Google Cloud Next kicked off this week with the usually flurry of announcements around the technologies that the search and ad giant focuses on. And at VMworld 2021 the virtualization giant announced a whole slate of “projects”, which is a term used by the tech giant to refer to software releases which aren’t ready to go out the door yet and need more testing. We discuss these stories and more on this week’s Rundown
Pat Gelsinger Says Intel More Friendly than NVIDIA
You didn’t think Intel was going to sleep on NVIDIA’s move into the chip market, did you? In a recent interview with Pat Gelsinger he talked about Intel’s designs on pushing into the GPU space and how the newcomer would battle against an entrenched leader. Gelsinger said that Intel is going to focus on partnering with the channel instead of competing directly with them. They’re also highlighting their single oneAPI architecture that allows for a single toolkit to program CPUs, FPGAs, and GPUs. Intel faces an up hill climb to take on someone as established as NVIDIA on their home turf.
Forcepoint is looking to bolster their SASE story by announcing the acquisition of Bitglass. The newly acquired company brings a whole host of software to the aid of Forcepoint, including SASE keys like Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Security Web Gateway (SWG), and Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA). Bitglass was one of the last independent SASE software vendors that had yet to be purchased and they’ve been embroiled in some legal issues with competitor Netskope.
Databricks announced last week that they have acquired 8080 Labs. The startup is known for their Bamboolib data science library, which helps with low code data analytics. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but the founders of 8080 Labs have reportedly already joined the Databricks team. Databricks is coming off of a recent Series H funding round that boosted the valuation of the firm to a staggering $38 billion.
High-end enterprise storage vendor Hitachi Vantara updated their VSP 5000 and E-Series storage arrays and HCP object storage products at a special event this week. The new offerings are in line with what we’re seeing across the industry, including cloud and container integration and as-a-service pricing.
1 in 15 Orgs run Exploited Version of SolarWinds
In a new report from Randori, it has been found that people are still running vulnerable software. The 2021 Attack Surface Report listed a number of assets with scores designed to determine how tempting they were for attackers to exploit. A score of 30 was a High likelihood. The vulnerable version of SolarWinds software has a ranking of 40. The report details a number of other issues, such as open RDP, older versions of firewall software, and even using Microsoft Outlook Web Access. No word yet from SolarWinds on the report or the percentage of companies that are still affected by the vulnerable software.
Rubrik Announces Ransomware Warranty
Data protection company Rubrik is offering a 5 million dollar Ransomware warranty for enterprise edition customers. This novel offering shows Rubrik’s confidence in its product and also gives customers a little peace of mind, as long as they step up to the high-end product offering.
Micron Launches Next-Generation SSDs
Chipmaker Micron rolled out a whole new line of SSDs last week. The 7400 series is focused on PCIe Gen 4 and includes a range of form factors and offerings including U.3, M.2, and E1.S. But the biggest buzz is focused on their endurance, which ranges up to 3 drive writes per day.
Google Goes Hybrid at Google Cloud Next
We hope that you’re ready for what Google says is next for their Cloud offering. Google Cloud Next kicked off this week with the usual flurry of announcements around the technologies that the search and ad giant focuses on. The key factor that Google is trying to draw on to differentiate themselves from the other bigger players in the market is hybrid offerings for specialized workloads. Sachin Gupta, GM and VP for IaaS, says that not all customers are ready or able to move these special workloads to the public cloud. That means someone needs to offer a way for the companies to start small on-prem and move them in later if desired. That’s the direction Google is taking. The secret sauce that makes it all possible is Anthos, which allows these workloads to be managed the same whether they live in your data center or the public cloud.
A Look At VMware’s Many VMworld Projects
Welcome to the post-release era. At VMworld 2021 the virtualization giant announced a whole slate of “projects”, which is a term used by the tech giant to refer to software releases which aren’t ready to go out the door yet and need more testing. Last year saw the announcement of Project Monterey, focused on DPUs. Monterey finally saw a wider release at this year’s event. This year VMware decided to project themselves all over! We’ve already covered Project Capitola in a different episode, so let’s run down the rest of the list:
- Project Arctic – vSphere-as-a-Service for multicloud
- Project Cascade – Brings Kubernetes abstraction layer to VMware Cloud
- Project Crypto Agility – Easier switching between weak crypto algorithms
- Project Ensemble – Automatic integration and deployment of vRealize
- Project IDEM – Cloud scale management automation
- Project Radium – Pooling GPU with Bitfusion
- Project Santa Cruz – Edge SD-WAN
The Week Ahead
Security Field Day is October 20-22
NetApp Insight is October 20, 21, and 22 for Americas, EMEA, and APAC
Check out the Tech Field Day Intel Showcase that just published on techfieldday.com
Apple Special event is October 18 at 10am PT
The Gestalt IT Rundown is a live weekly look at the IT news of the week. It broadcasts live on Facebook every Wednesday at 12:30pm ET. To watch along, “Like” our Facebook page. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
