SMEs want investigation into Capita

Posted on February 11, 2015 by - News

parliamentA report said 12 small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are asking the government to investigate IT giant Capita for allegedly damaging their business.

According to the Independent, the Cabinet Office has started an investigation into Capita after the group of SMEs alleged that it was exploiting their suppliers over a civil service training scheme.

Capita secured a £250 million deal three years ago to provide civil service training in a move that was intended to open the public sector to SMEs.

But the SMEs have made a number of allegations including paying invoices late, taking big fees for training contracts, and hiring sub contractors to work directly for Capita rather than farming the work out to the small businesses.

Capita is also alleged to have introduced non competing clauses for SMEs involved in business which precluded them getting work without its permission.

The Cabinet Office said it was taking the allegations seriously. It said government policy is to support SMEs. Capita said it had changed its policies on late payment and it had abandoned its policy of non compete clauses.

BBC to stream to Roku devices

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

tvA Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request made by TechEye has revealed that the BBC is to offer live streaming on Roku devices.
Roku gizmos are tiny devices that use your internet connection to stream content to your TV.
Currrently, in the UK, there are few live news services available for the Roku, apart from Sky News. The BBC supports iPlayer for the Roku, but without live channel feeds.
But, the BBC said in its response to our request that it will make BBC channels available in the next few months.
The response said: “Whilst we have made live streaming available for our mobile and PC users, we have not prioritised this for TV audiences.  This is because most TV audiences have the ability to playback live via the tuner.
“However, I am pleased to say that the BBC is currently working on being able to provide the service to allow live streaming of the iPlayer for the Roku device.”

DRAM market shows unseasonal growth

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

nand-chipsSales of DRAM rose by 8.2 percent in the fourth quarter, bucking the usual pattern in the memory market.
DRAM Exchange, which tracks the memory market said manufacturers of devices migrated fast to 20 and 25 nanometre production, and the additional output meant quarterly revenues worldwide amounted to $13 billion.
The firm said that Samsung has shown the most profit from making DRAM, with typical operating margins of 47 percent.
SK Hynix also makes healthy margins of 42  percent, while American DRAM maker Micron managed to turn in margins of 29.5 percent.
Although Micron is still manufacturing using 30 nanometre technology, it raised production of DRAM for servers, which is the most lucrative application.
Samsung started volume production on 20 nanometre in the fourth quarter and the yield rate and output of chips made at 25 nanometre has increased.
Micron has begun sampling on the 20 nanometre process but plans to migrate so fast that there will be 80,000 wafer starts a month by the end of this year.

 

Biometric spending on the up

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

fingerprintRevenues for biometric identification to access computer systems will be worth as much as $13.8 million this year.
So said market intelligence company ABI Research.
Spending on biometric technology is because both consumer and enterprise segments are rapidly catching up with spending by governments.
A growing perception of terrorist threats in both Europe and the USA are also accelerating sales of biometric identification gear.
Fingerprint identification remains the dominant type of system and is more acceptable to people than other methods, although it is not the most accurate type of system.
Demand from enterprises and the use of smartphone and wearable technology is also increasing the trend.
3M Cogent, MorphoTrak and NEC are the leaders in the field but Apple and Samsung are also prominent as companies that will support these kind of technologies.

 

Dell intros support for PCs and tablets

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

Dell logoDell said it has extended its ProSupport Plus service for both PCs and for tablets.
The company claimed it’s the first to offer proactive and predictive support for these devices.
It also claimed that with this package in place, people will spend up to 84 percent less time on technical support calls.
The company claimed that IT departments spend around 80 percent of their time on routine operations and support.
The service will be available to both Dell customers and to its channel partners – and includes cover for a number of situations.
Those include coverage for drops, spill and electrical surges;  hard drive retention after replacement and workflow management for support cases, as well as self service case management and parts dispatch.

 

Amazon sells fake AMD CPUs

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

FireOnTheAmazonPosterAMD chip buyers using Amazon’s service have found themselves buying fake AMD A8-7600s.

When they receive the chips, the CPUs aren’t working and when they looked at the bottom of the chips they twigged that someone was taking older or less expensive CPUs and delidding them.

They were then taking newer CPUs that have more value, delidding those, and then putting the IHS from the new CPUs on the old CPUs. Unless you look at the pins before you buy, you would never spot the difference.

The cores being used are the AM2 Athlon X2 cores.

The scam is exclusive to the AMD A8-7600, and the situation appears to be limited to Amazon in the United Kingdom.

The danger is that this could spread over to other products if the scam is successful. c’t magazine said it would be a doddle to do with Haswell products, switching the IHS of a Celeron with a Core i7, because both products are LGA1150.

Amazon have not commented but AMD is furious and while refusing to confirm the scam it said:

“It is apparent that this isolated incident is not related in any way to AMD’s manufacturing or packaging, however AMD takes any reports of product tampering very seriously. As part of our ongoing efforts to help ensure consumers and businesses are sold only genuine AMD processors, we thoroughly investigate these extremely rare incidents in an effort to determine the source of the altered products, and consider all available legal remedies – including both civil and criminal prosecution – against persons found to have engaged in fraudulent actions affecting AMD products.”

AMD said it’s been on the blower to Amazon and the local enforcement authorities to fix this incident quickly and “ensure that the rigorous quality and reliability standards that AMD is known for are maintained.

“AMD already implements extensive security measures to ensure the authenticity of our products, we are currently evaluating further measures to implement additional security measures for maximum future support,” a spokesperson said.

AMD has a guide listed on its website to help verify the legitimacy of CPUs.

 

Microsoft and Samsung settle over royalties

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

 9545A court case between Microsoft and Samsung over patent royalties appears to have sorted itself out.

Microsoft  sued Samsung last year claiming the spy TV maker had breached a collaboration agreement by initially refusing to make royalty payments.

This was soon after Microsoft bought Nokia’s handset business in September 2013.

The lawsuit claimed Samsung still owed $6.9 million in interest on more than $1 billion in patent royalties it delayed paying. Samsung has countered that the Nokia acquisition violated its 2011 collaboration deal with Microsoft.

Microsoft has not said how much Samsung is paying it. In 2011, a technology analyst at Citigroup estimated that Microsoft was getting $5 per Android handset sold by phone maker HTC under a patent agreement, and that Microsoft was looking for up to $12.50 per phone from other handset makers it had yet to come to an agreement with.

Microsoft denied this figure but if it applied the $5 price to Samsung, the Korean company could be paying Microsoft about $1.6 billion per year.

Samsung said it had agreed in 2011 to pay Microsoft royalties in exchange for a patent license covering phones that ran Google Android operating system. Samsung also agreed to develop Windows phones and share confidential business information with Microsoft, according to court filings.

 

Varonis scores University of Liverpool file sharing contract

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

liverpoolVaronis has confirmed that it has scored a contract working with the University of Liverpool to overcome the challenge of students moving sensitive data to personal cloud-based storage.

Using Varonis DatAnywhere,  the university gives its 32,000 students and 4,700 staff the “flexibility” to sync its file share data across all of their devices with the added ability to securely share files with external collaborators.

It has proved popular with people –  within eight days of rolling out the software, the university had 1,366 new DatAnywhere users.

Andy Williams, Systems Manager, University of Liverpool said that there were major headaches moving data online to file sharing services.

“In addition to the data being vulnerable offsite, concerns of document version control needed to be addressed, plus the complication that when people leave the university, it is virtually impossible to retain or even revoke access to data stored in uncontrolled repositories.”

It also means that with DatAnywhere in place, the university can now offer a viable alternative to Dropbox and has recently introduced a policy stating ‘confidential documents are not to be stored on other platforms.’

The software uses the university’s existing Active Directory permissions, and no one now has access to shared data, unless they already had it or are provisioned access.

“IT still retains control over who can and can’t access files, particularly those deemed confidential. We can also revoke access centrally, and it will replicate across everything at once, saving time and reducing complexity,” he said

 

Windows on subscription gets closer

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

windows-10-technical-preview-turquoiseMicrosoft seems to be moving closer to the idea that its Windows operating system will be sold using a subscription as a service.

The subscription, much like Office 365, will be paid once a year but appeared to have been abandoned when Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will be free, for anyone upgrading from Windows 7 or 8.

Even though Microsoft has not fully detailed its Windows 10 pricing strategy, it recently filed for a trademark for ‘Windows 365’, which adds a bit of fuel to the subscription based version of Windows.

A trademark might have been lodged to stop other people using it, but when Microsoft does announce a subscription version of Windows, ‘Windows 365″ would likely be the name.

So far, there has been no sign that Redmond is rushing to release ‘Windows 365’ in the immediate future, as it is pushing Windows 10 at every possible instance. For now, know that Microsoft has claimed this branding right, it could be something seen in the future.

 

Google gets Glass customer

Posted on February 10, 2015 by - News

Joe_90_(TV)Even if the project has been mothballed, Google has found a partner for its Glass project.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport in the Netherlands, is trialling Google Glass for use by airport authority officers as a hands-free way to look up gate and airplane information.

Apparently its security officers are testing Google’s wearable computer on travellers passing through the terminal in a bid to better understand the ‘customer journey’.

What this suggests is that the project is never going to be mass market, but will have a function for niche industrial and service industry applications.

Google pulled ‘Glass for the masses’ when it shuttered its Glass Explorer program last month.

The airport started its trial of Glass last month, and has developed a Glass app which lets staff ask the device for gate or aircraft data and have the results displayed via the headset or on their smartphone. The airport hopes to measure the placement distance of barriers on the taxiway just by looking at them, rather than officers having to take measurements manually.

The airport is not committed to Glass beyond trialling it at this point. Any decision about whether the face computers will become a permanent fixture on staff will be taken next year, it said.

 

IBM steps up educational push

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

ibm-officeMassive services giant International Business Machines (IBM) said it has now enrolled over 300 colleges and universities around the world in its Power Systems Academic Initiative (PSAI).
IBM said that the push is to help students learn skills related to big data, cloud computing, mobile and social networking.
That, said IBM, is important in today’s job market.
The initiative, which started in October 2012. has grown by 152 percent over the last two years, IBM claimed.
Schools and universities hooked up to IBM include New York University’s polytechnic school of engineering, Virginia Tech, the UK University of Greenwich, the University of Ulster, and Glasgow Caledonian University.
Of course, IBM’s move is not all altruism – it is pinning its future on cloud computing, big data, analytics and security.
Several of the academic bodies offer courses related to IBM specific operations, and the company said it recruit from universities and business schools.

Qualcomm faces billion dollar fine

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

qualcomm-snapdragonUS tech giant Qualcomm may face a fine of as much as $1 billion after antitrust regulators decide on its future.
And it may also face sanctions that make it cut its royalties by a third.
Reuters reports that talks between Qualcomm and the authorities in China are close to reaching a conclusion.
The article quotes Xu Dunlin, head of China’s antitrust agency, as saying his authority will soon release details of the settlement.
The ruling will have a significant effect on Qualcomm because nearly fifty percent of its worldwide revenues from from the country.
Further, much of its profits come from royalties through its licensing division.
Reuters says that it’s not just Qualcomm that faces a problem from the Chinese agency.  It is also investigating Microsoft and Samsung to see if they infringe its antitrust rules.
It’s estimated that Qualcomm generates over $25.5 billion in revenues from the Chinese mainland.

 

Samsung edged out by Chinese vendors

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

Samsung HQ Silicon Valley - MM picA report said Samsung faces increased competition from mainland China.
And that will affect Apple’s bottom line too, according to a survey by Taiwanese market research company Trendforce.
It published figures that showed that in 2014 home grown companies Huawei, Xiaomi and others managed to ship 453 million units – nearly 40 percent of total smartphone shipments worldwide.
Samsung is being squeezed by Apple as well as Chinese smartphone brands but Apple itself is showing signs of losing the brand loyalty it largely depends on.
The company predicts that during 2015 the Chinese branded smartphones will account for shipments of 531 million units. That will be a growth, year on year, of 17.2 percent.
But the Chinese brands showed a growth last year of 54.8 percent.
One of the reasons for the smaller growth is because Chinese telcos have been cutting subsidies, making handsets more expensive.
But that is also likely to affect Samsung and Apple too.
When Samsung released its financial results recently, it reported smaller profits on its smartphone devices in the face of increased competition from Apple and others.

 

British tech firms buoyant about the future

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

ukflagA survey commissioned by Barclays’ Bank has revealed that UK IT firms are confident about profits during 2015.
The research indicates that, as an average, the businesses surveyed expect to grow by 11 percent this year.
That figure exceeds the UK GDP forecast for 2015 of 2.6 percent.
And the optimistic IT companies are predicting that 2016 will be even better, with growth for some anticipated to be as much as 20 percent year on year.
Sean Duffy, MD in charge of Barclays’ technology, media and telecoms unit said that the growth predictions reveal the optimism of the UK tech sector.
“The fact that many firms are expecting further growth in 2016 shows that this trend isn’t transient and the UK is a real launch pad for tech businesses,” he said.
Half of the businesses surveyed think that the government gives them enough support to grow. But the biggest challenges for respondents are increased costs and managing cashflow.

Intel thinks it has Apple by the short and curlies

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

Intel Q4_14_ResultsIt is rare that a company claims to have control of Apple, but it seems that Intel believes that it has Jobs’ Mob wrapped around its little finger.

After ten years working with Apple, there are rumours that Jobs’ Mob is considering ditching Chipzilla and will start making its own Mac chips.  After all Apple already creates its own chips for the iPhone and iPad based on designs from ARM and then has manufacturers like Samsung build them.

The Tame Apple Press thinks that eventually Apple’s ARM chips will be so powerful, Apple won’t need Intel anymore.

But in an interview with Business Insider, Intel’s CFO Stacy Smith brushed off those concerns and  claimed that Intel is so far ahead of the competition when it comes to PC processors that Apple – and just about every other PC maker – has no choice but to use Intel chips.

Smith said that Apple was a  “great partner of ours” and like Intel they like bringing really cool stuff to the market.

Intel’s leadership over the rest of the industry is extending. We’re not delayed relative to the industry. Intel is ahead of the industry, Smith said.

For Jobs Mob that means that if it abandons Intel it will have to lose lots of performance in its new Macs.

Intel thinks that Apple customers would have to take such a big step off performance if Jobs’ Mob abandoned Intel it is not worth it.

Of course, Smith fails to understand that if Apple decided to walk away from Intel, it would simply tell its customers its solution was better and the Tame Apple Press would agree with it. Apple has never been about performance, it has always been about the design and the Apple logo.