What company is doing the most to kill desktop computers? OK, that’s Microsoft, but who outside or Redmond is hitting PC’s really hard? What is the cloud’s role in making PC’s go away? Here’s one PC killer: VMware, whose new Horizon DaaS desktop-as-a-service offers a Windows machine in the cloud for a mere $35-a-month. Granted ...

This may not make me popular, but I am much more afraid of Google than I am of the NSA. Despite Edward Snowden’s revelations, for which I hope he will soon be prosecuted for treason, there isn’t evidence the NSA abused the information in ways that hurt normal Americans. It takes a whole lot of ...

People charged with making sense of big data should understand one thing: You’re working against human evolution. Not surprisingly, that can cause problems. “Big data is very sexy and makes it seem like we can figure out anything. Well, maybe,” says Dr. Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine. Shermer, who holds a Ph.D. in the history of science, ...

Having essentially hit the reset button after going private, Dell is trying to reposition itself as what Michael Dell has called “the world’s largest startup.” Internally, the company is focusing on innovation, increasing competition and cutting staff, supposedly a necessary condition for accomplishing its other goals. Externally, Dell is emphasizing its B-t0-B roots, including advertisements linking Dell ...

If you are buying cloud service from any of the Big Three, you may not be getting what you think you’re paying for. For example, performance is variable, with smaller machines sometimes beating larger ones. And no vendor is always best, but one tends to be fastest and another most expensive. Those are some of ...

One of the most powerful ways to make the cloud work for your company is locating at least part of your contact center there. The call-center-in-the-cloud offers tremendous flexibility and should offer significant cost savings, too. Many companies have already figured this out, according to a new study. IDC is out with a report this ...

As in most of life, with outsourcing you get what you pay for. If you want your outsourced cloud to offer as good or better security than your own data center, you better be willing to write the check. “You get what you pay for,” says Andy Ellis, chief security officer with Akamai Technologies. “If ...

If you’ve seen any indication that humans are getting smarter and more sophisticated, please inform me, and you don’t have to read what follows. For everyone else, who sees no lack of stupidity and misinformation in both business and public life, read on about the joys big data will bring. But, first, a quick pass ...

Microsoft’s Power BI for Office 365 has launched out of preview mode and gives us an idea of how Redmond looks at data analytics, visualization, user interface and enterprise licensing in creating what it hopes will be business intelligence for the masses. This is a key step in making Big Data a mass-market phenomena, at ...

It is a marriage of convenience. Google wants to smite Microsoft, especially Windows 7 and 8, while VMware could care less about customers’ operating system choices, so long as the OS can be virtualized. That’s what passes for a strategic relationship these days. So now, Chromebooks can access the Windows universe. Google and VMware have ...