Bipartisan push for IoT security: One of, if not the most vexing challenges facing the Internet of Things (IoT) is security. Millions of devices are flooding the market while lacking the type of security needed to preserve user privacy, thwart cyberattacks and resist infections and takeovers from botnets. Now a bipartisan group of U.S. senators wants to pass legislation ensuring that IoT devices bought by the goverment meets a set of strict security standards.
Companies who sell IoT devices to the goverment would ensure their devices can be patched, do not employ hard-coded passwords that can’t be altered, and are "free of known security vulnerabilities," Sens. U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT) said in a statement.
A wide array of academics and tech companies have endorsed the bill. They include the Berklett Cybersecurity Project at Harvard, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Mozilla, Cloudflare, Neustar, the Niskanen Center, Symantec, TechFreedom and VMware.
While the lawmakers describe the bill as a modest measure, it does contain one crucial component. IoT vendors wishing to sell to the government would have to adopt a set of disclosure guidelines, under which researchers could independently probe the devices for vulnerabilities without fear of prosecution under the Digital Milennium Copyright Act or Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The full text of the bill is available here.
POV: It's a common-sense piece of legislation that one could convincingly argue is a couple of years overdue, given the rash of IoT-related security disasters in the recent past. However, it doesn't go nearly far enough. While the U.S. government spends many billions on IT purchases each year, it still represents just a small fraction of IoT device sales overall. What the industry needs is legislation—and not just in the U.S.—that sets stringent and enforceable ecurity standards for all IoT devices coming to market. Until that happens, consumers lack sorely needed protections.
Oracle pushes out updates across cloud suite: This week, Oracle introduced Release 13 of its Cloud Applications family, with key new features including a revamped user experience and enhancements across SCM (supply chain management), CX (customer experience, ERP (enterprise resource planning), SCM (supply chain management) and HCM (human capital management).
SCM appears to have gotten the most investment, with the addition of more than 200 "major" features and six new SKUs targeting sales planning, demand management, supply planning, collaboration, quality management and maintenance.
The CX suite gets improved mobile and data visualization features, as well as a new app called Engagement Cloud that combines sales and service.
ERP Cloud updates focus on industry support for higher ed, financial services and manufacturing, as well as new functionality for dynamic discounting and multi-funding.
On the HCM front, Oracle says 80 percent of the new features were driven by direct customer input. Updates include broader UX personalization and added support for customers with unionized work forces.
POV: Oracle is keeping to a biannual cadence for updates to the cloud application suite, which is a less frequent pace than some SaaS vendors but likely one it has judged its customers prefer. While Oracle is still selling on-premises application licenses, the clear emphasis has been on cloud. In its most recent quarter, Oracle said SaaS revenue jumped 67 percent to $964 million. That's still a small fraction of its overall revenue but the strong growth can't be denied and is much less attributable to acquisitions than in the past.
Oracle is also having luck selling into new accounts; two-thirds of the 868 cloud ERP deals it signed in the most recent quarter were with companies who never had Oracle ERP before.
As for the Release 13 announcement, it's interesting that Oracle led with SCM, which has lagged as a category in the cloud era, says Constellation VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller.
Oracle's Cloud Applications stem to the mid-2000s when it began working on Fusion Applications, which were supposed to be a superset of capabilities from its existing on-premises suites. Fusion's development took much longer than planned, but they ultimately went GA in 2011. A key component of Fusion was the availability of both on-premises and cloud deployment options. Those still exist for many but not all Oracle enterprise applications, but the Fusion branding has pretty much been dropped altogether.
"The overall state of Oracle's SaaS products is stronger than ever in scope, vertical support and customer adoption," Mueller says. But it's a stretch to call them next-generation enterprise applications unless they employ big data, deep neural networks, voice as a UI and other cutting-edge features, he adds.
IBM, Sony report stunning new tape storage record: Digital tape may not be the sexiest or most flexible storage medium out there, but boy can you fit a lot of data on tape. IBM and Sony say they've set a record of 201 Gb/in2 (gigabits per square inch) in areal density on tape developed by Sony. That's a 20x increase over currently used tape, the companies say, and equates to 330 terabytes of uncompressed information on a tape deck the size of a human's palm.
IBM's release used a colorful metaphor to express the sheer size of this information set, comparing it to "the text of 330 million books, which would fill a bookshelf that stretches slightly beyond the northeastern to the southwestern most tips of Japan."
The test used a prototype sputtered tape. This variety costs more than standard barium ferrite-based tape, but the capacity makes it attractive for tasks such as cold data storage in the cloud, IBM says.
POV: IBM is clearly banking that tape can help it compete in the cloud archiving business with the likes of Amazon and Google. There's a lot of money to be made there, with legitimate customer needs driving demand. Having another big-name choice in the market will be a good thing to have.