Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president of Cloud + Enterprise at Microsoft, on July 12 reminded the database administrator and developer communities that SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 support comes to end on July 9, 2019. While they may continue to run their databases on those older versions, it may not be prudent to do so without Microsoft support, he cautioned.

When Microsoft pulls the plug on a software product, it effectively means the end of security updates. That is, unless a customer pays for premium support, an option typically reserved for the biggest and wealthiest enterprise customers that can afford Microsoft’s bespoke support services. Everyone is likely to accept the costs of upgrading to a newer version like SQL Server 2017.

It may be impractical for organizations to upgrade their databases in the time allotted since many of them attached to critical workloads. So, Microsoft is giving SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 deployments a new lease on life, provided they are migrated to the cloud.

Numoto announced “that Extended Security Updates will be available for free in Azure for 2008 and 2008 R2 versions of SQL Server and Windows Server to help secure your workloads for three more years after the end of support deadline,” in a blog post. “You can rehost these workloads to Azure with no application code change.”

Businesses will have another migration option sometime in the fourth quarter of 2018. That is when Microsoft is planning the general availability release of Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, a managed database-as-a-service product that will enable customers to move their SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 databases “with no application code change and near zero downtime,” Numoto stated.

In fact, the technology giant has its sights set on enterprise database workloads besides those running on SQL Server.

Microsoft is adding Azure Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL support to its Azure Database Migration Service by the end of July 2018, said Julia White, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure, in a separate announcement. Currently in limited preview, the service supports SQL Server migrations to Azure SQL Virtual Machines as well as Oracle databases to Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Database Managed Instances.

Finally, Microsoft is offering a new Solid-State Drive storage migration option for businesses that want to transfer databases and other types of workloads to Azure.

A new Azure Data Box option called Data Box Disk allows customers to load up specialized drives with encrypted data and ship them back to Microsoft, where the company copies the data into a customer’s storage accounts. In the case of Data Box Disk, Microsoft ships 40TB of SSD storage capacity overnight to enable customers to copy their data using a SATA or USB connection and return it to Microsoft.

The post Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Support Extended for Cloud Migrations appeared first on eWEEK.

“Our engineering investments, coupled with our scale and our time-tested ability to manage our capacity, allow us to identify and pass on the cost savings to you,” Barr said.

Most of AWS’s price reductions have come from its S3 storage (Simple Storage Service), which was instituted in 2006.

This one, however, is about cloud computing capacity. AWS is reducing the On-Demand, Reserved Instance (Standard and Convertible) and Dedicated Host prices for C4, M4, and T2 instances by up to 25 percent, depending on region and platform (Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE, Windows, and others).

Details:

C4: Reductions of up to 5 percent in U.S. East (Northern Virginia) and European Union (Ireland) and 20 percent in Asia Pacific (Mumbai) and Asia Pacific (Sydney).

M4: Reductions of up to 10 percent in U.S. East (Northern Virginia), EU (Ireland), and EU (Frankfurt) and 25 percent in Asia Pacific (Singapore).

T2: Reductions of up to 10 percent in U.S. East (Northern Virginia) and 25 percent in Asia Pacific (Singapore).

“You do not need to take any action in order to benefit from the reduction in On-Demand prices,” Barr wrote. “If you are using billing alerts or our newly revised budget feature, you may want to consider revising your thresholds downward as appropriate.”

The post AWS to Adjust Computing Capacity Pricing Downward Dec. 1 appeared first on eWEEK.

By giving members these tools, Thread Group officials are hoping to drive adoption of its Thread 1.1 technical specification in devices for the connected home and elsewhere. At the same time, the consortium—one of several industry groups developing standards for the internet of things (IoT)—said that chip makers ARM and NXP Semiconductors and IoT technology vendor Silicon Labs have developed the first conforming stacks that have passed testing based on Thread 1.1.

The unveiling of the new hardware tools, the opening of the test lab to consortium members and the first stacks to pass the tests is a significant step for the Thread Group, according to organization President Grant Erickson.

“The arrival of this milestone generates a new wave of momentum for Thread,” Erickson said in a statement. “We’re very excited to see the first Thread 1.1-conforming stacks come to market, and for our member companies to move their Thread-enabled products towards commercial availability.”

The Thread Group was launched in 2014 by Nest—which is owned by Alphabet and makes such products as smart thermostats—and other vendors, including ARM and Samsung, to develop a low-power, secure and scalable IP-based wireless mesh network layer that enables IoT devices for the home to connect more easily to the internet and each other. The release of the Thread 1.1 spec was a significant step for the 240-member group, and consortium officials earlier this month said that the spec has helped drive interest among the members and industry alliances in expanding Thread into other areas.

With that in mind, the Thread Group announced last week that they are planning to extend the reach of Thread beyond the connected home and into the commercial sector. Officials said that while the group will continue to develop low-power IP mesh solutions, they will include capabilities to enable Thread to work in both home and businesses.

Now group members can gain access to advanced tools and resources to help drive product development. The hardware test best includes multiple silicon and stack implementations. In addition, a partnership with Grant River Labs led to the development of the test harness, which runs automated test scripts on the bed.

The post Thread Group Unveils Developer Resources to Drive IoT Spec Adoption appeared first on eWEEK.

If I ran Samsung, I would be issuing a steady stream of detailed press releases with information about how our ongoing investigation into the battery problems was revealing—finally—the true and actual cause of the fires that doomed a smartphone model and caused my company to essentially watch some $6 billion in operating profits vanish due to the fiasco.

Instead, what did Samsung announce on Nov. 1 in a corporate press release?

A new Coral Blue color (pictured) for its Galaxy S7 Edge smartphones. I’m not making this up.

Samsung, just a couple weeks after a business disaster of epic proportions, continues to avoid revealing more details about what caused the failures that led to the recall of some 2.5 million Note7 phones.

Honestly, that’s what I want to hear about right now. Not about a new smartphone color.

Samsung needs to be much more open and much more direct and report every development into its investigation, no matter how small, as they figure it out.

Why should there be such scrutiny?

Because the company didn’t do its research the first time when the Note7 battery fires first cropped up. Instead, Samsung quickly said it had an answer to the issues by switching battery vendors. That, as we now know, was the wrong move and led to continuing problems with devices that contained the new batteries as well. By not openly sharing information earlier, the company failed to properly identify the root cause of the fires and turned its first recall into an example of how to kill a product and harm your credibility with customers in just a few short weeks.

Samsung still apparently doesn’t know or hasn’t reported exactly what caused the Note7 fires. The company told eWEEK earlier that it is continuing to look for the cause of the problems.

The Note7 debuted in late August and quickly was the source of reports about battery fires and explosions. Samsung addressed those initial reports by investigating the devices that had fires and starting its own global recall, and then in September cooperated with regulators at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission when the agency issued a government recall of the phones.

With all of this still ongoing, Samsung needs to focus, not on more phone colors, but on explaining what happened with the Note7 and what the company is doing to make sure it NEVER happens again.

This is about honesty, openness and restoring credibility, not about style and pushing more important matters out of the spotlight.

This is about forgetting about color choices and styling now and focusing on making batteries that don’t catch fire.

That’s what I’d be doing if I ran Samsung today.

The post Samsung Reveals New Smartphone Color When Focus Should Be on Quality appeared first on eWEEK.

Ruckus, a business unit of Brocade, this week introduced Cloudpath ES 5.0 software, which offers a range of features that deliver an integrated security and policy management platform to businesses looking for better ways to handle the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trends in their environments.

As the workforce has become more mobile and workers use more mobile devices for their jobs, businesses have been forced to find ways to balance network accessibility with security. Being more mobile can help many workers be more productive, but it also increases the complexity that IT departments have to manage when so many devices are being connected to the corporate network.

“Managing devices [as well as] workflow and security policies has become more complex over the last decade for businesses of all sizes,” Kevin Koster, chief architect and Cloudpath founder at Ruckus, said in a statement. “At the same time, many companies operate in various locations with multiple wireless networks. This creates complex IT management challenges.”

It doesn’t promise to get much easier. Analysts with IDC are predicting the mobile worker population in the United States will grow from 96.2 million people last year to 105.4 million in 2020.

Key features in Cloudpath ES 5.0 include a simplified Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), industry-standard x.509 digital certificates and granular policy assignment to stronger security and centralized policy management, and an improved user experience that includes a device onboarding process that can take as few as 10 seconds. In addition, users don’t need to remember passwords and no log-in is necessary when they move from one network to another.

The software also works with existing wired and wireless networks as well as network security firewalls, client operating systems and other avenues for ensuring compliance with security policies, helping to reduce the complexity for businesses. Ruckus also offers tight integration with Brocade’s ICX switches and a user-based licensing plan that helps businesses better plan their networks and keep costs down even as the number of devices per employee grows.

Brocade bought Ruckus earlier this year for $1.2 billion, a move to bring in wireless networking capabilities to complement its wired products.

The post Ruckus Wireless Aims to Make BYOD Onboarding Easier, Safer appeared first on eWEEK.

Citing anonymous sources, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters both reported that executives with the two companies are negotiating a deal that would being Level 3 into the CenturyLink fold. The sources told Reuters that an acquisition would be worth more than $50 billion and that it could be announced as early as next week.

Wall Street Journal sources said a deal could be made public within the next few weeks. Officials with both CenturyLink and Level 3 have declined to comment on the reports.

Telcos are under increasing pressure to deliver more speed and capacity to customers that are struggling to manage and store more and to analyze the massive amount of data that is being generated in this age of the cloud, more mobility and the internet of things (IoT).

Neither CenturyLink nor Level 3 has been shy about buying other companies to build out their own capabilities. CenturyLink in 2011 bought service providers Savvis and Qwest Communications International, the latter a $12.2 billion deal that made CenturyLink the country’s fourth-largest carrier. The company also has bought such companies as AppFog and Tier 3, and earlier this year, the company acquired cloud application management service ElasticBox.

For its part, Level 3 two years ago bought TW Telecom in an effort to build out its enterprise communications portfolio. At the time, Level 3 officials said the combined company had a value of $27 billion. In the past, Level 3 has bought a range of other companies, including Global Crossing, WilTel Communications, Looking Glass Networks and ICG Communications.

In the second quarter this year, Level 3 saw revenue hit $2.05 billion and net income of $149 million. For its part, CenturyLink revenue in the second quarter came in at $4.4 billion, with net income hitting $196 million.

The post CenturyLink in Talks to Merge with Level 3 Communications appeared first on eWEEK.

With the latest release of Pexip Infinity V13 collaboration software platform, businesses can burst to Amazon Web Services when the number of users on their conferencing systems reach the maximum capacity. Pexip officials said this is a necessary capability, given the rising adoption of collaboration and conferencing tools by organizations and the growing numbers of people using those technologies.

The new Dynamic Hybrid Cloud functionality is one of several new features in the latest Infinity V13 platform, with others including improved video quality on Google Chrome-based WebRTC clients—including Pexip’s portfolio of Infinity Connect clients—and sharing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations across multiple platforms.

Pexip’s platform delivers interoperability between enterprise communications offerings including Microsoft’s Skype for Business, traditional video and telephone conferencing and web-based communications, creating more efficient environments as businesses continue to shift their collaboration capabilities to the cloud, according to the company. The software-based platform can be deployed on-premises in a customer’s data center, in private or public clouds or in hybrid cloud environments.

The Infinity V13 platform’s bursting capability kicks in when usage demand surpasses capacity, and those AWS conferencing resources end automatically when demand returns to normal, officials said.

In addition, the platform’s adaptive-logic media resilience functionality is designed to improve video quality on Chrome-based WebRTC client, which can be hampered by packet loss and bandwidth challenges. Company officials cited numbers from market research firm Gartner that indicates WebRTC usage will grow 1,500 percent over the next few years, with many more people using their notebooks or other mobile devices for video calls, which drives the need for improved video quality.

The new PowerPoint feature enables users connected to Skype for Business meetings through a standards-based endpoint or other non-Skype clients to see PowerPoint presentations that are shared via Skype’s Present PowerPoint Files feature. Pexip also updated the administration interface to enable administrators to quickly see the status of the platform, ongoing calls and utilization.

The post Pexip Adds Cloud Bursting to Collaboration Software appeared first on eWEEK.

The mobile chip maker this summer filed more than a dozen complaints against Meizu with intellectual property courts in China in hopes of pressing the device maker to agree to terms of a patent licensing agreement that the two companies have been negotiating for more than a year.

Now Qualcomm officials are filing complaints with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) as well as similar agencies in Germany and France. The inability to reach a deal with Meizu gave the chip maker no other options, according to Don Rosenberg, executive vice president and general counsel at Qualcomm.

“Meizu’s refusal to negotiate a license agreement in good faith and its sales and distribution of infringing products around the world leave Qualcomm with no choice but to protect our patent rights through these additional legal proceedings,” Rosenberg said in a statement.

Qualcomm has had an eventful couple of years in regard to patent licensing in China. Early last year, Qualcomm agreed to pay a $975 million fine and to parameters for patent licensing deals with Chinese device makers to settle a yearlong antitrust investigation by National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s antitrust arm.

Since that time, more than 100 Chinese smartphone makers—including Xiaomi, ZTE and Vivo Communication Technology—have signed licensing deals with Qualcomm that comply with the terms reached between Qualcomm and Chinese regulators. Meizu has become the highest profile holdout, despite reported rumors in the country that the two sides were close to reaching a deal.

In a statement responding to the latest Qualcomm complaints, Meizu officials said they are willing to sign a licensing deal with the chip maker, but that the terms were unreasonable. In addition, they cautioned that should “Qualcomm succeed … the entire Chinese mobile phone industry will face a crisis.”

According to Qualcomm officials, the company has filed at complaint with the ITC and a patent infringement action with the Mannheim Regional Court in Germany, and has begun an infringement-seizure action in France in an effort to discover evidence that could be used for possible future infringement actions against Meizu in France.

The post Qualcomm Brings Patent Dispute Against Meizu to US, France, Germany appeared first on eWEEK.

“Sure,” I told the Verizon rep when he offered to give me extra gigs of data at the same price in exchange for dropping the ability to tether my phone to my laptop or other devices. “No problem.”

Quickly, though, I regretted that seemingly inconsequential decision while aboard an Amtrak train heading to New York City from my home in central Pennsylvania to cover a technology event. Amtrak trains have free on-board WiFi, I mused as the train made its way from the green agricultural countryside in Lancaster County to the urban canyons of Manhattan. Of course, I thought, I don’t need tethering.

Oh, how wrong was I.

Amtrak may have WiFi listed as a service on its trains, but it is largely not something that passengers can rely on. The service, to be kind, is spotty at best. It drops out at the worst possible times and is so unreliable as to be essentially something that you can’t use.

It was sad that I learned this harsh reality almost immediately after signing up for a two-year commitment to my no-tethering Verizon plan, but that’s the breaks.

So for two years, I’ve tested almost every portable mobile hotspot that companies asked me to check out. There was the device that let you pay for mobile WiFi one gig at a time—which sounded great until you ran out of capacity in the middle of a trip and were left stranded. Then there was another gadget that touted its fast 4G speeds, but the company failed to mention the device wasn’t backward-compatible with 3G networks and would drop your connection when 4G networks disappeared from your range. That may not sound like much of a problem in urban areas, but on the Amtrak route from Pennsylvania to New York City, certain rural stretches have no 4G. Another sad lesson learned by experience.

So when it was time for me to get a new smartphone and review my mobile plan this year, I chose a new Verizon plan with more data, a lower price and tethering capabilities once again.

It’s the greatest move I’ve made in my personal technology life in years. Once again, I can connect effortlessly to the internet, email and everything else I need from wherever I am relaxing, working or visiting.

No more connectionless frustrations—unless, of course, my train enters a long tunnel along the way. I don’t know how I survived without tethering for so long.

I know. It’s just tethering, which seems so simple. But to me, it is one of the greatest inventions ever because it brings connectivity to me day or night, no matter where I am.

So Verizon, don’t even think about taking my tethering away again. I’m not going back to an untethered life.

The post Mobile Tethering: A Tech Journalist’s Appreciation appeared first on eWEEK.

The cloud-based unified communications (UC) vendor on Oct. 11 is unveiling a new user interface that combines voice, video and messaging into a single application to give customers an improved user experience. It offers an enterprise-grade platform that brings the quality, reliability, security and analytics that businesses need, according to company officials.

The UC-as-a-service (UCaaS) vendor developed the redesigned user experience by moving away from the traditional approach of designing business software by asking people what they want and then trying to create a product to address what they’re asking for, according to Fuze CEO Steve Kokinos.

“With our redesign, we took a consumer-inspired approach to [user experience], observing individual behavior in a personal setting and then optimizing the experience based on that user behavior,” Kokinos said in a statement. “On average, people use four to six communication apps at work daily. The result is a disconnected experience with an overlap in services that creates redundancy and confusion. For the business, this results in poor user adoption, a lack of control, and excess cost associated with multiple overlapping technologies.”

Employees won’t tend to continue using communications technologies that don’t give them a good user experience, and what they find in consumer products sets a high bar, Fuze officials said. They noted a Gartner study that found that not only do many employee-facing applications provide a poor user experience when compared with consumer applications, but companies many times can’t improve the user experience in these third-party apps.

In addition, a survey by Fuze of more than 1,000 workers in the United States found that 73 percent said workplace technologies need to catch up in quality to consumer offerings. In beta tests of the new user experience from Fuze’s new app, 80 percent of testers regularly used the app over the course of several months.

With Fuze’s new app, employees need to install and learn only one interface across voice, video and messaging both internally and outside the business, which reduces the need to learn multiple products, company officials said. That should help drive up UC adoption and improve productivity, they said.

The post Fuze Improves the UC User Experience appeared first on eWEEK.