Move over, Siri. Some new consumer products will include the artificial intelligence platform and “Jeopardy!” winner, Watson. IBM announced at CES 2016 that it has partnered with Under Armour to use Watson in the company’s fitness app to help make suggestions based on health data. Watson will also power a new robot from the Japan-based SoftBank company. The Pepper robot is designed to provide an interactive experience that would replace the kiosks in retail stores, banks and hotels. Continue reading CES: IBM Pushes Watson Brand with New Product Integration

With FAA drone regulations newly in place, industry pioneers gathered at CES to describe the issues roiling this growing category. Drones allow people to fulfill the fantasy of flying and thus in our DNA, says 3D Robotics CRO Colin Guinn. The use cases, however, from agriculture to movie making, are very real, generating more attention. That’s why Flytrex Aviation chief exec Yariv Bash predicts we’ll see many more consumer and pro versions, and Parrot chief exec Henri Seydoux notes the drone’s data collection as its key feature. Continue reading Drones Grow Up: More Use Cases, Capabilities, Regulations

Proponents of artificial intelligence are quick to point out that, as Google searches and Siri exemplify, it’s nothing new. In fact, panelists talking about “The Future of Artificial Intelligence” at CES described their own and others’ efforts in the field dating back to 2007. But a combination of a new trend in collecting and curating massive amounts of data, along with widespread cloud usage, is opening to the doors to more platforms and applications for artificial intelligence in enterprise and consumer markets. Continue reading Future of Artificial Intelligence for Enterprise and Consumers

When Tesla released all of its patents to the public in 2014, it jumpstarted the electric car ecosystem while continuing to succeed. Facebook made its data-center architecture available to the masses, still making a tidy $12+ billion in revenue last year. Open source code is now fueling tremendous innovation and digital capabilities. Whereas companies in the past dominated by using licensed software to create monopolies, today’s companies relying on open source code differentiate themselves by the services they offer. Continue reading Open Source Speeds Developments in Artificial Intelligence

Apple just made its programming language Swift open source, housing it on the new website swift.org to offer a range of tools to help developers turn raw code into applications. Apple designed Swift as an easier programming language for developing software for Apple devices, but the apps can now be formatted to run on other operating systems. The move is part of Apple’s strategy, in light of sagging consumer sales, to target enterprise users; among the companies now using Swift are IBM, Twitter, Yahoo and LinkedIn. Continue reading Apple’s Swift Now Open Source to Aid Enterprise Developers

Google isn’t usually focused on open source projects, but the company now dominates the market for cluster managers with its open source Kubernetes software. Developed originally for internal use, Kubernetes gives corporations a way to manage clusters of containers, which are building blocks of code with a small application, designed to work across platforms and servers. Although it’s not a revenue source for Google, Kubernetes is a key technology in making Google a serious contender in the enterprise cloud. Continue reading Open Source Kubernetes Helps Make Google Cloud Contender

Apple’s new iPad Pro is the company’s biggest, priciest tablet and the first aimed squarely at enterprise users. The company says it’s pitting the iPad Pro against laptops, not other tablets, but it almost immediately draws comparisons with Microsoft’s Surface, that company’s business-focused tablet. Apple has not typically targeted the enterprise market, but this new focus is driven by the need to bolster revenues in light of declining iPhone revenues. Sales of the iPad have also declined since the 2013 peak of 71 million units. Continue reading Apple Goes After Enterprise With High-End, Pricier iPad Pro

Cloud storage company Dropbox made announcements during yesterday’s Dropbox Open conference in San Francisco meant to attract more business customers. The company introduced Dropbox Enterprise, a new tier for its business offering intended for larger companies that require more advanced functionality. Dropbox also announced that it has reached a new milestone: 400 million users and 150,000 business customers. And to continue growing its business side, the company has formed new partnerships with Synnex, Ingram Micro and HP Enterprise. Continue reading Dropbox Unveils Advanced Tools, Seeks Enterprise Customers

BlackBerry has finally done something it said it would never do: ditch its own operating system. Expected to ship by the end of November, Priv is based on the Android operating system but also incorporates BlackBerry’s encryption technology, still considered superior by the government and industry entities that have been central to the company’s success. Whereas BlackBerry phones once dominated usage among bank, law and other professional employment, the Canadian company lost market share to Apple and Android smartphones. Continue reading BlackBerry’s First Android Device Retains Security Technology

The Internet has revolutionized consumers’ lives, say Apple and General Electric, but the business world has yet to enjoy similar benefits. Both companies have stated that they see enterprise as the next frontier. Apple and GE are just starting to focus on this space but both have plans to empower enterprise with tools — with Apple focused on the mobile Internet and GE on sensors and predictive data analysis — that interact with people, track tools and mediate between people and machines. Continue reading Apple and GE: Future of Business is Personalized Technology

With the recent introduction of the iPad Pro, Apple is signaling its intent that iOS become the dominant operating system in the enterprise arena. Driven by millennials whose intimate familiarity with iOS comes from growing up with — and spending most of their time with — Apple mobile devices, iOS is poised, believes Apple, to be the operating system that this demographic brings with them as they move into their careers and business lives. Microsoft, among others, is porting hundreds of apps to iOS. Continue reading Apple Envisions iOS as the Future of Business Computing

Several high-profile technology companies, most notably Hewlett-Packard, have been hard at work trying to reinvent the hard drive. But it looks like Intel will be first to market with its new Optane drives. Although a current prototype of Intel’s Optane drives only functions seven times the speed of a top-end flash disk drive, it could be much faster by the time it is released in 2016. And the potential is great: Optane drives are said to operate as much as 1,000 times faster than today’s memory technology. Continue reading Intel to Bring Superfast Optane Hard Drives to Market in 2016

A recent Check Point Software survey determined that enterprise network vulnerabilities often result from the ease in which company employees can now connect their mobile devices to insecure wireless networks. The study suggests that the threat level increases with larger organizations. For example, companies that use 2,000 or more devices experience a 50 percent chance that at least six devices have become infected with malware (something to consider since 82 percent of companies now have a BYOD plan in place). Continue reading Mobile Devices Now the Largest Threat to Enterprise Security

Google has unveiled its new Chrome operating system designed for business customers, which includes changes aimed at allowing companies to operate many of their legacy software applications. Dell has announced new Chromebooks and management software designed to work with the new operating system. After years of pushing cloud-based systems for improved security and management, Google has learned that many companies require custom upgrades or rely on virtualized systems to address the multitude of applications that cannot easily move to the cloud. Continue reading Google Launches New Chrome OS for its Business Customers

Sales of the once-popular iPads are tumbling, and Apple is taking a hard look at business computing as a way to offset the loss. To make the iPad a tool more compatible to the workplace, the Silicon Valley company has begun to collaborate with more than 40 technology companies to create the kinds of apps and tools that will make it appealing to businesses, a sector it has never seriously gone after. With an estimated $2 trillion spent every year on technology for the workplace, the stakes are big. Continue reading Apple Focuses on Business Computing as iPad Sales Decline