers do.

11. Consider delegating management. If a cloud solution is easy to use and configure, Avent will allow a business group to take over management in the environment. Workday, for instance, is a clearly controlled environment, but HR primarily manages it, says Phillips. “We don't need to be in the middle of that, if the tool is intuitive enough and secure enough.”

12. Prepare for change. For The Vanguard Group, implementing an HR app in the public cloud required a change in mindset, says CIO John Marcante. There’s less customization of the application, which requires workers to do things in a different way. That’s been one of the hardest challenges, Marcante says. It’s not a technology challenge, but it requires “a different way of thinking.”

13. Go for it. “I hear a lot of excuses about why not to move” to the cloud, says Mike Macrie, CIO at Land O’Lakes. “You just have to be brave and try it, and see what works for your company. Not every industry is made for the cloud, but just push the limits and see what makes sense for your company.”

Editor’s Note: Giants in the Cloud was written by Network World assistant managing editor, features, Ann Bednarz, based on interviews conducted by CIO Magazine managing editor Kim S. Nash, CIO.com senior editor Brian Eastwood, Network World senior writer Brandon Butler and Computerworld technologies editor Johanna Ambrosio. This package, based on an idea from CIO executive editor Mitch Betts, was edited by Network World executive features editor Neal Weinberg, designed by Steve Sauer and illustrated by Chris Koehler.

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4 security tips for Apple Pay users

A payments industry expert shares four tips to help you get safely and security started with Apple's new contactless payment system, Apple Pay.

Many security experts agree that Apple Pay and contactless payment systems like it are an improvement over traditional credit-card based systems. However, Apple Pay is still new and relatively untested, and it's wise to approach it strategically.

Peter Olynick, card and payments practice lead with Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group, a management-technology consulting firm, says the following four best practices are a great way to get started with Apple Pay.

First, don't simply add all of your payment cards. "You should start off using one [credit card] … If there is an issue, you've mitigated the problem down to one card."

Apple Pay aside, Olynick recommends having one credit card for your online transactions and another for "physical" in-store purchases. Most of your Apple Pay purchases will be made in stores, so you shouldn't use your online card for Apple Pay, Olynick says.
Stick to Credit Cards, Avoid Debit Cards

You should also stick to credit cards, and not debit cards, when using Apple Pay, according to Olynick. Credit card companies typically offer much better fraud protection than banks that issue debit cards. If your account is compromised it's the credit card company's funds that are in limbo, and not yours, he says.
Avoid Items You Might Want to Return

It's a good idea to make to sure that the first few purchases you make using Apple Pay won't need to be returned. Sales clerks who are new to Apple Pay may not be familiar with the payment process, let alone the returns process, Olynick says. "Returns are always difficult, and you don't want to use a brand new device if you might need to request a return."
Closely Monitor Account Statements and Apple Pay Charges

Finally, watch your account statement very closely during the first few months following the Apple Pay launch, according to Olynick. Again, the system is new, and some growing pains can be expected. Some Bank of America customers report double charges on their statements, so it's a good idea to make sure you're being charged the appropriate amounts for Apple Pay purchases.

"The security element is great, biometric is fantastic, but I want to be careful about leveraging any new technology," Olynick says. "Apple Pay is getting a lot of press, and the bad guys are out there working really hard trying to figure out how they can get into this."

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Cisco and Kansas City to launch network for smart city services

Components include an incubator for startups to build apps and other services for residents and visitors

Officials from networking giant Cisco Systems and Kansas City, Mo., have signed a letter of intent to launch a new network for smart city services.

Elements of the project call for designing mobile apps for citizen access, digital interactive kiosks, smart street lights and video surveillance in an area called the city's innovation district.

The project is designed to complement the city's build out of a two-mile downtown streetcar path, Cisco said in a statement yesterday.

Kansas City, Mo. and its neighbor, Kansas City, Kans., are already getting plenty of outside attention from tech giant Google, which picked the area for its first deployment of Google Fiber, an initiative to install fiber optic cable there and in other cities.

Google won't say how many households are connected to Google Fiber in the area, but it has already installed 6,000 miles of fiber optic cable. Meanwhile, cable provider Time Warner has provisioned 11,000 Wi-Fi hotspots for its Internet customers to use from mobile devices in various Kansas City area locales, including the popular eight-block restaurant and bar district on the edge of downtown called the Power & Light District.

While some citizen groups have been concerned that Google Fiber isn't reaching enough low-income families in the area with gigabit fiber, there's a general recognition by city officials that people of all income levels use smartphones and other wireless devices fairly widely. That can only help the Cisco initiative with Kansas City for wireless services.

Kansas City, Mo. Mayor Sly James said the initiative with Cisco promises to connect city services and information with visitors and residents "like never before."

Third-party app developers will also have an opportunity to build unique and innovative apps for public use.

Cisco will use its Smart+Connected Communities reference architectures to evaluate the initiative and will work with the city and a business consultancy called Think Big Partners to manage a "living lab" incubator for the tech startup community.

Wim Elfrink, Cisco's executive vice president of industry solutions, credited city leaders with leading the "charge on innovation in the Midwest."

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Cisco and Kansas City to launch network for smart city services

Components include an incubator for startups to build apps and other services for residents and visitors

Officials from networking giant Cisco Systems and Kansas City, Mo., have signed a letter of intent to launch a new network for smart city services.

Elements of the project call for designing mobile apps for citizen access, digital interactive kiosks, smart street lights and video surveillance in an area called the city's innovation district.

The project is designed to complement the city's build out of a two-mile downtown streetcar path, Cisco said in a statement yesterday.

Kansas City, Mo. and its neighbor, Kansas City, Kans., are already getting plenty of outside attention from tech giant Google, which picked the area for its first deployment of Google Fiber, an initiative to install fiber optic cable there and in other cities.

Google won't say how many households are connected to Google Fiber in the area, but it has already installed 6,000 miles of fiber optic cable. Meanwhile, cable provider Time Warner has provisioned 11,000 Wi-Fi hotspots for its Internet customers to use from mobile devices in various Kansas City area locales, including the popular eight-block restaurant and bar district on the edge of downtown called the Power & Light District.

While some citizen groups have been concerned that Google Fiber isn't reaching enough low-income families in the area with gigabit fiber, there's a general recognition by city officials that people of all income levels use smartphones and other wireless devices fairly widely. That can only help the Cisco initiative with Kansas City for wireless services.

Kansas City, Mo. Mayor Sly James said the initiative with Cisco promises to connect city services and information with visitors and residents "like never before."

Third-party app developers will also have an opportunity to build unique and innovative apps for public use.

Cisco will use its Smart+Connected Communities reference architectures to evaluate the initiative and will work with the city and a business consultancy called Think Big Partners to manage a "living lab" incubator for the tech startup community.

Wim Elfrink, Cisco's executive vice president of industry solutions, credited city leaders with leading the "charge on innovation in the Midwest."

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Data center consolidation pays off, feds find3

Republicans and Democrats in Congress rarely seem to agree on anything anymore, but top members from both sides Friday offered qualified support for efforts to consolidate federal data centers.

The action was prompted by a federal watchdog agency report that says U.S. data center consolidation efforts are paying off and have delivered savings of $1.1 billion.

Most of these savings, $850 million or 74% of the total, were the result of efforts by the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Treasury, according to the General Accountability Office, which measured savings from the federal data-center consolidation effort from 2011 through 2013.

In total, government agencies have counted 9,658 data centers. The government definition of a data center is broad and includes small operations tucked into oversized closets. The government has closed 10% of its data centers and plans to shut 44% of them by the end 2015.

Overall, all the participating federal agencies expect to save $3.3 billion by the end of 2015, which is about $300 million more than the White House's original savings estimate.

The GAO's results were such that leaders and ranking members of oversight committees sent out a joint statement on the effort. Democrats and Republican leaders welcomed the GAO's findings, although they all agreed that more can be done.

"While the report is welcome news, the federal government is still wasting as much as 25% of an estimated $80 billion in annual federal IT expenditures through a lack of consolidation," said U.S. Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the subcommittee on Government Operations. That waste is the result of "the use and acquisition of outmoded technologies and a failure to utilize cost savings measures," he said.

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said the GAO report "underscores that more savings are possible in data center consolidation than the administration has estimated."

Indeed, the savings might actually be higher, according to the GAO. Six agencies that closed 67 data centers alone reported limited or no savings because they couldn't estimate a baseline cost.

U.S Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said the report underscores a need for improving reporting.

"As the saying goes, you can't manage what you can't measure," Carper said. "Without accurate tracking and reporting of performance measures, we run the risk of not achieving the full potential savings."

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Chromebook Pixel revisited: 18 months with Google's luxury laptop

Is it crazy to pay $1300 for a Chromebook? Some reflections after a year and a half of living with Google's luxurious Pixel.

When you stop and think about it, it's kind of astonishing how far Chromebooks have come.

It was only last February, after all, that Google's Chromebook Pixel came crashing into our lives and made us realize how good of an experience Chrome OS could provide.

At the time, the Pixel was light-years ahead of any other Chromebook in almost every possible way: From build quality to display and performance, the system was just in a league of its own. And its price reflected that status: The Pixel sold for a cool $1300, or $1450 if you wanted a higher-storage model with built-in LTE support.

Today, the Pixel remains the sole high-end device in the Chromebook world (and its price remains just as high). But the rest of the Chrome OS universe has evolved -- and the gap between the Pixel and the next notch down isn't quite as extreme as it used to be.

So how has the Pixel held up 18 months after its release, and does it still justify the lofty price? I've owned and used the Pixel since last spring and have evaluated almost every other Chromebook introduced since its debut.

Here are some scattered thoughts based on my experiences:

1. Hardware and design
As I said when I revisited the device a year ago, the Chromebook Pixel is hands-down the nicest computer I've ever used. The laptop is as luxurious as it gets, with a gorgeous design, premium materials, and top-notch build quality that screams "high-end" from edge to edge.
Chromebook Pixel Revisited

We're finally starting to see some lower-end Chromebooks creep up in the realms of design and build quality -- namely the original HP Chromebook 11 (though it's simply too slow to recommend for most people) and the ThinkPad Yoga 11e Chromebook (which is sturdy and well-built but not exactly sleek) -- and that's a very good thing. In fact, that's a large part of what Google was ultimately trying to accomplish by creating the Pixel in the first place. Think about it.

While those devices may be a step up from the status quo, though, they're not even close to the standard of premium quality the Pixel delivers. When it comes to hardware, the Pixel is first-class through and through while other products are varying levels of economy.

The Pixel's backlit keyboard and etched-glass trackpad also remain unmatched in their premium nature. Typing and navigating is a completely different experience on this laptop than on any other Chromebook (and, for that matter, on almost any non-Chrome-OS laptop, too).

The same goes for the Pixel's spectacular speakers. Other Chromebooks are okay, but none is anywhere near this outstanding.

2. Display
The display -- man, oh man, the display. The Pixel's 12.85-in. 2560-x-1700 IPS screen is like candy for your eyes. The vast majority of Chromebook screens (yes, even those that offer 1080p resolution) are still using junky TN panels and consequently look pretty awful. The two exceptions are the same systems mentioned above -- the HP 11 and the ThinkPad Yoga 11e -- but while those devices' displays reign superior in the sub-$500 category, their low resolution is no match for the Pixel's crystal-clear image quality.

I continue to appreciate the Pixel's touchscreen capability to this day, too: While I certainly don't put my fingers on the screen all the time, it's really nice to have the ability to reach up and tap, scroll, or pinch when I feel the urge. For as much time as I spend using smartphones and tablets, it seems completely natural to be able to do that with a laptop as well. (Admit it: You've tried to touch a non-touchscreen laptop at some point. We all have.)
"Performance is where things get particularly interesting"

I will say this, though: The time I've spent recently with the Yoga 11e has definitely gotten me keen on the idea of a Chromebook being able to convert into a tablet-like setup. After using that device, I sometimes find myself wishing the Pixel's display could tilt back further and provide that sort of slate-style experience.

3. Stamina and performance
At about five hours per charge, the Pixel's battery life is passable but not exceptional -- especially compared to the eight to 10 hours we're seeing on some systems these days. As I've mused before, stamina is the Pixel's Achilles' heel.

Performance is where things get particularly interesting: When the Pixel first came out, its horsepower was unheard of for a Chrome OS device. I could actually use the system in my typical power-user way, with tons of windows and tabs running at the same time and no slowdowns or multitasking misery. Compared to the sluggish Chrome OS systems we'd seen up to that point, it felt like a full-fledged miracle.

The Pixel's performance is no less impressive today, but what's changed is that other Chrome OS systems have actually come close to catching up. These days, you can get solid performance in a Chromebook for around $200 with the various Haswell-based systems. The newer Core i3 devices give you a little more punch for around $300. Neither quite reaches the Pixel's level of snappiness and speed, but in practical terms, they're not too far behind.

So for most folks, performance alone is no longer a reason to own the Pixel. It's an important part of the Pixel, for sure, but if that's the only thing you're interested in, you'd do far better to save yourself the cash and get a lower-end Chromebook with decent internals.

To Pixel or not to Pixel?
What is a reason to own the Pixel, then? Simple: to enjoy a top-of-the-line Chrome OS experience with all the amenities you could ask for. The device's hardware quality and design, keyboard and trackpad, speakers, and display add up to make a wonderful overall user experience no other Chromebook can match.

As for whether it's worth the price, well, that's a question only you can answer. Is a high-end car worth the premium over a reliable but less luxurious sedan? For someone like me, probably not. But for someone who's passionate about cars, spends a lot of time in a vehicle and appreciates the elevated quality, it just might be.

The same concept applies here. The Pixel remains a fantastic luxury option for users sold on the Chrome OS concept -- people like me who rely heavily on cloud storage and spend most of their time using Web-centric apps and services.

Like with any luxury item, the level of quality the Pixel provides certainly isn't something anyone needs, but its premium nature is something a lot of folks will enjoy -- and that's as true today as it was last year.

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New products of the week July 14, 2014

 Our roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.

Product name: APCON IntellaFlex 3288-XR Switch with WebXR
Key features: High availability, scalable network monitoring switch: 288 non-blocking 1G/10G ports, web-based management software, packet aggregation, filtering and manipulation, rate conversion, load balancing, 40G trunking, easy maintenance with hot swappable modules. More info.

Product name: Kaseya Traverse
Key features: Traverse is a breakthrough cloud and service-level monitoring solution that provides real-time visibility into the performance of virtualized IT services allowing proactive SLA management and rapid root-cause analysis. More info.

Product name: Niagara 4272
Key features: is a network packet broker that supports up to 72 ports of 1Gbps and/or 10Gbps, for aggregation, mirroring, filtering and packet slicing in a 1U. More info.

Product name: Identity Data Platform (Version 4.6)
Key features: A Customer Identity Management Solution delivering one, common customer profile with unlimited scalability and 5X the performance of legacy products, now featuring social log-in and advanced, multi-factor authentication. More info.

Product name: Anturis 2.0
Key features: Targeted to SMBs and web hosters, Anturis 2.0 provides enterprise-grade IT monitoring and troubleshooting -- all in a simple and easy-to-use cloud-based solution. More info.

Product Name: ProtectFile for Linux
Key features: ProtectFile delivers transparent and seamless encryption of sensitive data stored in Apache Hadoop clusters. It presents limited drag on performance and doesn’t require the re-architecting of existing big data implementations. More info.

Product name: Marketing Cloud Management (MCM)
Key features: is a SaaS solution that helps lines of business leaders to collaborate and evaluate digital marketing technology investments including operational costs, site performance and data leakage. More info.

Product name: iboss 7.0
Key features: expands malware and APT protection by incorporating 'lean forward' technologies such as Behavioral Data Baselining to detect anomalies, Sandboxing, and increased detection and response capabilities for infected devices on the network. More info.

Product name: Chekkt.com
Key features: Chekkt is a new B2B hub that helps businesses discover and compare the best SaaS solutions and services based on crowd-sourced user ratings and reviews. More info.

Product name - iNetSec Smart Finder
Key features - is an all-in-one solution that combines full network visualization of all wired and wireless devices and applications used, with the addition of new IPS features. More info.

Product name – SignNow by Barracuda
Key features – The new SignNow Kiosk Mode for iPads can be used in waiting rooms, check-in tables or anywhere else that requires gathering multiple signatures on fresh copies of a document. More info.

Product name: Governance Portal for Third-Party Anti-Corruption
Key features: Software run in the cloud that allows clients to manage onboarding, response collection, automated watch-list lookup, false positive analysis and risk scorecard development for third-party business partners. More info.

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Cisco Live lives it up at 25

Conference mixed milestone revelry with stark realities of mission ahead

SAN FRANCISCO -- It started with a sobering declaration and ended with what for some was an inebriating party.

So went the week of Cisco Live, the 25th anniversary of the annual conference of Cisco customers from around the world. And Cisco did the milestone birthday justice, with keynotes and conference sessions hammering home the determined message that Cisco and its customers will lead the march to “Fast IT,” and a stadium appreciation party rocked by Lenny Kravitz and Imagine Dragons.

Before the fun though, a chilling forecast from CEO John Chambers: Some of the leading IT companies in existence now won’t be in five years. Chambers predicted a “brutal” industry consolidation that will leave only two to three of the top five IT titans standing.
Cisco LIve

“I’ve seen this movie before,” Chambers said. “They will have missed market transitions.”

And that was during the opening keynote! Two market transitions Cisco’s intent on not missing are the Internet of Things and Fast IT, its term for InterCloud networking based on its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) technology.

InterCloud is how Cisco describes moving workloads between different cloud providers in private, managed, hosted, hybrid and public cloud deployments, with common policy and mobility across all deployment models. The company’s ACI technology, founded on its Nexus 9000 switching hardware and Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC), is how Cisco proposes building an InterCloud.

ACI is also Cisco’s entry into the software-defined networking market, which has been viewed as a Cisco disruptor. Chambers left no doubt about Cisco’s intentions with SDN.

“We will be the best implementer of SDN in the world," he said in his same keynote address. "It will not only benefit Cisco. We will lead this industry."

On day two, company President Rob Lloyd’s keynote went deep into the components of Fast IT and InterCloud. It was clear the sales and development chief was leading this particular charge into hybrid clouds, where Cisco can leverage its installed base of private clouds needing connectivity to any provider.

Lloyd announced that longtime partner Dimension Data and its parent, NTT, joined Cisco’s InterCloud ecosystem. And later that day in a roundtable session with reporters, Lloyd invited all to join.

“If they embrace (InterCloud) constructs, we will expand the ecosystem and it could include any of the companies we think of today as major cloud providers,” Lloyd said when actually responding to a question on whether buying an established cloud provider, like the rumored target Rackspace, would benefit InterCloud.

Chambers was a bit more direct on the specific prospect: “That’s a market that is very, very price sensitive; that’s taking on the big giants in Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. So those are the types of scenarios we look at as a partnership opportunity.”

Chambers also expanded on the reasons behind his letter to President Obama after pictures appeared of an alleged alteration of Cisco equipment by the NSA for surveillance purposes.

“This is so important to our industry and the future of the Internet that we’ve got to change,” Chambers said. “It isn’t so important to how we got to where we are now; it’s what we must change as we go forward.”

Also on Day Two of its conference, Cisco gave an overview on how it spots and seeds market transitions in the making. It’s a crowdsourcing effort with 80 technology scouts that identify and submit what they think the next big things are, says Joel Bion, senior vice president of Cisco Research and Advanced Development. Cisco then takes the top 10 trends to drive investments from its $2 billion Cisco Investments fund.

One of those next big things is the Internet of Things/Everything and Day Three of Cisco Live was dedicated to it. Cisco rolled out a half-dozen public and private sector customers of IP-enabled city, building and business management systems and sensors that they said cut their costs and increased their revenue.

A networked building HVAC system let a 40-year-old Houston high-rise cut energy consumption in half over four years, from $4.3 million to $2.1 million, in 2009-2013. An Anheuser-Busch distributor in Texas installed Cisco VoIP, digital media systems and TelePresence in new distribution center to increase efficiency. The IP TV cameras lowered insurance costs, and sensors on beer trucks assist in inventory management.

And Bank of America is expanding an 85-branch TelePresence IoT pilot to 500 branch offices. It has 5,000 such offices around the U.S. and the trial is intended to bring the banking center representative to the consumer. In the face of online banking, 85% of Bank of America’s products are still sold through these 5,000 branches, said Tyler Johnson, senior vice president of ATM/kiosk strategy and innovation.

To secure the Internet of Things, Cisco ended the day with the rollout of advanced malware protection (AMP) appliances for both on-premises and off-premises malware blocking. Cisco also announced its intention to acquire ThreatGRID, another malware prevention company to complement Cisco’s AMP lineup.

Those announcements ended the day. But the day didn’t end. It was time to celebrate 25 years of Cisco Live and Networkers with silly birthday cakes hats at AT&T Park. It was time for thousands of Cisco customers and partners to embark on the next 25 years after ringing out the last.

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