Anybody can now buy Microsoft’s $3,000 HoloLens

You can now buy Microsoft’s HoloLens Development Edition, the company’s futuristic augmented reality helmet, without having to go through an application process. Until now, Microsoft only made HoloLenses available to developers who put in an application. Now, if you have $3,000 to spare and you are in the U.S. or Canada, you can simply buy up to five units directly from Microsoft.

At $3,000, HoloLens is still pretty expensive, so I don’t expect that too many people will just spontaneously want to buy one, but at least if you want one, you can now have it. Officially, Microsoft says HoloLens is available to developers and business customers (this is still the “Development Edition,” after all), but even if you’re not one of those, it will still happily sell you one. All you need to buy one, after all, is an address in the U.S. or Canada, a Microsoft account and enough money.

Microsoft notes that its retail stores do not have HoloLens inventory.

In addition to making HoloLens more widely available, Microsoft also today launched the HoloLens Commercial Suite, which includes the hardware and additional enterprise security and device management features.

As part of this enterprise suite, HoloLens is getting a Kiosk Mode so you can limit which apps run on the device, support for identity management, device management, BitLocker support for data encryption and more.

This update clearly shows that Microsoft wants to get HoloLens into the enterprise market — a market Microsoft knows better than virtually any other player out there.

Microsoft started shipping HoloLens to select developers in March. The fact that it is opening up this program so quickly means that it feels pretty confident in the hardware (and that it can produce it at scale), but also that a wider consumer launch probably isn’t that far off.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/anybody-can-now-buy-microsofts-3000-hololens/

Moore’s Law Soon To Be Given Last Rites

Moore’s Law, one of the most prescient observations made about the increasing power of computer processors that has become accepted theory and practice for almost 50 years, may soon be no more.

Intel has made great advances with the latest Haswell processor

This is the news, that barring some sort of technological breakthrough, the practical limits on improvement of copper on silicon technology (microchips) may have already reached the practical limit of what can be achieved.

According to Moore’s Law, originally published in a 1965 research paper, by none other than Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore, the number of transistors capable of being placed onto an integrated circuit board doubles every two years, and consequently it was postulated that processing power also doubles.
Although something of a hypothetical back in the sixties, the theory was soon proven to be true, sort of, or was at least close enough to the truth that now iconic piece of thinking became universally known as Moore’s law.
Experts have now predicted however that it will be nigh on impossible to shrink transistors any further by the year 2021. That is at least from an economically viable perspective. While it theoretically possible to make transistors smaller and smaller, after a certain point the costs involved become exponentially prohibitive, and also begins to involve quantum mechanics.
Moore’s law worked around the idea that the reason behind integrated circuits were and would become more powerful every 2 years or so, was because there was a demand for ever more powerful electronics. However, getting around the problems that come with working around quantum physics would probably bankrupt any company that tried to do it.

An end to the future?

No. Probably.
Because as we’ve already seen, there are always possibilities and new ways of thinking. We’ve already gotten used to the idea dual, quad, and even 20 core processors in computers, where technology and economic limits of single processors has been bypassed by getting more done with several side by side.
The next step will probably see the extension into 3D, but unlike 3D TVs, this will probably work.  Current generation processors are essentially built on a 2D plane.  The next generation may see transistors being stacked on top of each other, to break through the barrier of the end of Moore’s law.
But as always, it will be time that tells.

Announcing SQL Server on Linux

It’s been an incredible year for the data business at Microsoft and an incredible year for data across the industry. This Thursday at our Data Driven event in New York, we will kick off a wave of launch activities for SQL Server 2016 with general availability later this year. This is the most significant release of SQL Server that we have ever done, and brings with it some fantastic new capabilities. SQL Server 2016 delivers:

    Groundbreaking security encryption capabilities that enable data to always be encrypted at rest, in motion and in-memory to deliver maximum security protection
    In-memory database support for every workload with performance increases up to 30-100x
    Incredible Data Warehousing performance with the #1, #2 and #3 TPC-H 10 Terabyte benchmarks for non-clustered performance, and as of March 7, the #1 SAP SD Two-Tier performance benchmark on Windows1
    Business Intelligence for every employee on every device – including new mobile BI support for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices
    Advanced analytics using our new R support that enables customers to do real-time predictive analytics on both operational and analytic data
    Unique cloud capabilities that enable customers to deploy hybrid architectures that partition data workloads across on-premises and cloud based systems to save costs and increase agility

These improvements, and many more, are all built into SQL Server and bring you not just a new database but a complete platform for data management, business analytics and intelligent apps – one that can be used in a consistent way across both on-premises and the cloud. In fact, over the last year we’ve been using the SQL Server 2016 code-base to run in production more than 1.4 million SQL Databases in the cloud using our Azure SQL Database as a Service offering, and this real-world experience has made SQL Server 2016 an incredibly robust and battle-hardened data platform.

Gartner recently named Microsoft as leading the industry in their Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems in both execution and vision. We’re also a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse and Data Management Solutions for Analytics, and Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms, as well as leading in vision in the Magic Quadrant for Advanced Analytics Platforms.

Gartner MQs

Extending SQL Server to Also Now Run on Linux

Today I’m excited to announce our plans to bring SQL Server to Linux as well. This will enable SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud. We are bringing the core relational database capabilities to preview today, and are targeting availability in mid-2017.

SQL Server on Linux will provide customers with even more flexibility in their data solution. One with mission-critical performance, industry-leading TCO, best-in-class security, and hybrid cloud innovations – like Stretch Database which lets customers access their data on-premises and in the cloud whenever they want at low cost – all built in.

“This is an enormously important decision for Microsoft, allowing it to offer its well-known and trusted database to an expanded set of customers”, said Al Gillen, group vice president, enterprise infrastructure, at IDC. “By taking this key product to Linux Microsoft is proving its commitment to being a cross platform solution provider. This gives customers choice and reduces the concerns for lock-in. We would expect this will also accelerate the overall adoption of SQL Server.”

“SQL Server’s proven enterprise experience and capabilities offer a valuable asset to enterprise Linux customers around the world,” said Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat. “We believe our customers will welcome this news and are happy to see Microsoft further increasing its investment in Linux. As we build upon our deep hybrid cloud partnership, spanning not only Linux, but also middleware, and PaaS, we’re excited to now extend that collaboration to SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, bringing enterprise customers increased database choice.”

“We are delighted to be working with Microsoft as it brings SQL Server to Linux,” said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical. “Customers are already taking advantage of Azure Data Lake services on Ubuntu, and now developers will be able to build modern applications that utilize SQL Server’s enterprise capabilities.”

Bringing SQL Server to Linux is another way we are making our products and new innovations more accessible to a broader set of users and meeting them where they are. Just last week, we announced our agreement to acquire Xamarin. Recently, we also announced Microsoft R Server , our technologies based on our acquisition of Revolution Analytics, with support for Hadoop and Teradata.

Source: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/03/07/announcing-sql-server-on-linux/

Microsoft expands Cortana support, features in new Windows 10 'Redstone' build

Cortana's language support is expanding with this test build to include Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil) and French Canadian. Cortana also is now able to save new reminder information, such as the name of a book and to-do items without specific due dates (like "remind me to wash the car").
Today's new Redstone 14279 test build also provides a merged logon experience, combining the lock screen background and the logon screen background into just one background. For those with custom lock screen backgrounds, the lock screen will now be used for both the lock screen and logon screen.

Build 14279 also includes fixes and known issues, as do all Insider builds. Among the fixes are remedies to the situation that caused the Edge browser and Cortana to crash for users with roaming profiles. Cortana also will no longer show reminders that have been completed. Microsoft also fixed issues causing certain drivers from Windows Update to cause some PCs to bluescreen, according to today's blog post.

In the known issues area, Microsoft is looking into an issue I've heard several users report: Their Surface Pro 3, Pro 4 and Surface Book devices can freeze or hang and prevent inputs including typing and touch from registering. Right now, the workaround is to hold the power button to force a hard reboot.

Users who have Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Internet Security or the Kaspersky Total Security Suite installed may also experience problems, which Microsoft and Kaspersky are working to fix.

Microsoft released a number of additional Windows 10 updates earlier this week for PC users, Windows 10 Mobile Insider testers and for Windows 10 IoT testers.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-expands-cortana-support-features-in-new-windows-10-redstone-build/

IoT Adoption Will Reach 43% In 2016

IoT is greatly used by heavy industries like utilities, oil, and gas and less by service-oriented industries, according to a new survey by Gartner. All told, about 43% of businesses are planning to adopt IoT technology by the end of the year.

10 IoT Development Best Practices For Success
10 IoT Development Best Practices For Success
(Click image for larger view and slideshow.)

Adoption of the Internet of Things is expected to reach 43% of enterprises by the end of this year, with the heaviest users including companies in the oil, gas, utilities, and manufacturing industries, according to a global survey released March 3 by Gartner.

The survey of 465 IT and business professionals in over a dozen industries around the globe found these results:

    29% of survey participants are currently using IoT
    14% plan to use IoT by the end of 2016
    21% expect to implement IoT after 2016

That translates into 43% of enterprises and organizations planning to use IoT by the end of 2016 and 64% to eventually role it out. But for now, IoT is still in the minority when it comes to use.

"This is largely because of two reasons," Chet Geschickter, Gartner research director, wrote in a statement. "The first set of hurdles are business-related. Many organizations have yet to establish a clear picture of what benefits the IoT can deliver, or have not yet invested the time to develop ideas for how to apply IoT to their business. The second set of hurdles are the organizations themselves. Many of the survey participants have insufficient expertise and staffing for IoT and lack clear leadership."

Additionally, enterprises and organizations that are planning to implement IoT are concerned with figuring out ways to coordinate workflows and processes, while those that have hit the go button on IoT cite cyber-security and managing business requirements as their biggest challenges.
Who's Into IoT?

The industries that have glommed on or are planning to the use IoT are the so-called heavy industries of oil, gas, utilities, and manufacturing. According to the study, 56% of survey participants in the heavy industries are expected to implement IoT in 2016.

As for enterprises and organizations in service-oriented industries, only 36% are anticipated to use IoT by the end of the year.

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Part of the reason heavy industry is embracing IoT may be partly attributed to the way the technologies are being used. More than half of the survey participants, 52%, note they use IoT internally to cut costs, improve efficiencies, and bolster the use of assets, whereas 40% of companies and organizations apply it to improving customer experiences or pumping up revenue.

That, however, is expected to change in the future, Jim Tully, a Gartner vice president and analyst, wrote in Thursday's report.

"The survey shows a dramatic jump in focus on customer experience, doubling in nominal terms from 18% to 34%. This indicates that we can expect a much higher IoT focus on end customers during the next 12 months," Tully said. "In effect, IoT programs and processes will become competitive marketplace weapons starting in 2016."

Whether IoT is used for service industries, heavy industries, or other industries, the companies and organizations that use IoT will need to show a return on their investment to justify a large-scale rollout, said Gartner's Geschickter.

Some of the tech titans that have already embraced IoT include IBM, which last year announced plans to create a $3 billion designed IoT business unit and Cisco Systems, which is acquiring IoT cloud-platform company Jasper Technologies for $1.4 billion. The return on their investments should become evident as the years progress.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/iot/iot-adoption-will-reach-43--in-2016-gartner-finds/d/d-id/1324558?