Microsoft’s cloud services, including Xbox Live, were disrupted Thursday because of a DNS error. Services connected to Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud suffered a disruption Thursday — the second one interruption in a under a month. Online reports indicate impacted services included Microsoft.com, Outlook.com, Office 365, and Xbox Live. Microsoft had resolved lots of the problems by Thursday night, avoiding the possibly cataclysmic possibility that Xbox Live will be down when Xbox One units went on sale just after midnight Friday morning. The disruptions began at 2:22 p.m. PT and stretched across multiple regions. Microsoft corporate vice chairman Scott Guthrie confirmed via Twitter that the issue failed to involve Azure itself. Rather, “The issue is a DNS name server issue outside of azure.” Microsoft said Thursday evening that Azure was running normally. As of Friday morning, the Azure service dashboard showed most services were functioning as intended, though partial interruptions were plaguing compute functions in Asia, Europe, and the u. s. . Despite the outage, Windows... Read More »
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App Translations Boost Online Sales
A recent study from an internet translation firm, determined that almost all applications developed anywhere on the earth are written in English even if the developers aren’t from English speaking countries. 40% of the surveyed translations were general business applications, 30% were games (excluding gambling), and the rest 30% were applications from different categories. App developers generally cater to precise markets, in order that they translate their applications into the most languages in their target audience. To illustrate, developers targeting the South American market (about 40% of the translated applications) translate their applications into Latin America Spanish and to Brazilian Portuguese. Developers targeting the ecu market (35% of the translated applications) translate their applications into German, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and Russian. Applications targeted at East Asian markets (about 20% of the applications) are translated into Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hindi. Finally, about 15% of applications are translated into Scandinavian languages including Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish. Other markets, equivalent to the massive market... Read More »
Q&A: FedRAMP Director Discusses Cloud Security Innovation
Maria Roat After leaving the location of CIO for the U.S. Department of Transportation, I co-founded a marketplace called GOVonomy, designed to compare government needs and opportunities with emerging technology products from startups and growth companies. These kind of products are cloud-based and should require the government’s FedRAMP security assessment. Yet most private companies don’t seem to be attentive to the FedRAMP program and process, or the way it may also help improve their cloud security. In order portion of a brand new series of discussions with top government leaders for InformationWeek Government, I interviewed Maria Roat, the FedRAMP director at GSA. The FedRAMP program offers a very good opportunity for all enterprise cloud products and repair providers, although they don’t seem to be immediately planning to market to government, because the rigor can help improve the safety of all their products and decrease liability. On areas of improvement for GSA and the FedRAMP to think about, it’s going to help to have the third... Read More »
Microsoft CES Buzz: CEO Search
Microsoft remains publicly committed to outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer’s vision. Is that discouraging his potential replacements? 7 Mistakes Microsoft Made In 2013 (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) Microsoft usually makes news in the course of the annual International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, however the buzz typically centers on Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates giving a keynote speech that sets the tone for the approaching year’s technology trends. That’s now not the case. Microsoft is playing just a background role at this year’s show, and possible tensions in its ongoing CEO search coming to the fore. Ford CEO Alan Mulally, who have been perceived as a number one candidate since Ballmer announced his retirement plans in August, is not any longer within the running, in keeping with an AP report published this week. This technically narrows the list of possible successors, but reports continue to signify that power struggles are playing out behind the curtain. The Wall Street Journal reported Jan. 3... Read More »
Bitcoin Thefts Surge, DDoS Hackers Take Millions
Cryptographic currency’s massive rise in value ends up in a corresponding increase in online heists by criminals seeking easy paydays. 10 IT Job Titles We Miss (Click image for larger view.) Say you’ve created a cryptographic currency called bitcoin that promises users relative anonymity and untraceable transactions. What may be able to get it wrong? The reply, obviously, is that these virtues also attract hackers, malware developers, and arranged crime rings who wouldn’t consider carefully about committing virtual bank robberies. Earlier this month, as an example, Bitcoin Internet Payment System (BIPS), a Denmark-based Bitcoin payment processor, suffered a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Unfortunately for users of the company’s free online wallets for storing bitcoins, the DDoS attack was merely a smokescreen for a digital heist that quickly drained numerous wallets, netting the attackers a reported 1,295 bitcoins — worth nearly $1 million — and leaving wallet users with little chance that they’d ever see their money again. “On November 15th BIPS was the objective of a... Read More »