IT Minds

Machines will learn just like a child, says IBM CEO ORLANDO – Technology is shifting to intelligent machines with a capability to reason, said IBM Chairman and CEO Virginia Rometty. These machines won't replace humans, but will augment them. It is a technology that will transform business, she said. This technology is the basis of  IBM 's work on  Watson , its cognitive or thinking system. Rometty, interviewed Tuesday by Gartner analysts at the research firm's Symposium ITxpo , said cognitive systems understand not only data, but unstructured data, which includes images, songs, video, and then goes a step further: "They reason and they learn." "When I say reason it's like you and I, if there is an issue or question, they take in all the information that they know, they stack up a set of hypotheses, they run it against all that data to decide, what do I have the most confidence in, " Rometty said. The machine "can prove why I do or

IBM chases Intel with new Power-based Linux servers sold over the Web IBM is gunning for a slice of Intel's x86 server chip business with a new family of Power systems that run Linux and will be sold directly to customers over the Web. The LC family of servers, which went on sale Thursday, is aimed at organizations deploying clustered or cloud environments, particularly for running Hadoop, Spark and other workloads that involve crunching large volumes of data. IBM already sells Power servers running Linux, but these new boxes differ in a number of ways, and mark the latest effort by IBM to expand its Power platform into new markets, said Stephanie Chiras, director and business line executive for scale-out Power systems. For a start, the servers make use of industry standard components, including the memory DIMMs, to keep prices lower, and they don't automatically "call home" to IBM if there's a failure, as other Power systems do. They're also

CM launches Microsoft India’s cloud services MUMBAI: Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday launched Microsoft India's local cloud services (LCS) from the company's state-of-the-art data centres in Mumbai, Pune and Chennai. Fadnavis said the state would host a range of digital services on Microsoft's local cloud, including citizen services, applications and other people-oriented government initiatives to enhance economic productivity, prosperity and overall efficiency in governance to meet the objective of digital Maharashtra. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had assured commercial cloud services in India by the year-end, but practically launched it on Tuesday, ahead of the deadline. These services accelerate digital transformation, handle a wide range of data and help create speedy and innovative applications. Billing services and government schemes will get faster and easier in terms of accessibility and delivery. Cloud-computing with data storage and analytics offers

The Indian Express

Microsoft’s Quiet Office Evolution Under Satya Nadella Mr. Nadella, 48 years old, is more likely to quote German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche than to scream and shout like his predecessors. His mission is markedly different, too: attempting to make Microsoft more innovative, a change that critics say was long overdue at a company that tended to fall behind in emerging technology areas. Messrs. Gates and Ballmer built a $350 billion software empire on the popularity of Windows, the personal-computer operating system that for years was the default interface of office life. Yet the primacy of Microsoft’s Office software—with its built-in Outlook email, Word for writing documents, and Excel spreadsheets—is no longer a sure thing. Rival tools for office tasks have arrived, include file-sharing service Dropbox Inc., Apple Inc.’s iPhones, and workplace versions of Google Inc.’s Gmail and Docs, many of them free. Thus Mr. Nadella is intent on talking about the evo

Google Launches New Chromecast and Chromecast   Google Launches New Chromecast and Chromecast Audio by  Mani At a media event on Tuesday, alongside the  launch  of two new Nexus smartphones -  Nexus 5X  and Nexus 6P  - and  Pixel C  tablet, Google announced the refresh of its original Chromecast while also introducing Chromecast Audio. Also unveiled was the refreshed Chromecast app, support for Spotify streaming, and  Google Photos  support. Two years after Google launched the  Chromecast , a flash drive-shaped device that allows users to beam media content and on-screen activities from smartphones, computers, and tablets to TV and other big screens, the company believes it's time it further expanded in your living room. Enter Chromecast Audio, a device that turns any speaker with an auxiliary input into an Internet-capable device. Priced at $35 (roughly Rs. 2,300), the  Chromecast Audio  allows one to stream music to their regular speakers directl