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Today’s topics include Intel aiming its latest Xeon server chips at evolving data centers; Symantec bolstering mobile security with its Skycure acquisition; Microsoft pouring LinkedIn data into Dynamics 365 for sales organizations; and a new Quest software-as-a-service package helping to manage Azure AD and Office 365.
Intel continues to be the dominant server chip vendor in the industry, but a rapidly changing data center environment fueled by the rise of such emerging technologies as cloud computing, data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning is opening the door to new and re-energized rivals that are looking to grab some of the 95 percent market share that Intel currently owns.
Intel, however, is not sitting idly by while its challengers make their advances. At an event in a newly opened lab in New York City July 11, company officials unveiled their latest server chips, the Xeon Scalable processors—based on the Skylake-SP core—which they said represent the most significant improvement in a data center platform in a decade and come with the scalability, security and optimization capabilities needed to address a broad range of workloads, from traditional tasks to AI, data analytics and other emerging applications.
On July 11, Symantec announced that it is acquiring privately held mobile security vendor Skycure.
With the acquisition, Symantec is getting Skycure’s Mobile Threat Defense Platform, which provides organizations with multiple security capabilities, including Mobile Active Protection that helps secure devices with real-time protection. Skycure’s platform also provides an on-demand app analysis capability called the Mobile App Reputation Service.
“The approach that Skycure has taken to secure mobile operating systems is something that will stand the test of time and is a very innovative approach,” Greg Clark, CEO of Symantec, told eWEEK. Skycure’s technology has the ability to find mobile malware that other mobile security technologies cannot, Clark claims.
Nestled among some major announcements during the Microsoft Inspire conference in Washington, D.C., this week was news of updates to the company’s Dynamics 365 cloud enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management package.
Microsoft made a splash at the event by pinning down the upcoming availability of hybrid cloud systems powered by its Azure Stack software and its new Microsoft 365 business software bundles.
Not to be left out, Dynamics 365 is also getting some attention from the software giant in the form of a major LinkedIn data integration. First unveiled in April, Microsoft Relationship Sales, a stand-alone package that includes LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, is now generally available for the Enterprise edition of the software-as-a-service platform.
A year after it finished being “rented” for four years by temporary owner Dell Inc., Quest Software is back under private ownership evolving its own set of systems management and security software tools.
The Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based company on July 11 announced the availability of Quest On Demand, a new, cloud-hosted software-as-a-service suite designed to make life easier for IT administrators as they manage and secure Microsoft Office 365 and Azure Active Directory workloads.
The first release of Quest On Demand includes tools that back up and recover files for Azure AD and Office 365 users, attributes, groups and group membership.