Jeff Burt

Oracle is launching a tool designed to make it easier for communications service providers to manage and deploy services in a network-functions virtualization environment. Oracle officials this week unveiled its Oracle Communications Application Orchestrator, which enables service providers to manage the entire lifecycle of a virtual network function and to respond to changes in demand […]

A U.K.-based consortium of tech companies that includes IBM, Intel and ARM has developed a new specification for the Internet of things that is designed to make it easier for connected systems to automatically find and make sense of data. According to the group, which was funded by almost $11 million by the Technology Strategy […]

Dell is building out its security capabilities as it continues its transformation into an enterprise IT solutions provider, with officials rolling out enhancements to its Dropbox as well as a business PC that includes high levels of encryption and malware prevention. Growing its security portfolio has been a key focus of Dell as the now-private […]

Extreme Networks and Hewlett-Packard this week broadened their respective portfolios around software-defined networking and network-functions virtualization. Extreme, which joined the vendor-driven SDN consortium OpenDaylight Project earlier this month, unveiled a software-defined networking (SDN) platform that includes a controller based on the OpenDaylight code and that supports the OpenFlow protocol, OpenStack orchestration technology and open APIs. […]

Intel and ARM continue to grow the fields in which they compete, from mobile devices to the data center. When ARM officials several years ago first broached the idea of using the company’s low-power system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture to challenge Intel’s dominance in data center servers, the focus was on highly dense and highly energy-efficient microservers […]

Officials with Advanced Micro Devices raised some eyebrows this week when they said the company intends to improve the energy efficiency of their accelerated processing units 25-fold by 2020. Such gains would greatly outpace what the company has done over the previous six years, when it improved the energy efficiency of its APUs in typical […]

Hewlett-Packard is bringing managed storage services to its Helion cloud computing platform, the latest move in its efforts to rapidly expand its infrastructure-as-a-service offerings. HP officials this week introduced Helion Managed Storage to help organizations deal with the rapidly growing amount of data they need to store and the increasing associated costs of doing it […]

Dell is updating its pocket-size Wyse Cloud Connect computing device, including launching an app that can take any Android-based device and turn it into a keyboard and mouse. The updates, announced June 19, were designed to help improve the user experience and enhance management and control of the Cloud Connect, according to Jeff McNaught, executive […]

A day after Intel introduced new capabilities that will enable major cloud players such as Google and Facebook to more easily customize high-end Xeon server processors to better run their varied workloads, the giant chip maker unveiled a mobile messaging app that advances the use of emoticons. Intel on June 19 showed off what it […]

Intel is making it easier for giant online businesses like Amazon, Facebook and eBay to use its powerful Xeon server processors in their massive data centers. At the Gigaom Structure 2014 event June 18 in San Francisco, Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center and Connected Systems Group, announced a […]

Apple is making it $200 easier to own an iMac all-in-one desktop. Company officials on June 18 announced that Apple is rolling out a 21.5-inch iMac that comes with a price of $1,099, about $200 less than the previous entry-level system. The new system reportedly comes a week after speculation on the Internet that the […]

Acer replaced one co-founder with another as board chairman as the onetime PC powerhouse looks to build up its financial fortunes after several years of struggling. Acer’s board of directors on June 18 named George Huang the new chairman, replacing Stan Shih, who announced in May that he would retire this month. Both Shih and […]