Daily Tech Briefing: April 22, 2014

While fiber optics is relatively common in telecoms and hyperscale environments, some vendors have plans to start pushing it into enterprise data centers. By making the switch to fiber optics, organizations can eliminate the need for wiring closets and air conditioning units.

Also, fiber optics requires less cabling than copper-based LANs and don’t require upgrades to the cabling infrastructures, which reduces operating expenses as technology evolves. Jeffrey Jones, director of global technology services alliances at IBM and a director on the APOLAN board, stated that he believes that eventually, the benefits and business reasons behind optical LANs will convince companies to make the switch.

Seven months after it was announced that Microsoft would acquire Nokia’s hardware unit, the $7 billion deal will finally be closed on April 25. The companies created an alliance in 2011, in an effort to catch up to Apple and Google in the smartphone market.

There is speculation that Microsoft may change the name of its newly-acquired smartphone division to Microsoft Mobile. The smartphone unit’s former parent company, Nokia, a diversified communications and technology company, continues operations at its corporate home in Finland.

Following Facebook’s lead, Twitter has started selling ads within its mobile app that encourage users to try out other apps. Advertisers will be able to run simultaneous campaigns that could reach more than 241 million of Twitter’s active users or reach 1 billion mobile devices off of the Twitter website.

This new offer is integrated with MoPub Marketplace, a sort of match-making service between advertisers and developers that Twitter purchased in September, 2013. Facebook has been offering mobile app install ads since October 2012.

Finally, the mobile payment industry has been seeing growth for several years. However, a new survey of U.S. consumers conducted by IT research firm IDC found a small decline in online bill payment, as well as both network-branded and store-branded gift cards.

PayPal Mobile was found to still be the most frequently used mobile payment method. Mobile payment adoption has reached a point of slower growth, while online bill payment continues to see strong overall adoption.