Red Hat OpenStack Scores Verizon, NASA as Major Customers

Today's topics include the opening of the OpenStack Summit 2016, a report that BMW and Daimler dropped out of Apple’s electric car project, Symantec's discovery of security problems with mobile apps related to the presidential primaries and HP's Z1 workstation lets Mac users multitask with Windows and Linux applications.

The OpenStack Austin Summit convened April 25 in Austin, Texas, and it came with news that some big-name organizations have adopted the open-source cloud computing platform.

Verizon is announcing a major OpenStack cloud networking milestone while NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory revealed it is using Red Hat's OpenStack Platform. Meanwhile, Red Hat itself now claims to have trained 10,000 IT professionals on OpenStack.

Verizon on April 29 formally announced the completion of its OpenStack network-functions virtualization deployment across five U.S data centers.

Verizon is working with Big Switch Networks, Dell and Red Hat to enable the NFV deployment with OpenStack. The effort first began in 2015 and took nine months to carry out.

Apple has been searching for months for a partner in its quest to build electric cars, but the list of potential partners no longer includes BMW and Daimler, both of which pulled out of the talks, according to a report.

BMW dropped out of talks with Apple last year, while Daimler bowed out recently. Both automakers dropped out of the "iCar" talks with Apple because they "fear the U.S. tech giant will end up in the driver's seat" as the vehicle is planned, built and marketed.

With BMW and Daimler out of the running, Apple's favorite potential partner now appears to be Magna, a Canadian-Austrian company.

As the 2016 presidential primary season advances, people are using a growing number of mobile apps to track the candidates and voting results, but not all of them are secure.

More than 50 percent of the presidential primary-related apps Symantec surveyed were leaking private user information in some way.

While there are apps for all current presidential candidates, Symantec found that apps devoted to the campaign of Republican candidate Donald Trump dominate the landscape, with about 75 percent of presidential primary apps.

Those related to Democrat Bernie Sanders represented 13 percent of surveyed apps, while 7 percent follow the campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton. A report released earlier this month found the Trump Website to be the most secure of all current presidential candidates.

HP Inc. has reworked its HP Z1 workstation with new capabilities specifically to provide an alternative for the creative Macintosh community.

It has achieved this by enabling 1-to-1 connections from its Windows OS workstations to Apple Macs, so artists and other creative types can get the best of both worlds when needed.

HP Z1 is essentially a larger, heavier laptop, but with features and performance normally found in tower PCs. Key features include a 23.6-inch diagonal anti-glare UHD 4K display for high visual clarity.