Today’s topics include Dell expanding its network portfolio, OPM disclosing that more fingerprint data was stolen than first reported, T-Mobile offering a low payment plan for the iPhone 6s, and Cray and SGI announcing two new supercomputer installations in Europe.
Dell is rolling out an array of networking products designed not only to simplify campus environments, but also to address the growing demand for bandwidth in data centers.
Yesterday, the vendor introduced a unified architecture for campus networks that includes networking nodes and a switch that when used together create a single-layer architecture with a single management point for the entire infrastructure.
Months after the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) first disclosed that it was the victim of a data breach, the details about the data losses are still coming out. In July, OPM revised its initial numbers to 25.7 million, across two separate data breaches.
The second breach involved 21.5 million Americans and initially was reported to include 1.1 million fingerprints. On Sept. 23, OPM revised the fingerprint data loss to approximately 5.6 million.
T-Mobile has announced a new initiative to sell Apple’s latest iPhone 6s and 6s Plus smartphones for as little as $5 a month if customers trade in eligible late-model smartphones.
Earlier in September, T-Mobile had announced a special $20 a month rate for 18 months for a 16GB iPhone 6s through the company’s Jump On Demand program, with zero down.
Now, however, T-Mobile is dropping its prices even more, unveiling a $5 a month rate if a customer trades in a working and undamaged Apple iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge or a Galaxy Note 5 smartphone.
Supercomputer makers Cray and SGI got some good news out of Europe this month.
Cray officials have announced that the Swiss National Supercomputer Centre has installed a Cray CS-Storm, a supercomputer cluster with a peak performance of 15 teraflops per node that will be used by the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology to create more detailed weather forecasts.
Meanwhile, SGI this month announced the unveiling of the Salomon supercomputer, a massive system based on SGI’s ICE X technology that has been deployed by the IT4Innovations national supercomputing center in the Czech Republic.