Today’s topics include Intel’s effort to expand its cloud efforts with a big investment in Mirantis collaboration, Dell is expanding its target markets with its new Dell Scalable Solutions business, federal workers are ignoring mobile device security practices, and Parallels launched Desktop 11 for Mac.
Intel officials are pushing forward with the company’s ambitious cloud efforts by collaborating with OpenStack distributor Mirantis to enhance the enterprise capabilities of the open-source cloud stack.
The chip maker, which last month unveiled its “Cloud for All” initiative, is also leading a $100 million fundraising round for Mirantis and its 4-year-old subscription-based version of OpenStack.
Joining Intel in the funding round were Goldman Sachs and existing Mirantis investors August Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Ericsson, Sapphire Ventures and WestSummit Capital.
Dell eight years ago launched its Data Center Solutions business, a unit aimed at delivering customized and optimized solutions to the handful of organizations that make up the hyperscale computing market, including Google, Facebook, and Chinese companies such as Baidu and Alibaba.
Now Dell is targeting the next level down from these top-tier cloud providers with a new business called Dell Scalable Solutions (DSS).
These companies—which include hosting organizations, telecommunications service providers, oil-and-gas firms and research organizations—have the same needs as their hyperscale counterparts, but not the same financial or engineering resources.
Not only are federal employees using personal devices to access potentially sensitive government data, a significant number of them engage in behaviors that could put the device and, in turn, sensitive data it contains and network connections at risk, according to a survey of 1,000 federal workers.
The survey, conducted by Lookout, found this includes behaviors such as rooting, jailbreaking and side loading applications, which involves installing applications from places other than official app stores, such as Websites or email links.
Rooting a mobile phone involves gaining “root access” to the device’s system directory to add or disable applications.
Almost a quarter (24 percent) of federal employees send work documents to personal email accounts, and half use their personal devices for work email. Also, 17 percent store work-related documents on personal file sharing apps.
Parallels launched Desktop 11 for Mac, a new version of Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac Pro Edition, its software for developers, designers and power users. It includes Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition, previously known as the Enterprise Edition.
Desktop 11 allows Mac users to run Windows 10 and run Microsoft’s intelligent personal assistant, Cortana, when using both Windows and OS X. This is the first time that Desktop has ever made a Windows feature available for OS X applications.