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Today’s topics include the upgrading of Galaxy Note smartphones from Samsung; Google’s release of a version of Chrome OS for the enterprise; the release of Microsoft’s Project Brainwave; and Illumio’s update of its Adaptive Security Platform with new visualization and policy features.
As expected, Samsung on Aug. 23 officially unveiled its highly anticipated Galaxy Note 8 smartphone, a follow-up to the ill-fated Note7.
To further distance the Note 8 from the notoriety surrounding last year’s Note7, which was banned from passenger planes after reports of the device’s defective batteries catching fire and then recalled, Samsung is incentivizing former owners to give the Note 8 a shot. Samsung is offering Note7 owners who lost their devices to the global recall up to $425 off the price of the Note 8 when they trade in their current device.
Giving those users another reason to trade up, Samsung has stuffed the smartphone with class-leading components and a 6.3-inch AMOLED screen that closely resembles the near-bezel-less look that gave the Galaxy S8 and S8+ their distinctive look when they were released earlier this year.
Google announced this week that it is readying a version of its Chrome OS operating system designed specifically for enterprise use. This new Chrome Enterprise edition will offer organizations a slew of features that, according to Google, have been optimized to meet the security, support and management requirements of businesses.
The operating system will license for $50 per device annually and will come with single sign-on capabilities, Microsoft Active Directory integration, managed Google Play, managed operating system upgrades and 24/7 support.
The new OS will also be integrated with on-premises and cloud management tools such as VMware’s Workspace ONE technology. Thanks to its integration with Workspace ONE, Chrome Enterprise will give IT administrators a way to centrally manage all corporate-owned or employee-owned Chrome devices through a single unified interface.
Microsoft’s latest system, dubbed Project Brainwave, uses field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, from Intel to process artificial intelligence workloads in real time using Intel’s 14nm Stratix 10 FPGA chip. This capability will soon be coming to the software giant’s cloud, Microsoft announced at the Hot Chips 2017 conference in Cupertino, Calif., this week.
Soon, Microsoft Azure customers will be able to run their artificial intelligence workloads using the Project Brainwave system. Users of the company’s other services, including Bing, will indirectly feel the performance-enhancing benefits the technology offers, according to Microsoft.
Security firm Illumio is updating its Adaptive Security Platform with new capabilities that aim to help organizations visualize connections within an enterprise and create security policies that reduce risk.
With the latest Illumio update, the company is adding a new Explorer feature that provides additional visibility for organizations. With Explorer, an organization can now query the system to better understand network traffic and application flows across an enterprise.
PJ Kirner, co-founder and chief technology officer of Illumio, noted that having network visibility with graphics and diagrams of connectivity is interesting, but the real value is in having an accurate map of how things work together. Illumio makes use of various open-source technologies throughout its platform, and putting all the pieces together is part of the commercial offering.