Author Archives: Alex Woodie

Alex Woodie

Alex Woodie has written about IT as a technology journalist for more than a decade. He brings extensive experience from the IBM midrange marketplace, including topics such as servers, ERP applications, programming, databases, security, high availability, storage, business intelligence, cloud, and mobile enablement. He resides in the San Diego area.

Drones and GPUs Provide AI Boost for Inspection Firm

September 7th, 2017 Comments Off

A company backed by GE’s venture capital arm is using NVidia GPUs, deep learning frameworks, and drones to automate the inspection of physical assets in the oil and gas, electrical distribution, and transportation industries. Avitas Systems, owned by GE ...

IBM Enables Quantum Computing Experimentation

September 5th, 2017 Comments Off

IBM Research is pairing its Jupyter-based Data Science Experience notebook environment with its cloud-based quantum computer, IBM Q, in hopes of encouraging a new class of entrepreneurial user to solve intractable problems that even exceed the capabilities of the ...

AI Makes Inroads into Enterprise Software

July 13th, 2017 Comments Off

Enterprise software is often maligned as a legacy holdover from a previous age, a low-growth market dominated by stodgy software companies out to milk maintenance streams from hapless victims. But two giants of enterprise software, OpenText and Infor, today ...

MapR Rebrands Around Converged Data Fabric

June 6th, 2017 Comments Off

MapR Technologies today announced a major rebranding and repositioning of the data storage layer of its converged data platform. MapR-XD, as the data store is now known, provides the mechanism for customers to build a unified data fabric that ...

How Uber Uses Big Data to Optimize Customer Experience

October 6th, 2015 Comments Off

If you’ve ever used Uber, you’re aware of how ridiculously simple the process is. You press a button, a car shows up, you go for a ride, and you press another button to pay the driver. But there’s a ...

Unravelling Hadoop Performance Mysteries

November 20th, 2014 Comments Off

Despite the fact that it runs on plain vanilla X86 servers and 64-bit operating systems, Hadoop is a complex beast that's prone to bottlenecks and performance issues. Getting Hadoop to run well isn't easy and typically requires a lot ...

How Shutterstock Keeps Its Hyperscale Infrastructure In Check

September 9th, 2014 Comments Off

Since it was founded 11 years ago, Shutterstock has grown to become one of the largest image sharing marketplaces on the Internet. Managing that growth has not always been easy for the company, which runs its own IT infrastructure. ...

The Hyperscale Lessons Of Healthcare.gov

April 4th, 2014 Comments Off

The last six months have been a hair-graying experience for everybody involved in the Healthcare.gov rollout. While it ultimately managed to meet its goals and enroll 7.1 million people, the disastrous start and near implosion of the website behind ...

Flash Array Aimed At VDI Heals Other Hospital Applications

March 13th, 2014 Comments Off

When the folks at Shannon Medical Center decided to begin a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) project to eliminate traditional PCs, their research showed how critical I/O would be to the success of the project. But when the 400-bed hospital ...

The NoSQL Heart of Telco Messaging

January 15th, 2014 (2)

You probably haven't heard of Openwave Messaging. But if you get email, voice mail, or other messaging services from a tier-one telecommunications firm, chances are fairly good that you have used its white-label messaging products at some point. And ...