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Forget choice: 50% of firms will demand you BYOD by 2017
When you are as bombarded by BYOD good-news stories as El Reg is these days, the central marketing message that emerges is it's all about "freedom of choice." Not for long, it seems, if the Gartner's analysts are correct: they forecast that half of all companies will enforce "choice" as a condition of employment.
The biggest …
Intel plucks new CEO Brian Krzanich from its own ranks
Intel has dipped into its own ranks to choose a new CEO who has already clocked up 30 years at the company.
The world’s largest chip manufacturer announced that former chief operating officer Brian Krzanich will be the new chief executive officer, six months after former CEO Paul Otellini announced his retirement following eight …
'I still get on the phone for a $5k deal' - NetSuite CEO's anti-SAP mission
Interview California-based Salesforce has been an unstoppable force in Software as a Service (SaaS) for 14 years. It pulled in $3.05bn in revenue last year, and just booted rival enterprise tech maker SAP from its slot as the world's number-one customer relationship management software (CRM) company.
But there’s another SaaS company that …
Huawei boss: Next CEO won't be member of my family
The Chinese telecoms giant won't be listing itself on any public exchange, and the founder's kids won't be taking up the reins either - as their dad reckons they're not up to the job.
Ren Zhengfei, who founded Huawei with a fistful of cash back in 1988, is now 68 years of age. Rumours have been circulating that he'd pass control …
IBM CEO Rometty swaps heads of strategy and servers
Ginni Rometty, who has been CEO at IBM for a year and a half, is making two big changes in the upper echelons of her management teams; she is swapping the head of corporate strategy and the head of its Systems and Technology Group, and it is presumably to get better results than IBM showed in its first quarter of 2013 in its …
Amazon: Hard luck Microsoft, AWS will always be cheaper
Amazon’s struck back at Microsoft camp over its "lowering" of its cloud computing prices by touting Amazon’s track record for saving money.
The etailer-turned-cloud-giant’s chief technology officer Werner Vogels yesterday claimed there had been 31 price reductions in AWS since the service went live in 2006 – seven years ago.
He …
Google's teeny UK tax bill 'just not right', thunders senior MP
Top Labour MP Margaret Hodge has told The Register that it's "just not right" for Google to get away with paying so little corporation tax in the UK.
Hodge, who heads up Parliament's influential Public Accounts Select Committee, rejected the advertising giant's executive chairman Eric Schmidt's defence of his company's tax …
The software industry: So efficient, we invented shelfware
It has always amused me that we work in an industry that has built up such a bad reputation for overselling that we actually coined the phrase "Shelfware".
To be fair and accurate about it, buyers are just as guilty as sellers here, and they often bulk-buy licences for software and services with little consideration, seldom …
Software designers: Lose your inhibitions, embrace complexity
Opinion One of the most persistent reasons quoted for software project failures is the gap between Business and IT – the lack of common understanding, clear communication and shared culture between those that commission solutions and those that design and deliver them. The discipline of Systems Thinking can narrow the gap by envisaging …
Google tells Microsoft IE shops: We can help you with those 'legacy apps'
Google is chucking Chrome at businesses whose applications are hardwired to Internet Explorer - and coupled its offer with a snub to Redmond, claiming its once-proud browser has become "legacy".
The Chocolate Factory today released the Chrome Legacy Browser Support extension that - with additional fiddling courtesy of your IT …
Why hacking and platforms are the future of NHS IT
Opinion Apart from those who have a commercial vested interest does anyone still believe in large top-down centrally architected IT solutions? Public sector IT in the UK is littered with expensive white elephants, and it sometimes seems as if the only beneficiaries are the large IT contractors, who can threaten significant job losses or …
CIOs: Are you your CEO's business partner or their gimp?
Secret CIO The title CIO is often suggested, mostly as satire, to stand for Career Is Over, usually by bitter people who applied for the job but didn’t get it.
The joke isn't true but nor is it totally without foundation, because the days of the career CIO seem to be coming to an end.
These days CIO is often a position taken by someone on …
Tax man to take a bite of tech employees' free meals?
The free meals doled out by Silicon Valley titans such as Facebook and Google may soon carry an additional burden for employees: the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly weighing whether to count them as income for tax purposes.
The agency itself is keeping mum on the topic, but The Wall Street Journal cites tax …
If only enterprise IT worked like my iPad ... or at least my car
Opinion Do you remember when computers were hard to use?
Not so long ago our collective opinion was neatly summarized by the apocryphal GM press release which asserted that if they developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars that for no reason at all, would crash twice a day, shut down and refuse to restart.
Since …
How the iPad ruined the lives of IT architects
For IT architects, one of the most important non-functional requirements to determine is the availability needs of a system’s users.
It’s often expensive and risky adding availability features to an already deployed solution, so getting it right first time is important. In current times however, we’re being asked to regularly …
Hi-tech horses racing: how to stay Happy down in the Valley
Hong Kongers love to gamble. It’s a serious business over here, and one that can generate at least HK$100m (£8.5m) in turnover from every race.
That money goes to the Hong Kong Jockey Club, a venerable institution formed by the British in 1884 to promote horse racing, which has a monopoly on betting in the city-state.
Every …
Jobs' first boss Nolan Bushnell: 'Steve was difficult but valuable'
Steve Jobs' first boss, Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell, has written a book in which he offers advice on how to find, hire, and retain visionary talent – even though such creative types can be as difficult to deal with as Apple's cofounder.
"The truth is that very few companies would hire Steve, even today," Bushnell writes. "Why …
Dell directors foresee unremitting brutality in PC market
The global PC business is in a woeful state, and Dell founder, chairman, and CEO Michael Dell thinks the best way to put his eponymous company back on top is give it reconstructive surgery away from the prying eyes of the public stock market.
In a 274-page proxy filing with the SEC on Friday, information trickled out about …
Spotting a Big Data faker as you set up Big Data for someone
Having read my last Big Data piece, I fear that some of you will try to blag your way out of the declining Oracle/Java/VB market without the legs to support what’s on your CV.
This article is not for you: it’s for the poor souls who have to catch you out whilst trying to get in someone who’s at least mildly competent. There are …
Revealed: Vendors’ worst sales fluff
Reg readers often show little love for analysts, labelling them over-priced prognosticators with tenuous ties to reality.
But a new Gartner blog post on "Useless Sales Pitch Slides" may win back some favour, as it reveals the six worst pieces of meaningless marketing messaging vendors put before the firm, and those to whom they …
Are the PCs all getting a bit old at your office? You're not alone
Business PC refresh cycles are set to stretch even further, according to IDC analysis - heaping more strain on vendors and channel partners.
This comes against a backdrop of declining global sales of desktops and notebooks, which fell by 4.1 per cent and 3.4 per cent respectively in 2012 compared to 2011. No near-term uptick is …
British spooks chum up with IT-related biz to battle cyber threats
The UK government has launched a scheme designed to promote greater information sharing on cyber threats between businesses and government.
Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for the UK national cyber security strategy, is due to launch the Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership (CISP) later today ( …
India’s outsourcers battle for customers in a cloudy universe
Analysis The rumblings started in the late 1990s. Indian services companies were getting into outsourcing. Almost before the news broke, deals followed. Before long, India was a destination for all manner of serious jobs and a byword for getting things done well and at a price western nations struggled to match.
Fast forward a decade or …
Time to put 'Big Data' on a forced diet
Data is big business. These days they've even started calling it “Big Data”, just in case its potential for unbridled magnitude had escaped anyone. Of course, if you have Big Data you need somewhere to put it. Hence storage is also big business.
On the one hand this is a good thing, but that's just because several of my …
Whatever happened to telepresence? From $2.5m deals to free iPad apps
Feature Cast your mind back nearly 10 years and high-end videoconferencing with its eye-watering price was being touted as the substitute for the corporate jet. At the time, having remote video streams to view your conference room was a big deal that involved an awful lot of looking after and a continuous investment each month for the …
Rackspace: Why we're designing our own cloud servers
Exclusive Any cloud computing provider that wants to operate at scale and compete against its peers is under pressure to build some kind of custom hardware. It may, in fact, be necessary to compete at all.
That is what Rackspace, which is making the transition from website hosting to cloud systems, believes. And that's why the San Antonio …
Googlification of Britain: Forget 'IT worker', we're all just 'digital' now
The central government CIO job vacated by Andy Nelson will not be filled, according to the Cabinet Office. Nelson was cut loose from the decision-making centre and plonked into the same role at the Department for Work and Pensions.
The Cabinet Office confirmed on Thursday that there was no longer a need for a CIO-to-rule-them- …
Attention, CIOs: Stop outsourcing or YOU will never retire
Walk down the hall. Look into the IT room. How old are the people in there? How are they getting on? Or are they just getting on? Would you trust them to keep the server lights on in a couple of years? Is there anybody actually in there at all?
If there isn’t, your company may be part of the problem that’s keeping John Harris …
Oz Bank share price dives after reveal of IBM/Oracle plan
Is it feasible that investors are belatedly learning that a technology refresh might involve spending huge amounts of money on risky projects?
If the National Australia Bank's experience yesterday (13 March) is any guide, the answer might be a tentative “yes”. The bank, which suffered some high-profile outages during 2012, …
IT chiefs choose Choose-YOD over full fat BYOD for now
Insight EMEA boss Stuart Fenton says BYOD is failing to set the world alight: but a half-fat version is gaining some traction within enterprises.
Talking at the annual Insight Technology Show 2013, attended by some 2,000 representatives at 1,500 customers, Fenton told The Channel that "Choose YOD" is whipping up some interest …
BYOD: Bring Your Own Device - or Bring Your Own Disaster?
Live Chat In most discussions of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and consumerisation the experts' mistrust of users is evident. Typically, IT departments are not keen on people bringing their own devices into work with the expectation that apps, services and support will just magically work.
But some organisations have decided to trust the …
1 in 7 WinXP-using biz bods DON'T KNOW Microsoft is pulling the plug
A large number of Microsoft customers are in for a rude awakening on 8 April 2014.
With less than 400 days to go, 15 per cent of those running Windows XP are still unaware that that’s the date Microsoft finally turns off all support for its legacy PC operating system, according to a recent survey.
After 8 April next year, …
IT sector needs to keep getting greener: Alcatel-Lucent study
The IT industry needs to work on efficiency to curb its unrelenting demand for electricity – and even if it does, by 2020 it will be responsible for four per cent of the world's greenhouse gas output, according to an Alcatel-Lucent-funded study.
The assessment, conducted by BIO Intelligence Services, suggests that the four per …
Amazon accused of knocking off AWS customers' products
Exclusive The torrential growth of Amazon Web Services' cloud is coming at the expense of the web giant's customers, some of its partners contend – and they're not happy about the tactics being used by the company.
For several months, Amazon has been encroaching onto the turf of other companies, typically by producing knockoffs of …
US economy defies Fiscal Cliff, creates plenty of IT services jobs
The US federal government's budget crisis at the end of 2012 did mess with America's economy and the jobs market in particular. But according to the latest employment report from the Department of Labor, companies were a tad more resilient in the face of the Fiscal Cliff than many had expected.
As El Reg reported a month ago, …
'Mainframe blowout' knackered millions of RBS, NatWest accounts
A hardware fault in one of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group's mainframes prevented millions of customers from accessing their accounts last night.
A spokesman said an unspecified system failure was to blame after folks were unable to log into online banking, use cash machines or make payments at the tills for three hours on …
New UK.gov cyber-security standard puts MANAGERS in firing line
The UK government is seeking to hear from businesses that would be interested in submitting evidence to help form a new "organisational standard" for cyber security.
The Cyber Security and Resilience Team within the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills (BIS) has asked businesses to detail initial interest in …
RBS and NatWest FAIL downs services across UK
Updated Thirsty NatWest and RBS customers across the UK are finding it difficult to get the last round in tonight, as the banks' systems have failed.
The megabork, which began at around 9:30pm, has taken down cash machines, online banking and telephone banking for the majority of its customers across the UK.
"We are aware of the …
Corporates! Bring in all-purpose filler for IT skills gap, thunders Steelie Neelie
Brussels' unelected digital czar warned on Monday that the European Union's competitive strength in the media and technology markets could be weakened if people fail to continue to develop the right IT skills.
Neelie Kroes said that a coalition funded by the European Commission to the tune of €1m had been created to address that …
Amazon CTO: Big Data? An unfortunate, 'catchy phrase'
Technology Frontiers “I love that the world is data intensive... unfortunately, it’s called 'Big Data',” says Amazon’s chief technology officer Werner Vogels, who went on to describe BD as "a nice catchy phrase".
Did the CTO of a company in the top tier of those generating and storing billions of objects through retail sales and cloud service just …
Don't believe the IT hype: Ye cannae change the laws of physics
It's fun to be on the receiving end of IT advertising. The vendor's ads start by promising to solve your business problems better than the competition can, and then the superlatives begin to snowball until an answer to global warming and a solution for war in Iraq are both in there among the plug-ins you can buy to make your …
World spent $3.6 trillion on ICT in 2012 - analyst
International Data Corporation (IDC) said that the figure included what businesses had spent on telecoms services and that total expenditure on hardware, software and IT services alone had topped $2 trillion on its own. The latter figure represented a 5.9 per cent increase from the total IT expenditure in 2011 and was recorded …
