Software: News

Microsoft is placing Microsoft Stores within about half the U.S. Best Buy locations and creating a parallel online store on the Best Buy site in an effort to drum up more consumer business, it seems, for Windows 8.

Data encryption could help enterprises protect their sensitive information against mass surveillance by governments, as well as guard against unauthorized access by ill-intended third parties, but the correct implementation and use of data encryption technologies is not an easy task, according to security experts.

A series of blunders by Microsoft has paved the way for Sony's PlayStation 4 console to capture the top spot in year-end holiday sales.

I found out recently that I'm not the only member of my family to appear in the illustrious pages of the IDG family of publications, of which Network World is one. In 1983, sister site InfoWorld reviewed my dad's Home Finance System – a personal accounting program that competed (albeit briefly) with Quicken – and I happened to stumble across the article via a Google Books search. (It's on page 31. Apparently, InfoWorld liked it.)

Microsoft has struck a deal with Best Buy to create 600 stores-within-stores in the U.S. and Canada to sell customers on Windows 8, the Surface tablet line, and new PCs and devices from other OEMs.

Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue offered only short answers in testimony Thursday in federal court when questioned by U.S. Justice Department prosecutors trying to solidify their case that Apple, along with five of the largest book publishers, worked together to illegally set the prices of electronic books for the market.

Medical device makers should take new steps to protect their products from malware and cyberattacks or face the possibility that U.S. Food and Drug Administration won't approve their devices for use, the FDA said.

Software AG is building out its portfolio of CEP (complex-event processing) software with the acquisition of Apama from Progress Software, in the second CEP-related deal this week. Terms of the deal, which was announced Thursday, were not disclosed.

Nationwide Insurance is moving off Windows XP and the misery of an eight-minute boot-up time for some 40,000 users.

Microsoft is upping the security on Azure with Active Authentication, a new service now in preview which allows enterprises to secure access to hosted applications such as Office 365 with two-factor authentication.

Sony's Open SmartWatch Project will make it possible for developers to create and install alternative software on the Sony SmartWatch.

The next summer blockbuster out of 20th Century Fox might be called "The Incredible Shrinking Data Center."

Apple has posted to its Belgian website a new policy stating that its warranty period is now two years, up from the previous one year, but a local consumer group suing the company over the issue is withholding judgment for now.

ICT solutions and services provider, Dimension Data (DiData), has launched new Cloud services hosted in its managed private Cloud environment.

IBM has cut about 1300 employees and more layoffs are possible, according to an employee organisation.

Alcatel Lucent Enterprise has appointed Maud Holvast as the company’s new vice-president for the A/NZ region.

In the aftermath of the revelation of PRISM, the NSA spying program that collects user data from nine major U.S. tech companies, many have highlighted alternate options from organizations that are not known to be cooperating with government surveillance efforts.

Red Hat announced a large-scale restructuring of its OpenStack-based offerings today, bundling its Enterprise Linux software with the OpenStack platform, and creating a more comprehensive infrastructure product for private-cloud IaaS.

Microsoft will probably price its own 8-in. Surface tablet running Windows RT at $349, just 6% higher than Apple's iPad Mini but nowhere near the basement $199 of Android rivals, an analyst said this week.

On the second day of its annual HP Discover user conference in Las Vegas, Hewlett-Packard launched an operating system (OS) designed specifically for cloud computing, called the HP Cloud OS. Initially, however, the software can only be obtained by purchasing HP systems.