Authentication and Identity management support for access to applications and networked resources.
Multimedia production and support that includes Video Production, Streaming and Design and Illustration. Also inclusive of AV support , Conferencing support and Digital Signage.
Application support for all Administrative applications and databases. Also inclusive of Facilities and operational systems.
Delivering and supporting desktop computers, computer labs, printers and peripherals.
Support for all internet and voice services that include email, internet and network access, and telephone services.
Support for Security related services, including anti-virus software, virtual firewall, and encryption services.
Instructional technology and application support, with services that are inclusive of Learning Management systems (LMS), classroom and evaluation.
Application and server services and support, such as virtual server support, physical server hosting, and web application and site hosting.
Globe and Mail Technology - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 14:37
National Post Tech Desk - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 12:26
Plans for package delivery by drones were outlined in a patent application filed by Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest online retailer.
Application 20150120094, published in the database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office April 30, covers what Amazon calls an “unmanned aerial vehicle delivery system.” In April the Seattle-based company asked the Federal Aviation Administration for leniency on pending drone regulations. Its service would be known as Prime Air.
The company said the drones, still in development, would mostly fly at least 200 feet off the ground, relying on sensors and computers to select a route to customers’ doors and avoid hazards.
RelatedAmazon said in its patent application that the drones would have a safety barrier around the device enclosing the propellers and engine. The drone would receive inventory information and a destination location, retrieve the items from inventory, compute a route from a materials-handling facility and fly to the destination.
The inventory location could be a materials-handling facility or a third-party seller, Amazon said. The drone could communicate with others in the area to share information about traffic, weather and landing conditions.
If the drone must cross a road for automobiles, its navigation could be adjusted to minimize the potential for contact, according to the application. The drone could use the intended recipient’s mobile device to calculate a delivery location and bring the goods to customers even at a location other than the listed physical address, Amazon said.
Seattle-based Amazon applied for the patent in September 2014.
National Post Tech Desk - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 11:18
The Financial Post rounds up recent news that technology leaders need to know:
Microsoft announces Azure Data Lake
At its Build developers conference last week, Microsoft announced Azure Data Lake. A data lake is a relatively new concept, and consists of an enterprise wide repository of every type of data collected in a single place prior to any formal definition of requirements or schema. The Azure data lake is built for the cloud, and designed to support huge volumes of data.
Internet Explorer officially dead
Microsoft’s “Project Spartan” browser now has a name: Microsoft Edge. It will replace the venerable Internet Explorer as the default browser in Windows 10. As well as better performance and compatibility with today’s Web, it features the ability to annotate and comment on Web pages.
Cisco releases security advisory
Cisco has released a security advisory about a flaw in the web framework of Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) Central software. The exploit could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to take control of the system. There are no mitigating workarounds. The company has released an update to correct the issue (Cisco UCS Central Software Version 1.3(1a)).
RelatedHP updates performance testing tools
HP has announced Community Editions of its performance engineering software suite will be released into the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. LoadRunner and StormRunner Load have been updated with new features, and are pre-configured for Azure environments. LoadRunner is available now, while StormRunner Load will be available next month.
VMware recalls faulty patch
VMware has recalled patch ESXi550-201504002 after systems running VMware NSX for vSphere 6.x or Cisco Nexus 1000v became unable to communicate across hosts with their Edges or Distributed Routers. To recover, customers are advised to use the alternate boot bank to roll back to their previous build. The company has now released a replacement patch, VMware ESXi 5.5 Patch Release ESXi550-201505002 (build number: 2718055).
EMC offers OpenStack reference architectures
EMC has been working with partners to develop reference architectures to enable the use of three key OpenStack distributions on its hardware. The reference architecture guide describes the solution for managing storage life cycle (Cinder) using EMC storage technologies and partners’ OpenStack distributions based on the Juno release. A certified architecture for Mirantis is available now, while those for Red Hat and Canonical will be available soon.
Oracle announces Java 9 release date
After several years of development, Oracle has announced that the next major version of Java will be released on Sept. 22, 2016. The biggest change in Java 9 is the move to modularization, allowing users to only load or install the pieces needed for an application or task. It has taken Oracle five years to implement this because to do so it had to break down Java and rebuild it.
Intel releases new Xeon processors to support real-time analytics
Intel has released the Intel Xeon processor E7-8800/4800 v3 product families, with, it says, up to 6x improvement in business processing application performance for in-memory transactional workloads. Processors offer up to 18 cores, and what Intel says is the highest memory capacity per socket at up to 10x greater performance per socket. The processors also feature enhanced security and reliability. The company says that 17 systems manufacturers will be announcing systems based on the new platforms.
National Post Tech Desk - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 11:10
Storage giant EMC doesn’t do things in a small way. At its annual EMC World conference last week, it launched a series of products, blew one up during the keynote, and teased about a couple of open source initiatives. And that was just Day One.
The technology victim of the explosion was XtremIO 4.0, known as “The Beast”, the newest member of EMC’s XtremIO all-flash array family. It will be a free, non-disruptive software upgrade to the XtremIO version 3.0 arrays that supports enhanced scale-out replication based on EMC RecoverPoint software, larger clusters (there’s a new 40 TB X-Brick coming to deliver petabytes of capacity per rack), online expansion with no downtime, multi-array management from a common console, improved reporting, and better scalability. In addition, XtremIO’s copy data management functions are integrated into key enterprise application management stacks such as VMware, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange to automate use cases including the scheduling, attachment and expiration of space-efficient copies to application hosts.
Oh – and the explosion? Well, after components were yanked out of the demonstration Beast with no effect on performance, EMC’s president of the core technology group, Guy Churchward, cheerfully blew up the array to demonstrate XtremIO’s failover capabilities. And yes, it worked.
The XtremIO 4.0 software, along with 40TB X-Brick configurations, will be available for order this calendar quarter.
Next up was the announcement of the VCE VxRack System, from one of the newest members of the EMC federation, VCE. VxRack is a new family of hyper-converged RackScale Systems that enables enterprises and service providers to simplify the deployment of next generation scale out mobile, cloud, and distributed Tier 2 applications, starting with dozens of servers and expanding to thousands. They complement VCE’s Vblock and VxBlock converged infrastructure platforms.
There will be two versions: one offering the choice of hypervisor (VMware or KVM) or bare metal, which will ship in July, and one optimized for VMware based on VMware’s EVO:RACK technology; it will be previewed at VMworld in August.
The VSPEX family also received a new member, with the addition of VSPEX with VMAX 100K. EMC says that it will provide customers the ability to seamlessly bridge their VMware private cloud deployment with public clouds, allowing them to hyperconsolidate and connect on- and off-premise workloads into a hybrid cloud environment. It will scale to 2800 VMs. The company claims that TCO is reduced by 30 per cent over the previous generation of the technology.
VSPEX with VMAX 100K is available now.
Storing vast amounts of data is one thing, but protecting it and moving it from storage tier to storage tier as required is quite another challenge. At EMC World, the company introduced FAST.X, which fully automates data movement to storage across the data centre and to the public cloud, as well as CloudBoost, which connects protection workloads to EMC and third-party clouds. CloudBoost is now integrated with the Data Protection Suite, unlocking cloud storage as a seamless extension of EMC protection software. It is based on EMC’s recent acquisition of Maginatics.
To round out the offerings, Spanning Backup for Office 365 provides daily, automated backup, and accurate restore. All will be available this quarter.
Sophos Naked News - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 08:20
National Post Tech Desk - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 08:10
Something very weird is happening in the tech world: Microsoft looks cool again.
The guileless, style-less suburban dad of digital America — maker of Clippy, Vista and the Zune — is suddenly intriguing developers, exciting customers and building things people actually want to use.
Now piloted by Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s 47-year-old dealmaker, the US$390 billion tech giant is making friends with an army of developers, administrators and former antagonists who are helping strengthen its software and spread the word.
Just a year into the job, Nadella, Microsoft’s third chief executive in 40 years, has pushed the tech titan into surprising territory, unveiling a free version of Windows 10 that pledges to fix the sins of its predecessors while also playing nice with start-ups and studios that once left it behind.
But the Redmond, Washington-based giant is also using its gargantuan budget, including US$11 billion spent last year on research and development, in hopes of forging the next generation of tech. One of its biggest, riskiest bets in years: the HoloLens, its sci-fi-style “augmented reality” goggles that project virtual objects in plain sight.
“What things like HoloLens show is this is a company that is still fighting very hard to produce innovative ideas,” said Brad Reback, a managing director and analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “Some will work. Some won’t . . . but everyone’s paying attention.”
Within the last year, Microsoft cleaned house in its highest ranks, invested heavily in its Xbox One gaming console and spent US$2.5 billion to buy Minecraft, one of the world’s best-selling video games. It also unveiled some long-awaited software, such as Office for the iPad, which helped send its stock to a 14-year high.
RelatedWithin the past week, the company went viral with a photo analyzer that guessed (with varying success) how old someone looked and with news that Windows 10 will be the first version with its own middle-finger emoji, shareable in six skin tones.
Even Wall Street is finding something to love. Microsoft’s shares have climbed about 15 per cent since its earnings call last month and more than 40 per cent since 2013. Investors who once sought to cozy up to smaller tech start-ups are suddenly praising the new leadership of one of the world’s biggest computing juggernauts.
Some will work. Some won’t . . . but everyone’s paying attention
Microsoft has never had a heavily hyped, style-oozing release like Apple’s iPod or iPhone. But in the Bill Gates era, the company showed a certain verve and excitement that proved, in the early tech industry, hard to match. Twenty years ago, thousands waited in line to pay US$90 for their fresh copy of Windows 95.
In the years after Gates stepped down as chief executive, in 2000, the company began to bungle releases and lose out on basically every big market-mover in tech, ceding ground to Google, Apple, Amazon and many others on smartphones, search and social networks, as well as online music, books and ads.
Under the watch of Nadella, analysts say Microsoft has radically changed even its most bread-and-butter tech.
David Paul Morris/BloombergThe Microsoft Corp. HoloLens augmented reality headset is demonstrated during a keynote session at the Microsoft Developers Build Conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Wednesday, April 29, 2015.It has revamped one of its dustiest offerings, Internet Explorer, and plans to unveil a new, streamlined browser, Edge, to compete with Google Chrome. And Windows 10, set for a summer release, is designed to run on nearly every device on the market, including laptops, tablets and smartphones.
Most notably, Windows 10 will be offered for free to the millions now working on Windows 7 and 8, transitioning what was once one of the company’s fastest-growing moneymakers into a new way to win customer loyalty.
Nadella has pivoted the company away from selling discs loaded with software to users every few years to selling subscriptions to cloud-based services, such as Office 365, that let users run Outlook, Word and Excel from the Web.
Microsoft is optimistic about the results these changes will bring. Nadella expects Microsoft’s yearly corporate-cloud earnings will more than triple within three years, to US$20 billion, and the company wants 1 billion users to be using Windows 10 by 2018.
Microsoft is still one of the world’s most colossal tech firms: 1.5 billion devices worldwide run Windows, and 300 million Windows-loaded personal computers are sold every year. The company had profits of US$22 billion last year, nearly enough to buy Twitter, and still has US$95 billion in cash on hand.
AP Photo/Elaine ThompsonMicrosoft's Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Operating Systems Group, demonstrates new features of its flagship operating system Windows.But with its 118,000 employees and worldwide tech empire, Microsoft will never be as new or nimble as Silicon Valley’s glitziest start-ups. The company also lacks the moonshot projects of Google or the fashionable mojo of Apple. Campaigns like the Windows Phone have been costly disappointments, while innovative computers like the Surface still sit deep below (literally) the hype and sales of Apple’s iPad.
The HoloLens, analysts said, will mark the biggest test for whether the new Microsoft can restore some former glory. Though some reviewers have praised it as “one of the most amazing pieces of tech I’ve seen,” others have said it falls flat on the basics — for instance, having a field of view that is too constrained.
The risks are huge. The HoloLens is a new and untested gadget in a new and untested industry. Even if it beats out rivals such as Facebook’s Oculus Rift, there’s no guarantee people will want to strap bulky computers to their heads.
The HoloLens could easily go the way of the product on which its motion-sensing cameras were designed: the Kinect, a heavily marketed Xbox add-on that Microsoft increasingly avoids mentioning.
Yet the company once dinged as a modern tech monopoly, analysts said, is doing well to not show any sweat. In other words, it’s playing it cool. As Microsoft executive Dave O’Hara said at a Goldman Sachs technology conference in February, “For us it is more about . . . what the customers wanted and less about the competition.”
Washington Post
National Post Tech Desk - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 07:03
A little of the lustre on GoDaddy Inc. shares has come off since its successful market debut on April 1, but analysts seem very confident that more gains are coming.
The website-hosting service jumped more than 30 per cent on its first trading day, but has since pulled back about five per cent.
RBC Capital Markets and J.P. Morgan — both underwriters for the IPO — initiated coverage of GoDaddy with buy ratings on Monday.
Analyst Sterling Auty at J.P. Morgan is the more bullish of the two, with a US$33 price target.
He expects GoDaddy’s growth to benefit from a healthy environment for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), its expanding international presence, and the emergence of new generic top-level domains such as .shop, .science and .bank.
Calling it the Wal-Mart of the domain industry, Auty noted that GoDaddy’s large sales and marketing investments have produced an 81-per-cent brand awareness level in the U.S., serving to attract the largest volume of customers in the industry.
“While there are a number of other competitors in the space, we believe GoDaddy will continue to receive a disproportionate amount of traffic and thus the largest potential customer conversion opportunity,” the analyst said in a report.
Mark Mahaney at RBC, whose price target on the stock is US$30, noted that GoDaddy is one of the strongest recent Internet IPOs thanks to its 13 million customers, substantial market share, and consistent growth and profitability.
He thinks the company faces a multi-billion-dollar total addressable market that includes more than 200 million SMBs worldwide. Nearly 500,000 small businesses are started each month in the U.S. alone, and more than half are not currently online.
Mahaney also noted that GoDaddy’s business model consistently generates double-digit revenue growth and EBITDA margins in the high teens.
“We view the GoDaddy management team as particularly strong and experienced,” the analyst told clients. “We also believe the company has developed significant competitive advantages based in part on its large size and scale.”
National Post Tech Desk - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 05:56
Some people say Twitter is still the place where you tell the world what you ate for breakfast, but for digital strategist Martin Waxman, it’s the farthest thing from that.
He visits the platform to learn about the world. Because of Twitter, he buys fewer magazines, yet reads more widely than ever. He’s built a career convincing boomers that these social sites aren’t just frivolous fads. He loves Twitter, especially the mobile app. He can’t figure out why more people don’t love it, too.
“I don’t know why it’s not in the 500, 800 million-user range,” said Waxman, a 25-year communications industry veteran who runs a consulting firm in Toronto. The latest quarterly figures show nine-year-old Twitter Inc. has gathered 302 million monthly active users, which is a lot, but still a dwarf compared with rival Facebook Inc.’s 1.44 billion. “Maybe they need to retell their own story so people can realize it’s amazing.”
Waxman isn’t the only one who’s noticed the sluggish growth in Twitter’s user base of late, but that’s only half its problem: Twitter last month posted its weakest quarterly revenue growth as a public company and warned about “headwinds” in its current period. Since reporting the lacklustre first-quarter results on April 28, shares have plunged more than 25 per cent in New York to US$37.59, erasing roughly US$9 billion in value.
“I wouldn’t characterize it as a problem,” says Shailesh Rao, the company’s vice-president of emerging markets, when asked about stalling growth. He manages Twitter’s offices outside of the United States and Europe, which includes the growing Toronto outpost.
The vision we have is something that’ll play out for a longer time horizon than certainly a quarter
“There are communities out there that are still learning about Twitter and that’s a learning process that’ll continue,” he said in an interview. “The vision we have is something that’ll play out for a longer time horizon than certainly a quarter.”
He’s right. Twitter is young, and these hiccups could be growing pains. The site’s functional shortfalls — it’s hard for new users to navigate, its mediocre click-through rates on direct-response ads, its spotty data analytics, among others — are under repair and new iterations are being introduced, the company has said.
“Twitter is in the early innings of a long game,” said Sarah Hindlian, a New York City-based tech analyst at Brean Capital, “one that we do not anticipate will be linear.” But in today’s equity markets, where traders increasingly jump in and out of stocks hastily, patience to wait and see what could be is ever-thin.
RelatedWhile Twitter doesn’t disclose the specifics of its user count for competitive reasons, it does say close to 80 per cent of accounts are located outside the U.S.
Rao boasts that Canada has been “punching way above our weight class” in both adoption and ad spending, citing ComScore data that show more people use Twitter on a per capita basis here than they do in the U.S. Canada also ranks among Twitter’s top 10 revenue contributors in the world. Rao, who was born in Toronto, uses the words “consistent growth market,” “inspiration,” “innovation” and “cutting edge” to describe what Canadians have done on the site.
“Some of the most iconic Canadian brands [are] doing some of the most innovative work on the platform globally,” said Rao, who flew in from Singapore to celebrate the opening of Twitter’s new, spacious office in downtown Toronto. He names Canadian Tire Corp., Rogers Communications Inc. and Kraft Foods Canada as some of the brands that have been “engaging the audience and really getting people to participate” using both regular tweets and Twitter’s expanding suite of “promoted” products.
Tony Matta, the chief marketing officer at Kraft Foods Canada, says his portfolio of brands publishes a “healthy mix” of Twitter content that’s organic and bought “to be in the moment with the consumer,” a prized trait of the platform for Matta.
He doesn’t have a “tie-breaking rule” to determine what content is more suitable for Twitter over Facebook, but gives Twitter an edge if being in real time matters to the campaign. But if the objective is to reach the largest audience, Facebook often wins in a knock out. The Kraft Hockeyville initiative, for example, has 4,142 followers on Twitter and 53,934 fans on Facebook.
What would happen to sales of Kraft products if Matta instructed his team to cease all Twitter activity? “I think it would make a difference, I just can’t quantify it in 2015 revenue terms,” he said. “I don’t think we have the metrics that are that specific.”
Matta did qualitatively predict that brand equity would start to decay, ties to the consumer would weaken, and price would drive volume. “You still don’t have a choice not to participate,” he added, “because this is the channel of communication for the modern consumer.”
This fear of losing out, which is shared by many consumer-facing companies, should come as a relief for a social network known in marketing circles for maintaining scant record of its users and their activities.
“I don’t think Twitter’s ad network and their targeting is as good as it should be,” said Leigh Himel, president of digital strategy agency Gravity Partners in Toronto. Advertising that works doesn’t just put a message in front of, say, 100,000 people — it reaches the right 100,000 people. Always.
To that end, how well Twitter’s algorithm matches a user’s interests with relevant ad material and pushes people further along the consumption chain is a work in process. “It’s early days,” Rao said. “It’ll get better and better over time,” especially since Twitter is increasingly billing itself as a one stop marketing shop.
Not all marketers want a deep dive into who follows their brands and why, as long as the dialogue is there. When asked if Twitter amasses enough data about users, Kraft’s Matta says: “We don’t look at that. I don’t think we’d get into that level of analysis.” He’s more concerned about interests than demographics. Nabob Coffee campaigns, for example, target people who either already follow the brand or tweet about coffee.
“If I’m going to join a conversation,” he said, “I’m going to join a conversation with coffee lovers.”
At times, conversation and commerce clash in obvious ways. The top reason to use the site for half of users in Canada is for breaking news, but Twitter can’t always monetize against these tweets.
“Around moments of tragedy or national crisis, you tend not see a lot advertising, just out of respect for what’s going on at that moment,” Rao said brands don’t fit into every conversation. Twitter makes money when they do.
“Maybe you only want to [chat with a brand on Twitter] when you have a problem or need something,” said Waxman. “But that’s okay, because brands can be in other places.”
Financial Post
cpellegrini@nationalpost.com
Sophos Naked News - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 04:59
Globe and Mail Technology - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 04:30
Sophos Naked News - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 03:45
Sophos Naked News - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 03:02
Sophos Naked News - Mon, 05/11/2015 - 02:26
Sophos Naked News - Sat, 05/09/2015 - 15:58
National Post Tech Desk - Fri, 05/08/2015 - 15:11
Postmedia Network Inc. has teamed up with SiriusXM Canada to launch National Post Radio.
Matt Gurney, a columnist and editor at the National Post, will host the radio show, which will feature a combination of topical commentary, debate and round-table discussion with Postmedia journalists and guests from across the country. It will be broadcast on the satellite network’s Canada Talks channel on weekday mornings.
Gurney said the idea for the show evolved after SiriusXM approached the National Post with a desire for more news-driven talk content.
“They gave me a call and asked if I would do an hour-long show where some ‘Posties’ talk to each other,” says Gurney. Eventually it was developed into a three-hour morning segment.
Gurney said that given the amount of time that Postmedia voices were appearing on the channel already, the partnership just made sense: “They were already having Post people all over their channel.”
Postmedia boasts the largest editorial staff of any news organization in the country, something Gurney says is a huge advantage when it comes to getting local coverage for a national audience. “Whenever we need something from across the country, we’re able to go there,” says Gurney.
Although this is Postmedia’s first radio show, Gurney said the challenge faced by most new shows — building a roster of talented and knowledgeable guests — is not an issue. “We already have rolodexes upon rolodexes of sources and guys we’ve worked with who have the gift for the gab.”
National Post Radio had its soft launch last Monday, with the official launch date set for Monday, May 11.
RelatedGlobe and Mail Technology - Fri, 05/08/2015 - 14:40
National Post Tech Desk - Fri, 05/08/2015 - 10:16
Salesforce.com Inc. CEO Marc Benioff is tackling yet another social issue: the gender pay gap.
Benioff, who grabbed headlines recently for his opposition to the controversial “religious freedom” law in Indiana, says he’s methodically combing through the pay of all 16,000 employees of his cloud-based software company to make sure his male and female employees are compensated fairly, according to a report in the Huffington Post Thursday.
He’s already given some women raises after finding differences in their pay, and he expects to hand out more. While Benioff said he didn’t know what the current pay divide was at the company, “when I’m done there will be no gap,” he told the Web site. “My job is to make sure that women are treated 100 percent equally at Salesforce in pay, opportunity and advancement.”
Benioff’s move has been called a “radical step” and a “brilliantly simple” way to close the gap. Yet research has also shown that it’s likely quite effective at improving the overall ranks of women at the company, too — perhaps even more so than traditional benefits designed to attract and retain women.
RelatedHere’s the evidence showing why Benioff is on to something. In a study released in November, the consulting firm Mercer asked 164 companies about their benefits and human resources tactics. One of the big findings from its results, which I wrote about at the time, was that companies with flexible work policies or maternity leave benefits were actually linked with a slower promotion of women into top ranks (though in many cases had higher current numbers of women). The explanation: Such benefits can lead to a check-the-box mentality, in which companies think they’ve done enough to help women along.
The report also found, however, two variables that appeared to have a positive impact on both current and future gender diversity — and they’re just what Benioff is doing. One was the involvement of company leaders and men in diversity programs; the other was having a team responsible for pay equity and a process that statistically examines any wage gaps they discover.
Benioff’s pay initiative is reportedly part of a program called Women’s Surge, designed to help improve the ranks of women at the company, where 85 percent of leaders and 71 percent of the overall workforce are men, according to Salesforce data. The program includes efforts to ensure that women make up at least 30 percent of all meetings and that female candidates are evaluated for new hires and promotions.
A team at Salesforce is also using its own analytics software to examine the salary data, determine whether there is a gap and surface the factors influencing it, according to Business Insider.
Salesforce isn’t alone in methodically reviewing the company’s potential gender pay gap. Mercer’s study found that 52 percent of the 164 companies that responded said they have a dedicated team for analyzing any salary differences between men and women.
Still, the combined punch — having not only a rigorous process for analyzing gender pay data, but an involved CEO who is willing to talk openly about the issue — could end up being very powerful.
My job is to make sure that women are treated 100 percent equally at Salesforce in pay, opportunity and advancement
That, after all, is what makes Benioff stand out here. It’s one thing for HR teams to comb through pay data (perhaps partly out of fear of lawsuits), and quite another for a chief executive to commit his time and attention to the issue and publicly hold himself accountable for ending any pay inequities on his watch.
Other companies are increasingly speaking out as well on how they’re addressing pay equity, such as Reddit’s decision to take negotiating out of the hiring process and Google’s focus on removing unconscious bias. Yet Benioff’s public leadership on this from the CEO perch sets the highest bar yet for more companies to reach.
National Post Tech Desk - Fri, 05/08/2015 - 09:43
BlackBerry Ltd. Chief Executive Officer John Chen has cut costs and started posting profits in his year and a half at the helm. But he’s still dealing with ghosts from the halcyon days.
Chen said his biggest challenge is convincing his employees that BlackBerry’s days as a smartphone-focused company are over.
“It’s a hard cultural shift in our company because we used to be the king of the hill,” he said at a May 5 event in the company’s hometown of Waterloo, Ontario. When Chen joined, the culture inside the firm was “everything has to be BlackBerry, if you’re not using a BlackBerry then you’re not very intelligent,” he said.
Chen’s turnaround plan centres on expanding BlackBerry’s software business to diversify away from handsets, whose global market share has dropped to less than 1 per cent. He’s building new applications for other companies’ smartphones and envisions a future where BlackBerry security software keeps billions of connected devices — from cars to pacemakers — safe from hackers.
Trying to persuade customers that the company has changed isn’t easy either.
“One of the biggest things that I’m working and struggling with, that everybody here can help, is our reputation,” he told a crowd of 400 Waterloo business owners and community members.
RelatedAbout 2,200 enterprise customers bought BlackBerry software last quarter, he said. “More and more are doing it, but still a lot are sitting on the sidelines.”
Before Apple Inc.’s iPhone existed, BlackBerry had convinced businesspeople that they couldn’t live without mobile e-mail. “Crackberries” were a status symbol for the powerful and connected, and in 2008 one in five of the world’s mobile phones were BlackBerrys, according to researcher Gartner Inc.
As consumers flocked to the touch screens and massive application libraries offered by its competitors, BlackBerry’s global market share slumped.
‘Sea Change’“The reason why we all grew up with BlackBerrys is because there were no other choices,” Chen said. “When the other choices started showing up I think we, collectively now, as a company, refused to believe that there was a sea change.”
The CEO took over in November 2014 after a plan to take the company private collapsed. In his previous job, he revamped business software company Sybase Inc. and sold it to SAP AG for US$5.8 billion in 2010, more than six times its value at the start of his tenure.
At BlackBerry, he’s still working at reversing revenue declines. Chen said in March that sales are nearing a bottom after slumping 32 per cent in the latest quarter. He’s aiming to double software sales to US$500 million by next March. On the device side, Chen has unveiled three phone models — the Leap, the Passport and the Classic — since September and plans more this year.
“Not long ago the company was in deep, deep trouble. We are now out of trouble, in terms of financials, but we haven’t established the growth,” he said.
On Friday, Chen sent out his first tweet from his official Twitter account.
.@JohnLegere in his @BlackBerry tee finally got me onto #Twitter. Can’t wait to get & wear my Magenta @Tmobile shirt.http://t.co/soeQHoufSj
— John Chen (@JohnChen) May 8, 2015
National Post Tech Desk - Fri, 05/08/2015 - 08:32
BlackBerry’s latest offering, the Leap, gives users who enjoy an all-touch experience the upgrade that keyboard lovers received with the Classic. It’s aimed at mobile professionals who want an economical way to get the power and security of a BlackBerry at a consumer-friendly price – as low as $0 with a two year contract (check with your carrier), or about $349 unlocked at ShopBlackBerry.com.
Despite the low price, the Leap is undeniably a BlackBerry. Build quality is solid. At 5.67 x 2.87 x .37 inches, it sits comfortably in the hand, and at 170 grams (6 oz), it’s not too heavy to handle. I found it easy to operate one-handed; the textured back and non-slip sides cut down the risk of drops.
The screen is very good: a clear and bright edge-to-edge 5 inch, 1280 x 720 HD display (294 pixels per inch, if you’re counting) with 24 bit colour and 16:9 aspect ratio. It can’t hold a candle to the Blackberry Passport’s display, of course, but it’s quite respectable, and good value for the price. The company did save a few bucks on some of the innards here and there to maintain the price point; for example, there’s no Near Field Communications (NFC), meaning many mobile payment mechanisms won’t work, and there’s no SlimPort for HDMI output, but it’s still a very well configured phone.
The cameras are fairly basic, with an 8 MP auto-focus rear camera with 5X digital zoom, flash, video image stabilization and 1080p HD video, and a 2 MP fixed focus front camera with 3X digital zoom and 720p video. Images were decent, and there was little shutter lag. The operating system has some clever photo features built in, such as Time Shift, which quickly snaps a series of images so you can capture that one moment when everyone’s eyes were open.
RelatedBlackBerry didn’t skimp on the cellular capabilities. 4G and LTE/HPSA+ work fine. Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy and EDR are built in as well, and the WiFi radio is 802.11.b/g/n. 4G Mobile Hotspot, WiFi Display, and Miracast are also supported, as well as FM radio (the headphone cable acts as an antenna). All latched on to signals and didn’t let go, even in dubious coverage areas. Voice quality was pretty good in most cases, thanks to dual noise-cancelling microphones.
Despite the fact that the speaker is a dinky little grille on the back of the Leap, I was pleasantly surprised by the sound quality. Playing the Sabadell flashmob version of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, I could feel the bass as I held the phone. While you can’t get the richness offered by larger speakers, the Leap acquitted itself well. The designers even put some little bumps by the speaker to lift it off the desk and let the sound out if it’s lying flat. Obviously, they work best on a hard surface. Sounds are apt to be muffled on soft surfaces, unless the phone is face-down.
The sensor collection consists of an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, and proximity sensor, and there is, of course, a GPS.
The processor, a dual core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm, is not blazingly fast, but doesn’t suffer major performance lags. I found the 2 GB memory and 16 GB storage quite sufficient, but if you need more storage, the microSD slot supports cards up to 128 GB. Because the Leap is a sealed unit without removable battery, the microSD and SIM slots are under a cover on the left side, easy to access, yet protected. The cover seems sturdy enough to survive, rather than falling off after minimal use.
Pau Barrena/BloombergAn employee holds a new BlackBerry Ltd. Leap smartphone for an arranged photograph at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday, March 3, 2015.Speaking of the battery, I was prepared to be disappointed that it wasn’t swappable, but the 2800 mAh is, to put it mildly, amazing. It’s rated at 25 hours of heavy use; I was able to go for over two days without worrying about finding a power plug. And that was without enabling any of the power saving features. Power saving mode lets you selectively throttle the CPU, reduce screen brightness, shut down wireless or location services, and turn off advanced features, to increase life by about 15 per cent. By default, it automatically kicks in if the battery capacity falls below 20 per cent, but you can configure it to do so sooner or later, or not at all.
A lot of the goodness in the Leap comes from the operating system. It runs the latest and greatest, BlackBerry 10.3.1, giving the device all of the benefits of BlackBerry security and business features, as well as BlackBerry Blend, software that allows you to access BlackBerry features on a desktop or tablet.
As well as being a great first BlackBerry for a mobile professional, the Leap is an ideal upgrade for the BlackBerry Z10 user whose contract (or phone) is expiring. It has a 40 percent larger screen, is faster, and has better battery life, while preserving the excellent touch keyboard (sometimes I think it’s psychic, the way it anticipates what I’m about to type) and other features of the all-touch Z10.
In the box, all you get is the Leap itself, a micro USB cable, a charger, and a wired stereo headset, but BlackBerry has also released several accessories, including a charging/sync cradle known as the Sync Pod, as well as several cases and shells. I received the Flex Shell with my review unit. It’s a simple plastic shell that turns into a stand that props the device horizontally or vertically when you pop out the cutout on the back. It’s pricey, at about $35, but it does the job.
The BlackBerry Leap will be available from Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless, Sasktel, TELUS, WIND Mobile, ShopBlackBerry, and select Tbooth wireless and WIRELESSWAVE locations starting on May 7th, 2015, for as low as $0 on contract. A variety of accessories, including cases, carrying solutions, chargers, and audio peripherals, are also available through the carrier partners or ShopBlackBerry. BlackBerry has also introduced three new Accessory Value Bundles that include an unlocked BlackBerry Leap with accessories, offering additional savings. The BlackBerry Leap Efficiency Bundle, BlackBerry Leap Travel Bundle and BlackBerry Leap Power Bundle are available now on ShopBlackBerry.
National Post Tech Desk - Fri, 05/08/2015 - 08:09
Microsoft Corp. is not mulling an offer for Salesforce.com Inc., according to a Reuters report on Thursday citing two sources.
An earlier report by Bloomberg News, citing people with knowledge of the matter, said that Microsoft is evaluating a bid after the San Francisco-based cloud software provider was approached by another unnamed would-be buyer.
But Microsoft sees Salesforce’s current market valuation of US$47 billion expensive, though it could review a bid for Salesforce in the long term, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.
Microsoft jumped 2.7 per cent to US$47.95 and gave the biggest boost to the S&P and the Nasdaq after Reuters reported that the company was currently not weighing an offer for Salesforce.com. Salesforce.com fell 2.2 per cent to US$72.86.
Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz said recently an acquisition of Salesforce would create disruption in the software market. She declined to comment on whether Oracle was interested in buying Salesforce.
Salesforce was involved in strategic-alliance discussions with SAP SE last year, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg last week. SAP said it’s not considering a bid for Salesforce.
For any buyer, Salesforce offers a leading position in customer relationship management, or CRM, software, as well as cloud computing — the delivery of business software and services via the Internet.
Compiled with files from Reuters, Bloomberg News
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