Author Archives: George Leopold

George Leopold

George Leopold has written about science and technology for more than 30 years, focusing on electronics and aerospace technology. He previously served as executive editor of Electronic Engineering Times. Leopold is the author of "Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom" (Purdue University Press, 2016).

Linux Distributions Expand on IBM Servers

April 21st, 2016 Comments Off

Since unveiling its Linux mainframe servers at last summer's LinuxCon conference, IBM has been adding more open-source distributions to its LinuxOne line of z Systems-based mainframes. This week it added the latest release of Canonical's Ubuntu platform that the ...

Cloud Platforms Help Wrangle Trader Data

April 20th, 2016 Comments Off

A new data-as-a-service platform targeting high-frequency traders adds momentum to the growing trend toward combining cloud-based computing with precise market data. In this case, a widely used time-sensitive data format called GPS packet capture. Manhattan-based financial software and data ...

Alliance Coalesces Around Mesosphere Platform

April 19th, 2016 Comments Off

The datacenter operating system movement continues to gather momentum with the announcement by Apache Mesos developer Mesosphere of a broad alliance backing the beta release of an all-encompassing platform for building and scaling enterprise applications. The new platform, dubbed ...

App Containers Advancing on Several Fronts

April 18th, 2016 (1)

The application container ecosystem continues to thrive as illustrated by another burst of activity this month, including the release of a new image specification and more evidence that Docker containers are making steady headway in upgrading the enterprise software ...

Custom App Container Targets HPC Needs

April 15th, 2016 Comments Off

Custom versions of application containers are emerging that meet stringent requirements. Among the first is an HPC-specific container platform dubbed "Singularity" built around what its developers say is the concept of "mobility of compute." Despite the fact that commercial ...

Volatile Energy Sector Eyes ‘Information Fusion’

April 14th, 2016 Comments Off

Given the current state of the global energy sector—including the nation's largest coal mining company filing for bankruptcy protection this week—no current operator can afford to drill a dry well. Given the high stakes, the oil and gas industry ...

OpenStack Reviews Mixed in Latest Survey

April 13th, 2016 Comments Off

As OpenStack users align around its standard APIs for deploying cloud infrastructure, adoption of application container technologies on OpenStack platforms continues to generated the most buzz in the latest OpenStack user survey released this week. Still, the survey found ...

Storage Startup Brings DevOps Approach to Datacenters

April 12th, 2016 Comments Off

Building on the growing enterprise shift toward developer operations, a storage startup is emerging from stealth mode with and "elastic" data fabric approach that promises to deliver public cloud-like block storage to hybrid cloud platforms. Datera, founded by the ...

U.S. Spy Master to Hire CIO

April 11th, 2016 Comments Off

The U.S. intelligence apparatus is looking for a spy to come in from the cold to serve as its first chief information officer. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the entity created in the aftermath of ...

Rackspace Looks to Boost OpenStack Adoption

April 8th, 2016 Comments Off

OpenStack pioneer Rackspace has moved to boost enterprise adoption of the cloud operating system with this week's release of a managed private cloud service that can be installed in a variety of datacenter settings. Also this week, the cloud ...