Companies that are running BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5 or any mobile device management solution that competes with BlackBerry now have an easy way to make the transition to BES10. Blackberry recently made the BlackBerry EZ Pass available, which has been designed to make the switch to BES10 as simple as possible. The company says it’s free to switch and customers that trade in their licenses for BES10 licenses will get BlackBerry’s Technical Support Services. Also, companies that are part of the EZ Pass program will receive a free upgrade to BES12 when it comes out later in the year.
The use of smartphones and tablets is on the rise in health care institutions, despite concerns that these devices may pose a security risk in hospitals and clinics. A Spyglass Consulting Group health care study found that 51 percent of hospitals have been looking into enterprise-class nursing smartphone solutions to aid in team-based care over the next 12 to 18 months. Also, 67 percent of hospitals surveyed said nurses have been using personal smartphones to support clinical communications and workflow, despite hospital policy restrictions regarding such behavior.
In June 2013, IBM acquired a cloud services-provisioning company SoftLayer, a move that surprised some industry IT watchers because of how small and relatively unknown SoftLayer seemed in comparison to industry giant. However, IBM discovered that it was able to sell SoftLayer services more effectively than other cloud solutions in its portfolio thanks to SoftLayer’s user-friendly interfaces. Now, IBM is retooling itself for the future, and is focusing on expanding SoftLayer’s cloud offerings. IBM is continuing to expand its cloud service offerings with the help of more than 40,000 cloud experts and its knowledge of industry trends.
Finally, Extreme Networks is unveiling a software-defined architecture that is more about the end-user experience than the technology. The system combines its networking solutions with those of Enterasys Networks-which Extreme acquired last fall-and it also has SDN features like automated network and application provisioning to 802.11ac wireless access points.