The biggest news of the holiday weekend dropped on Monday. Pat Gelsinger has retired from Intel, effective immediately. David Zinsner, CFO, and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, newly named CEO of the Intel Product subunit, have been named as Co-CEOs while the board searches for a permanent member. Gelsinger has been the CEO since 2021. He has been focused on returning Intel to dominance in the chip market while also facing headwinds from industry transitions to mobile and AI computing. Intel stock pr...
Dec 04, 2024•40 min
The week before Thanksgiving is always busy and this year was packed with great conferences. Super Computing 24 took place in Atlanta and there was plenty to discuss with over 17,000 attendees learning about the latest technology. Let's dive in to a few key announcements. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to the Rundown 1:29 - Clumio Backtrack Announced by Commvault 7:11 - Aryaka Unveils New Survey Report Exploring Network Security Trends in Manufacturing 11:16 - Techstrong Launches PlatformEngineerin...
Nov 27, 2024•48 min
The US Department of Justice is looking at two big IT companies, potentially making waves in the enterprise IT space. They are asking a federal judge to force Google to sell or spin off its Chrome browser, arguing that integration with Google's other products, particularly Android, Search, and the Play store, is anti-competitive. At the same time, the DOJ is also looking at the proposed acquisition of Juniper Networks by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to the Rundown 2:09...
Nov 20, 2024•40 min
Pay rates for IT security professionals are rising faster than inflation, but burnout and stress are growing faster. A survey of UK security professionals revealed the fast pace of modern security and the risk of unknown failure is causing skilled practitioners to leave the field. Would yet more pay fix the problem, or is there another way to address IT security staff retention? This and more on the Rundown. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to the Rundown 1:19 - Can AMD Top NVIDIA? 3:50 - Quantum AI ...
Nov 13, 2024•38 min
Another Trump presidency could bring significant implications for enterprise tech, particularly through a focus on deregulation, increased M&A, and expanded Big Tech investments. this also extends to advancements in military technology, Israel’s influence on cybersecurity, the impact of initiatives like StarLink and rural broadband on connectivity, nuclear energy, AI, the CHIPS Act, and the expanding space industry. Altogether, these insights suggest that a pro-deregulation agenda, aiming to...
Nov 06, 2024•41 min
Hatfields and McCoys. Lakers and Celtics. GIF versus GIF. The rivalries of our time are always storied. One of the biggest seems to be cooling, however. AMD and Intel have announced a new partnership aimed at countering the surge of ARM-based designs. The companies are trying to standardize aspects of the x86 instruction set in order to make it easier for ISVs to write code that runs on both Intel and AMD chips without a fragmented code base that reduces performance and encourages developers to ...
Oct 30, 2024•46 min
At Open Compute Summit this past week, key trends shaping the future of computing and infrastructure were discussed. One major concern is the global data center energy consumption, which is projected to triple by 2030, highlighting the urgent need for more efficient energy solutions. As technology advances, the shift from a 3nm process to a 2nm process is proving costly, with design costs estimated to reach a staggering $725 million, according to ARM. In response to both power demands and design...
Oct 23, 2024•34 min
At Commvault SHIFT 2024, The Futurum Group's Daniel Newman and Patrick Moorhead sat with CEO Sanjay Mirchandani, who discussed Commvault's strategic pivot towards a cloud-first approach in cyber resilience. This shift involves key acquisitions, such as Appranix and Clumio, and new partnerships with AWS and Google, aimed at enhancing cloud data protection and recovery. Mirchandani also introduced the concept of "Continuous Business," highlighting its distinction from traditional business continui...
Oct 16, 2024•41 min
A big cyberattack attributed to groups backed by the Chinese government has telecom providers worried. In this new report, investigators have determined that the group, known as Salt Typhoon, has had months-long access into the network infrastructures of companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies. That access includes visibility over the infrastructure used for lawful intercept, which is the Internet version of tapping a phone. Per the report, the Salt Typhoon hackers appeared to b...
Oct 09, 2024•34 min
Microsoft has revamped its AI-powered Recall feature, shifting from automatic to opt-in use with enhanced security measures like full encryption and Windows Hello authentication, addressing privacy concerns. California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB-1047, which aimed to regulate AI models, citing concerns that smaller models outside the regulation's scope might pose greater risks. Meanwhile, OpenAI is facing a leadership shakeup as CTO Mira Murati and other key executives depart, coinciding wit...
Oct 02, 2024•44 min
We're happy to have Dr. Bob Sutor joining us this week on the Rundown, since he covers quantum and advanced computing for The Futurum Group. IBM made two important announcements in the quantum space this week. The first announcement was Qiskit, a quantum SDK that runs on Python for quantum computers. This promises to bring quantum compute to a more mainstream audience and converting the underlying code to Rust. This solution is much faster than competing solutions from Google, Amazon, and Quanti...
Sep 25, 2024•37 min
We have talked at length this year about Intel's efforts to turn the ship and add more profitability to the ledger. One of the crown jewels in that portfolio is the foundry business. It has been the recipient of a large amount of government funding through the CHIPS Act. But it is also playing catch up with TSMC and others. New broke yesterday that Intel has announced that the foundry business will be spun off into separate susidiary entity. The new unit will have it's own board and be free to s...
Sep 18, 2024•32 min
AT&T has decided enough is enough. They have filed a lawsuit over the tactics they claim are putting first responders and critical government services at risk. AT&T is claiming breach of contract because of the new support policy enacted by Broadcom after the VMware acquisition. The key point comes in an amendment in their support agreement that says that AT&T can renew their current support contracts for up to two more years provided they do so before the expiration of their current...
Sep 11, 2024•37 min
This year, at the smallest VMware conference in many years, Broadcom made some important announcements. As we've previously discussed, VMware Cloud Foundation 9 was detailed, along with Tanzu Platform 10, an enhanced Edge Orchestrator platform, VeloCloud Software-Defined Edge, and more. Although we miss the community coming together at VMworld every year, this smaller VMware Explore conference is very much in line with the direction taken by Broadcom since their acquisition of the company. Time ...
Sep 04, 2024•30 min
This week kicked off the annual Hot Chips conference and AI has once again dominated the conversation. There were a lot of stories to talk about, from wafer scale chips to silicon photonics, Cerebras' giant leap into AI Inferencing, Microsoft Azure's MAIA 100 AI Accelerator, IBM's On-Chip DPU, Broadcom's AI Compute ASIC, Intel's Guadi 3, and more. Let's dive in on this episode of The Rundown. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to The Rundown 0:54 - Kioxa Files for IPO 4:18 - Cisco to Acquire Robust Int...
Aug 28, 2024•45 min
Our big story this week is from AMD. They're opening up their wallet to the tune of nearly $5 billion to buy ZT Systems. The two companies have had a preexisting partnership, with ZT having collaborated on the EPYC processor lines. ZT's biggest customers are AWS and Azure, as ZT specializes in hyperscale AI systems that are bought by the rack. This move follows a very recent acquisition of Silo AI, which we covered on the Rundown, as well as their last big acquisition of Xilinx. There's a lot to...
Aug 21, 2024•43 min
Black Hat was last week and Hacker Summer Camp never fails to disappoint. There were some big takeaways from the show, such as Moxie Marlinspike telling DevOps they're the problem with security as well as a whole host of exploits, like the ones we've covered above. However, AI is king in 2024 and we knew everyone was going to be talking about it. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to The Rundown 1:13 - IBM Storage Scale using Blue Vela AI supercomputer 4:46 - AMD Chips Hit with Sinkclose 8:24 - BMC Use...
Aug 14, 2024•41 min
It's not a great day for Intel and some 15,000 workers. In the earning call last week the CPU giant revealed that while they hit their revenue target numbers this past quarter there are storm clouds on the horizon. Challenges from AI companies as well as issues with some of their most recent chip designs has Pat Gelsinger looking to cut costs. The way that was expressed to the industry was through massive layoffs. Intel is shedding 15% of their overall workforce and suspending the payment of div...
Aug 07, 2024•30 min
Microsoft has released an accountability notice after the big Crowdstrike outage. According to the release, Microsoft is going to change and innovate in the area of end-to-end resilience. This includes things like VBS enclaves, which require no kernel mode drivers, as well as Azure Attestation, which determines secure boot posture. The messaging indicates that Microsoft sees kernel access is their biggest issue and they are going to try and develop new tools that eliminate the need for it. Time ...
Jul 31, 2024•47 min
Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to the Rundown 1:03 - NVIDIA's B20 AI Chip 5:35 - Wiz Denies Google's $23 Billion 9:15 - AMD Acquires Silo AI 14:07 - BMC Announces Mainframe AI Integration 18:04 - Einstein Service Agent Released by Salesforce 22:18 - Swiss Government Mandates Open Source 26:58 - Crowdstrike Update Strikes Microsoft's Cloud Services 43:46 - The Weeks Ahead 46:11 - Thanks for Watching Hosts: Tom Hollingsworth: https://www.twitter.com/NetworkingNerd Stephen Foskett: https://www.twitter...
Jul 24, 2024•48 min
Google is looking to make their biggest acquisition ever. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Alphabet will be making a bid to purchase Wiz for $23 billion. Wiz has spent the past four years developing a cloud security platform that has detected some big problems in a number of providers, including one in Microsoft Bing. Google is finding itself increasingly under fire from a varity of attackers. The move comes as Google is facing antitrust charges from the Department of ...
Jul 17, 2024•29 min
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released a comprehensive guide to bolster operational security (OPSEC) for election officials. This guide aims to enhance the security of election infrastructure by offering detailed strategies for identifying and mitigating potential risks within the election context. This and more on The Rundown. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to the Rundown 1:34 - Japan Bids Farewell to Floppy Disks 4:15 - NetApp to Focus on AI Integration and Data ...
Jul 10, 2024•40 min
The US government is worried there might not be enough trained workers to fill the needs of the CHIPS act. President Biden has announced a Workforce Partner Alliance (WFPA) to ensure the gap for skilled workers will be closed as soon as possible. WFPA is designed to reward providers with grants of between $500,000 and $2 million to provide the training for these new chip facilities. Is this something that we can count on? Or will it turn into another boondoggle like ITT Tech? This and more on th...
Jul 03, 2024•48 min
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has launched a private cloud solution leveraging the KVM hypervisor, aiming at customers upset by the Broadcom-VMware merger. This is added to the existing bare-metal and container solutions in HPE's Private Cloud offering. HPE is also the latest major IT vendor to partner with NVIDIA on a suite of private cloud solutions designed to accelerate the deployment of generative AI in enterprise environments. This includes a complete turn-key AI hardware solution, incl...
Jun 26, 2024•38 min
Amazon Web Services recently held their re:Inforce conference, as the company attempts to partner with customers to deliver a securre environment. Following the shared responsibility model concept that was the focus last year, it seems that the company is emphasizing that security is a job for everyone in the modern cloud. We also saw product announcements from AWS, including enhancements to Nitro that control access to the underlying infrastructure. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Cold Open 0:54 - Welcome ...
Jun 19, 2024•41 min
The US Justice Department and FCC have announced an agreement that gives them each a role to play in potential antitrust investigations against the biggest players in the AI market. Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI were named in the agreement specifically according to insider reports. This follows reports that antitrust investigators have big concerns about AI and how companies developing it get their data to train the models. This agreement is modeled on a similar one from 2019 that eventually saw...
Jun 12, 2024•34 min
At Qlik Connect in Orlando, significant announcements affecting the industry were examined. Key highlights included the integration of Talend Cloud to enhance data pipeline capabilities and the introduction of Qlik Answers, an AI-powered knowledge assistant tailored to enterprise data. The partnership with the United Nations to support climate change initiatives by leveraging data analytics was also discussed. Additionally, Qlik announced the formation of an AI Council composed of experts to gui...
Jun 05, 2024•33 min
The world’s leading internet firms are actively collaborating with regulators in the European Union to ensure compliance with the bloc’s stringent data protection rules. According to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which serves as the lead EU regulator for major tech companies including Alphabet’s Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and OpenAI, these firms are taking extensive measures to ensure that their artificial intelligence (AI) products do not violate data privacy regulations. Ar...
May 29, 2024•37 min
Pat Moorhead and Daniel Newman sat down with Sam Burd to discuss AI PCs at Dell Tech World. These new PCs include significant new AI integrations, and Dell expects these to initiate a "super cycle" of PC upgrades. We discussed the importance of Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite earlier in the program, but what should we make of the market for AI PCs? This and more announcements from Dell Tech World on The Rundown. Time Stamps: 0:00 - Welcome to The Rundown 1:00 - Dell Writes a HYCU in their PowerProte...
May 22, 2024•51 min
The June 2024 Top500 supercomputer list was released at ISC 2024, and there is a lot to unpack. The latest Top 500 Supercomputers list highlights significant trends in the supercomputing landscape, as NVIDIA takes 7 spots with Grace-based systems, including 3 of the top 20. Although the balance between Intel and AMD remains static, there is a shift towards co-packaged CPUs and accelerators just as Intel announces they will sunset Ponte Vecchio, their entry in this space, and skip the next genera...
May 15, 2024•36 min