Gestalt News Archives - Gestalt IT

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A group of investors, led by Elon Musk’s startup xAI and other backers, has made a $97.4 billion bid to take control of OpenAI, aiming to refocus the organization on open-source AI and safety amid rising tensions between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over its shift to a for-profit model. Meanwhile, OpenAI is advancing its AI hardware strategy with plans to launch a custom-designed AI chip in 2024, fabricated by TSMC using 3-nanometer technology to reduce reliance on Nvidia. Initially deployed on a limited scale, the chip is designed to optimize AI model performance, with OpenAI’s expanding chip team already working on future iterations with enhanced capabilities. This and more on The Rundown.

2:44 – Turn/River Capital Acquires SolarWinds

With its $4.4 billion acquisition of SolarWinds, Turn/River Capital seeks to take the IT management software firm private, allowing it to focus on long-term growth without the pressure of quarterly earnings. This deal aligns with a broader surge in private-equity buyouts in the software sector, driven by declining borrowing costs, and comes after SolarWinds’ turbulent past, including a major 2020 cyberattack that compromised government and corporate clients.

Read More: SolarWinds To Be Acquired By Turn/River Capital In $4.4B All-Cash Deal

Read More: Turn/River’s $4.4 Billion Acquisition of SolarWinds Could Signal More IT-Related Deals

5:21 – WEKA Restructure to Focus on AI

WEKA is restructuring its go-to-market functions to align with the rapid growth of generative AI, following a strong 2024 in which it raised $140 million in funding and surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. CEO Liran Zvibel emphasizes that this strategic shift will position the company for long-term success, with plans to expand headcount by approximately 120 employees to support large-scale enterprise AI and GPU acceleration deployments.

Read More: WEKA restructures for the GenAI era

9:23 – Cisco One Silicon Shows Big at Cisco Live EMEA

Cisco Live EMEA is happening this week and Cisco has had some big announcements. The biggest news comes with investments in new service provider hardware and data center infrastructure as well. The moves appear to be positioned to help Cisco customers take advantage of AI while also offering a custom advantage. The newest platforms are all powered by Cisco’s Silicon One chips. The newest A-series and K-series CPUs help offload processing to the edge and give Cisco an opportunity to challenge merchant silicon vendors in the space. For more on this we’re going on site to Tom Hollingsworth in Amsterdam at Cisco Live for more.

Read More: Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA Day One

12:50 – Hammerspace is Changing the AI Training Game

Hammerspace is challenging conventional reliance on object storage for AI workloads by advocating for universal, protocol-agnostic data access instead. The company has emphasized the importance of intelligent data orchestration across various storage types, ensuring seamless access to relevant datasets without disruptive migrations. As AI adoption continues to grow, Hammerspace highlights the need for metadata-driven automation and hybrid access models to optimize performance and scalability in enterprise environments.

Read More: Hammerspace challenges object storage norms for AI

17:31 – French President to Invest $112B in AI

French President Emmanuel Macron announced $112 billion in private investments for the AI ecosystem, with funds expected to be deployed in the coming years, coinciding with Paris hosting the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit. This investment will primarily focus on AI data centers, with the country positioning itself as an ideal location for AI infrastructure due to its low-carbon electricity and stable grid, which Macron emphasized as a competitive advantage for attracting global investments.

Read More: Macron unveils $112B AI investment package, France’s answer to US’ Stargate

22:36 – Huawei Shows Revenue Growth Despite Ban

Huawei expects to meet its 2024 revenue target of ¥860 billion ($118.25 billion), marking 22% growth compared to 2023. Despite sanctions, its ICT business remains strong, its consumer sector is growing, and its smart car solutions are expanding quickly. This success is notable considering Huawei’s challenges, including the sale of its Honor brand and the difficult economic environment in China.

Read More: Huawei revenue growing fast, suggesting China’s scoffing at sanctions

26:49 – Sam Altman Says OpenAI is Not for Sale

A group of investors has made a $97.4 billion offer to take control of OpenAI, aiming to restore the organization’s focus on open-source AI and safety. The investors are led by Elon Musk’s startup xAI and several other backers. Tensions between Musk and OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman have escalated as Musk challenges OpenAI’s shift to a for-profit model and its current management.

Read More: Musk-led investor group offers $97.4 billion for OpenAI — Altman declines

33:06 – OpenAI to Take On NVIDIA with Proprietary Chip

OpenAI is preparing to launch its own AI chip in 2024, aiming to reduce its reliance on Nvidia. The custom-designed chip, to be fabricated by TSMC using 3-nanometer technology, will focus on running AI models and will initially be deployed on a limited scale. OpenAI’s chip team, which has recently doubled in size, is also working on future versions with enhanced capabilities.

Read More: OpenAI is reportedly getting closer to launching its in-house chip

38:13 – The Weeks Ahead

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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We heard the rumors back in November that the HPE deal to acquired Juniper Networks was getting a closer look from the Department of Justice. Last week we got confirmation that the DoJ will be filing suit to half the deal. The arugument from the government is that the result of the deal would be 70% of the market for networking equipment being held by just two companies. Specifically cited was the wireless LAN component, where the DoJ said there were only three major players. This was refuted quickly by both HPE and Juniper. The UK Competition and Markets authority and the EU have both cleared the deal. This and more on The Rundown.

1:10 – Intel Not Bringing Falcon Shores GPU to Market

During Intel’s Q4 2024 earnings call it was announced that they will not be releasing their current generation GPU, code named Falcon Shores. The project has been in development for over three years and industry analysts have lamented that the chip maker has fallen behind the competition. Falcon Shores was supposed to be the entry point for Intel to claw their way into the AI GPU accelerator market. According to Six Five Live hosts Daniel Newman and Pat Moorhead, Falcon Shores was Intel’s last chance to make a splash in the market given the struggles that the giant has faced over the past twelve months.

Read More: Intel Falcon Shores GPU Not Coming to Market in an AI Hit

3:52 – NVIDIA Accelerates Storage Networking

It’s the return of storage networking. NVIDIA had a big announcement this week about using Spectrum-X to speed up the data storage fabric. One of the key features is using adaptive routing to prevent flow collisions and route around congestion in the storage infrastructure. If you’re worried about the data bits arriving out-of-order, have no fear. NVIDIA Bluefield-3 SuperNICs can hold onto those pieces and reassemble them for proper presentation to the host system without impacting performance. Spectrum-X is the Ethernet solution that allows for RDMA traffic to be sent via RoCE v2. Testing of the newest features increased read performance up to 48% and write bandwidth by up to 41%.

Read More: Nvidia says Spectrum-X adaptive routing can boost storage fabric bandwidth

Read More: Accelerating AI Storage by up to 48% with NVIDIA Spectrum-X Networking Platform and Partners

7:42 – Phishing attacks against Microsoft ADFS

Looks like some hackers got their phishing license early this year. The target is Microsoft’s legacy Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS), which is an SSO solution that allows one set of credentials to authenticate across multiple environments. Given this story invovles phishing, guess how they’re using it? Did you say spoofed login pages? How about tricks for two-factor codes? You’re right! The attacks use very well crafted emails and link obfuscation to snare even the most diligent workers. According to researchers at Abnormal Security, the targets for these attacks appear to be in the education sector.

Read More: A new phishing campaign is exploiting Microsoft’s legacy ADFS identity solution to steal credentials and bypass MFA

11:31 – Ventev Acquired by Hubbell Inc

Yesterday news broke that Ventev is being acquired by Hubbell Incorporated of Deleware. Ventev, a major manufacturer of wireless antennas and mobile technology, was formerly a part of Tessco. Hubbell has a large range of technologies for enteprise IT. Ventev is expected to continue their focus under the new organization.

14:25 – AI and Cloud costs are driving a closer look at FinOps tools

Strangely, the majority of respondents to an Apptio survey are expecting an increased IT budget but unsurprisingly demand for new services are outstripping any budget increase. The combination of unpredicatable cloud costs, huge AI build-out costs, and a host of legacy hardware and software costs present a big maanagement headache. This seems to be a data problem and ideal for a software based solution, is FinOps about to get hot?

Read More: Tech execs grapple with budget sinkholes as AI drives up spend

17:33 – Microsoft Stops TPM Bypass for Win11 Installs

One of the challenges for installing Windows 11 has been the requirement for a Trusted Platform Module 2.0 chip in the system. Microsoft had previously provided guidance on how to get around this particular hiccup in their official installation documentation. Several other developers have even created tools to bypass the TPM check. However, this week Microsoft has decided that everyone needs to play by the rules. Microsoft has removed the guide to bypassing the TPM check from online sources and Windows Defender now flags the popular FlyBy11 TPM tool as malware. Users on Windows 10 must now decide if they want to buy a new system with a compatible TPM or let their OS fall out of support toward the end of 2025.

Read More: Microsoft is cracking down on people upgrading to Windows 11 on unsupported hardware

22:16 – DoJ Blocks HPE Juniper Deal

We heard the rumors back in November that the HPE deal to acquired Juniper Networks was getting a closer look from the Department of Justice. Last week we got confirmation that the DoJ will be filing suit to half the deal. The arugument from the government is that the result of the deal would be 70% of the market for networking equipment being held by just two companies. Specifically cited was the wireless LAN component, where the DoJ said there were only three major players. This was refuted quickly by both HPE and Juniper. The UK Competition and Markets authority and the EU have both cleared the deal.

Read More: US DOJ sues to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion Juniper deal

31:22 – The Weeks Ahead

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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As we mentioned earlier, the early days of a US government change invovle a lot of new orders and announcements. After a week in office the current US administration announced a plan to impose import tariffs on Taiwan for a variety of goods, including pharmaceuticals, steel, and chips. The tariff was reported to be 25% but could be as high as 100%. In further comments the president said the goal of the move was to lure companies back to the US to manufacture chips domestically. However, the CHIPS Act was specifically called out as being problematic because it simply gave money away instead of punishing companies with additional taxes to change their behavior. This is definitely a developing situation but lets dive in. Al, what’s the ultimate goal here? This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

1:23 – Pure Storage Gets Hyperscale Win

Predictions of the demise of storage technologies are as regular as stories about the immortality of the same technology. The recent announcement that Pure Storage has a deal with an un-named hyperscaler to standardise on an all-flash storage design has brought the suggestion that hyperscalers may move on from spinning disk. All-flash arrays have been around for a while, is this really the end for hard drives in cloud storage?

Read More: Pure Storage’s recent hyperscaler ‘design win’ could be the death knell for disk storage

4:31 – Salt Typhoon Probe Potentially Disrupted

The first week of any new presidential administration is a flurry of activity. One of the items that slipped through the news coverage last week was an announcement that the US Department of Homeland Security has fired outside advisors on a number of advisory committees according to a report from Reuters. One of those review boards was in the middle of investigating the recent spate of hacks caused by the Chinese-aligned group Salt Typhoon that we’ve been covering here for the past few months. The letter reporting the firing of the committee said the members were free to reapply but other sources have said the investigation is effectively dead. Tom, is this the end of the Salt Typhoon probe?

Read More: US DHS fires outside advisers, sources say China probe disrupted

7:47 – AI Gets Trapped in a Maze

AI is very good at consuming information. What happens when a creative researcher makes it eat its own tail? In this case, this particular trap is named Napenthes, named after the carnivorous pitcher plant. The trap is designed to halt AI algorithms that are crawling the Internet for data without respecting limits on crawling sites. The system generates false links that contain garbage data and links back to other generated pages. While humans will be able to see through the ruse quickly the automated systems are locked into a loop that consumes resources and wastes time.

Read More: Developer Creates Infinite Maze That Traps AI Training Bots

11:35 – Swedes Seize Ship Slashing Subsea Stuff

The Swedish authorities have impounded a vessel they suspect caused damage to an undersea internet cable last week. This comes after two other cables owned by Finland were damaged back in December. While the ship is flagged in Malta it is rumored to be a part of a shadow fleet owned and operated by Russian interests. These vessels are reported to have caused damage to a number of cable in the Baltic Sea and elsewhere. Authorities are unsure if the damage is deliberate or has been caused by saliors that are less than seaworthy.

Read More: Sweden seizes cargo ship after another undersea cable hit in suspected sabotage

14:56 – OpenAI Announces Operator Agent AI

Agentic AI is being promoted as the next big wave, where Generative AI tools get to not just talk to us, but to take action for us. OpenAI has added their agent technology called Operator as a part of their Pro Subscription. Can we trust these AI models to act on our behalf and in our best interest? Is this really the start of Skynet or just a way for OpenAI to try to get some revenue to offset the huge cost of training GPT4?

Read More: OpenAI launches Operator, an AI agent that performs tasks autonomously

18:23 – DeepSeek Causes Deep Thoughts Among Tech

This week has been dominated by discussion about a new company called DeepSeek. Their app shot to the number 1 spot on various app stores practically overnight. The magic behind the newest AI darling is more interesting. It utilizes a new model dubbed R1. DeepSeek says that R1 was developed similarly to OpenAI’s o1 model but was done for a reported $6 million. That number is a fraction of the cost of competing software from other companies. DeepSeek also released the model weights for free licensed under the open MIT license so everyone can have a look at them. The market took heed of this and promptly dropped on the news. There’s been a lot of discussion so far but analysts are urging caution because something isn’t quite right with the story.

Read More: DeepSeek panic triggers tech stock sell-off as Chinese AI tops App Store

23:53 – TSMC Tariffs Could Cause Chaos

As we mentioned earlier, the early days of a US government change involve a lot of new orders and announcements. After a week in office the current US administration announced a plan to impose import tariffs on Taiwan for a variety of goods, including pharmaceuticals, steel, and chips. The tariff was reported to be 25% but could be as high as 100%. In further comments the president said the goal of the move was to lure companies back to the US to manufacture chips domestically. However, the CHIPS Act was specifically called out as being problematic because it simply gave money away instead of punishing companies with additional taxes to change their behavior. This is definitely a developing situation but lets dive in.

Read More: Responding to Trump tariff threat, Taiwan says chip business is ‘win-win’

31:40 – The Weeks Ahead

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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We spoke last week about the executive order issued by former President Biden around AI export controls. There has been some more information released about the reasoning behind the controls. One of those was that, as mentioned, third party actors are shipping restricted hardware to countries that were already banned from receiving it. Still others were able to access those systems through cloud computing in countries such as Malaysia and Brazil. The AI Diffusion Framework names 18 “friendly” countries with no restrictions and designates 23 countries under embargo with restrictions and caps on certain AI chips. The remaining nations of the world are categorized into a kind of limbo. The restrictions are based on a Total Processing Performance (TPP) metric that restricts exports based on the power of the chip. This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

1:05 – Futurum Asks CEOs About AI

The Futurum Group released one of the most impactful reports on AI to date. Working with Global Management Conulting Partnership Kearny, the report asked leading CEOs of companies with over $1 billion in revenue about their AI vision. The report includes important details like hurdles to AI integration and how older companies view AI versus the younger digitally native organizations. This comprehensive study has some of the most important information about the future of AI that has ever been collected.

Read More: CEOs face personal inflection point affecting decision making, management and culture; seek to recalculate AI journey, CEO study finds

6:40 – HPE Investigating IntelBroker Claims

HPE is doing some detective work this week after they found out last week that one of the more successful breach crews, IntelBroker, has made off with some of HPE’s information, including product source code. IntelBroker has decided to have an after Christmas sale and is offering the code on various forums as well as some personally identifiable information (PII) from older HPE delivery records. While you should always take criminal claims with a grain of salt, IntelBroker has been implicated in a number of thefts over the years that have turned out to be accurate.

Read More: HPE probes IntelBroker’s bold data theft boasts

9:51 – Former Meta Exec leads Microsoft’s New AI Team

Microsoft is building a dedicated AI group that has a familiar face at the helm. The CoreAI Platform and Tools division is going to be led by former head of Meta engineering Jay Parikh. The new office will pull in folks from the AI development teams along with some of the denizens of the Office of the CTO to focus on building an AI Platform to be used both internally and externally. The move was noted in a memo from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who says that AI is compressing thirty years of change into three. The company, according to Nadella, needs an AI-first app stack powered by Azure. Parikh was hired by Microsoft back in October and will now report directly to Nadella.

Read More: Microsoft creates new AI engineering group led by former Meta executive

13:41 – Gartner Says VM Migrations Won’t Be Easy

Moving away from VMware by Broadcom is going to cost you a lot of resources. That’s according to Gartner VP analyst Michael Warrilow. A survey published this week says that having external help to migrate a VM could cost you between $300 and $3,000 per machine and the project could take over two years depending on how many you need to move. In further breakdowns, the analyst says that teams of a dozen people could take more than a month to scope the project and start the migrations. Included in the report is the fact that VMware by Broadcom provides more than just virtualization support. Networking, storage, and management tools are also critical components to consider.

Read More: VMware migrations will be long, expensive, risky, Gartner warns

17:53 – Lenovo Acquires Infinidat

Lenovo is looking to shore up their storage chops and they’re taking a bite out of Infinidat. News broke last week that Infinidat is being bought for and undisclosed amount. Lenovo, probably most well known for their consumer devices, also has a significant stake in the enterprise, having purchased the IBM X-Series server line previously. Since that acquisition over a decade ago, Lenovo has sold third party storage lines such as EMC and NetApp. The move is seen as a way to help Lenovo compete against titans HPE and Dell in the space and provide options for customers looking at more advanced technologies such as AI.

Read More: Lenovo to acquire Infinidat, further expanding enterprise storage portfolio

22:05 – More on AI Diffusion Regulations

We spoke last week about the executive order issued by former President Biden around AI export controls. There has been some more information released about the reasoning behind the controls. One of those was that, as mentioned, third party actors are shipping restricted hardware to countries that were already banned from receiving it. Still others were able to access those systems through cloud computing in countries such as Malaysia and Brazil. The AI Diffusion Framework names 18 “friendly” countries with no restrictions and designates 23 countries under embargo with restrictions and caps on certain AI chips. The remaining nations of the world are categorized into a kind of limbo. The restrictions are based on a Total Processing Performance (TPP) metric that restricts exports based on the power of the chip.

Read More: 2025 AI Diffusion Export Controls – Microsoft Regulatory Capture, Oracle Tears, Impacts Quantified, Model Restrictions

37:24 – The Weeks Ahead

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

View Details

The Biden presidential administration might be winding down but thre are still some things that are making news. Yesterday the president proposed a new framework for the export of chips used to developer AI. The rules seek to limit exports of the chips to some 120 countries, including Mexico, Israel, and Switzerland. The rules appear to be aimed at protecting US national security and the undercurrent in the order is aimed squarely at China. The administration says this is designed to close some of the loopholes in currently existing regulations on chip exports. NVIDIA released a statement calling the rules “misguided” due to the fact that they could impact the largest AI hardware company in the world. This and more on the Rundown.

1:16 – Cohesity’s CERT Service Boosted by Added Partners

Cohesity is boosting their Cyber Event Response Team (CERT) service by adding incident response partners. The goal is to help customers get rolling on starting incident response as soon as possible when it’s detected. The new partners include Palo Alto’s Unit 42, Arctic Wolf, Sophos, Fenix24, and Semperis. CERT can automatically upload logs and reports to these partners to respond to attacks as quickly as possible to prevent further damage and contain the malicious software. CERT is included as a part of the Cohesity subscription.

Read More: Cohesity adds malware incident response partners to CERT service

3:43 – Building GenAI Apps Creating Headaches

AI enabled applications are the only way companies are going to get back the money invested in building generative AI models and all the supporting infrastrcture. The problem is that an IBM study revealed that AI expertise in software developers is a long way behind the same expertise in data scientists. Developers find that there is a steep learning curve to understand AI application development and a lack of end-to-end tools leading to developers needing to learn a dozen new tools to build the first use-case.

Read More: Developers are at their wits end trying to build generative AI applications – skills gaps, complexity, and ‘tool sprawl’ are creating major hurdles

7:01 – Eutelsat’s 2-Day Outage and Resiliency

Launching rockets is hard. So is remembering what day it is. Eutelsat is a company that operates a fleet of 35 geostationary satellites called OneWeb that provide services to customers such as Hughes Network Systems. On December 31 they had an outage that affect their customers. The reason? There was a bug in the receiving stations on the ground that didn’t realize that 2024 was a leap year, so on December 31 they thought it was 2025 already and shut off. Eutelsat worked to get the systems back online, however four of the gateways are still not operational and are not expected to be online until mid-2025. The life expectancy of their first satellites is also coming up soon in 2026 and the company is expected to launch more soon to replace the ones that are expected to power down.

Read More: What Eutelsat’s 2-Day Outage Says About LEO Satellite Service Resiliency

10:52 – Web Apps Exposed by AWS Configuration

The shared responsibility security model in AWS means that customers are free to misconfigure how they use services and cause themselves security problems. It seems that a few customers were unintentionally taking this freedom with the Application Load Balancer leading to security bypass and unintended information disclosure. AWS realized they need to do a better job of describing the secure configuration.

Read More: An AWS Configuration Issue Could Expose Thousands of Web Apps

14:28 – Oracle to battle for JavaScript Trademark

It’s time for Legal Corner on The Rundown. This week Oracle refused to voluntarily release the trademark on JavaScript, which means the case is headed to court for real. Oracle has claimed a trademark on the term since they purchased the remnants of Sun Microsystems back in 2009. The current provider of JavaScript, Deno Land, had asked the company to abandon the trademark to prevent any legal issues with a term that has been genericized to the point of being unenforceable. Oracle tried to file a renewal of the trademark back in 2019 but the screen capture they submitted referenced Node.js, which isn’t associated with Oracle in any way. The trial process is expected to go on for the rest of the year unless a settlement can be reached.

Read More: Oracle refuses to yield JavaScript trademark, Deno Land says

20:03 – An IT Exodus is Happening

If it feels like everyone in tech is looking for a job you’re not wrong. According to career site Dice, 47% of surveyed IT workers said they are actively looking for new roles. Some of the stated reasons include reduced benefits, meager salary increases (unless you’re working on AI), and even less flexibility in work locations, such as remote. Only 36% of those surveyed received a merit increase in salary last year and others noted that companies are no longer offering training and education benefits as well. Overall it seems like the tech industry is tightening the belt as the rise of AI threatens roles.

Read More: Nearly half of tech workers are seeking new roles – declining employee benefits and reduced flexible working options have staff looking elsewhere

23:46 – NVIDIA Comments on AI Diffusion

The Biden presidential administration might be winding down but there are still some things that are making news. Yesterday the president proposed a new framework for the export of chips used to developer AI. The rules seek to limit exports of the chips to some 120 countries, including Mexico, Israel, and Switzerland. The rules appear to be aimed at protecting US national security and the undercurrent in the order is aimed squarely at China. The administration says this is designed to close some of the loopholes in currently existing regulations on chip exports. Nvidia released a statement calling the rules “misguided” due to the fact that they could impact the largest AI hardware company in the world. Al, where do we even start here?

Read More: NVIDIA Statement on the Biden Administration’s Misguided ‘AI Diffusion’ Rule

Read More: Biden’s administration proposes new rules on exporting AI chips, provoking an industry pushback

32:56 – The Weeks Ahead

The Weeks Ahead:

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

View Details

At CES 2025, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang introduced Cosmos, a new AI model trained on 20 million hours of video to help machines better understand and interact with the physical world, available via Hugging Face and NVIDIA’s GPU Cloud. He also urged businesses to adopt a three-computer AI system, featuring tools like Project DIGITS for AI development and the Llama Nemotron models for autonomous agents. Meanwhile, Dell announced a full rebrand, replacing familiar names like XPS and Latitude with Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max, along with Plus and Premium tiers, aiming to attract customers seeking AI-powered PCs. Critics noted the naming is familiar, but it could help Dell appeal to new users. This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

1:38 – Anthropic Raising More Money

European AI powerhouse Anthropic is seeking $2 billion in funding, valuing it at $60 billion. This valuation reflects the growing excitement and investment in AI, particularly generative AI, despite significant losses for many startups. Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI employees, focuses on safety testing and has seen substantial revenue growth, primarily from business sales.

Read More: AI Startup Anthropic Raising Funds Valuing It at $60 Billion

6:15 – Net Neutrality Neutralized

The US Sixth Circuit of Appeals ruled that the FCC rules around net neutrality are unconstitutional. Per the ruling, the judges believe that the FCC did not have the legal authority to reinstitute the rules, which were first put in place in 2015 but repealed in 2017. The judicial reasoning is that only Congress can pass laws that regulate businesses, which is in line with Supreme Court guidance in overturning the Chevron deference in Loper vs Raimondo in 2024.

Read More: Net Neutrality Rules Struck Down by Appeals Court

10:01 – GlobalFoundries and IBM Find Their New Years Resolution

IBM and GlobalFoundries rang in the new year with an agreement to drop the suits each had filed against the other. The suits came about from the sale of IBM’s foundry technology to GlobalFoundries back in 2015. In 2021, IBM filed the first suit alleging breach of contract in chip manufacturing, Global Foundries fired back with a countersuit alleging IBM stole intellectual property and trade secrets from the company and shared them with Intel and Japanese firm Rapidus. The announcement did not disclose the settlement details.

Read More: GlobalFoundries and IBM Announce Settlement and Resolution of All Litigation Matters

14:56 – FCC Opens Lower 6GHz Band for Low Power Devices

On December 12, the US FCC announced that they will be opening the remaining 350 MHz of frequency in the lower part of the 6 GHz band for use by low power devices. The ruling means that these low power devices may now operate across the whole spectrum without a license. The primary use case is for devices that need high connection speeds but at close range, such as medical monitors or in-car devices. These devices may only operate indoors as per the current specifications of the 6 GHz band and must listen on the channel before broadcasting to ensure that the channel is clear.

Read More: FCC Opens Entire 6 GHz Band to Very Low Power Device Operations

19:54 – HashiCorp Acquisition by IBM Reviewed by UK

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced on December 30 that they will be taking a closer look at IBM HashiCorp acquisition. The companies have been invited to comment on the investigation until January 16 and the deadline for clearance is February 25. The announcement comes after the US FTC announced a simliar investigation.

Read More: UK antitrust watchdog launches review of IBM’s HashiCorp takeover

24:41 – Ingram Micro To End Relationship with Broadcom/VMware

Tech distributor Ingram Micro announced on December 16 that they will will dissolve their partnership with VMware by Broadcom. The decision comes as the companies failed to negotiate a new agreement on Ingram Micro reselling VMware by Broadcom software. Ingram Micro serves over 1,500 vendors and 161,000 customers. Those customers have reported that Ingram was slow to respond to changes in the program since the acquisition. Some of the business that Ingram Micro had will go to other distribution partners or be taken in-house by VMware.

Read More: Ingram Micro to ‘stop doing business’ with Broadcom, downgrade to ‘limited engagement’ on VMware

28:59 – Big News from CES

29:33 – NVIDIA Cosmos Brings AI Into the Real World

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s CES 2025 keynote was all about bringing AI into the real world. In debuting the new Cosmos “world foundation model”, NVIDIA aims to enable AI systems to understand and interact with the physical world. This model, trained on 20 million hours of video data, will be freely distributed through Hugging Face and the Nvidia GPU Cloud. Huang also recommends that organizations adopt a three-computer AI system, all powered by NVIDIA, suggesting a future where AI and robotics will disrupt traditional economics and labor. This includes Project DIGITS, a desktop system for AI application development, and the Llama Nemotron family of open models for building agentic AI applications.

Read More: NVIDIA CEO Huang Gets Physical AI at CES

Read More: The Future is the One We Generate

43:48 – Dell to Rebrand PC Line

Dude, you’re not getting an XPS. Or an Inspiron, Or a Latitude. You’re getting a Dell. At CES, Dell announced a complete rebranding of their workstation lineup. Gone are the famliar brands we’ve bought over the years and in their place is something eerily familiar. The lineup will now be called Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max. There will also be additional branding such as Plus and Premium. While Dell has taken some flack in the press for copying a competitor’s naming conventions there is also discussion of how this will benefit them as new customers look to add AI features to their PCs.

Read More: The end of an era: Dell will no longer make XPS computers

The Weeks Ahead:

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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We’re looking back at our reporting on the biggest enterprise IT stories of 2024 and telling you the trends that will be discussion points well into 2025. We’re reconsidering Broadcom’s moves with VMware, the fall of Intel, HPE’s acquisition of Juniper, that fab CHIPS act, the evolution of data protection companies to security, power-hungry GPUs, Co-Pilot PCs, lots of AI infrastructure, a whole lot of hacks, including Snowflake and Salt Typhoon, and the government’s actions against big tech.

2:04 – The Fall of Intel

It’s hard to say which story from 2024 will have the most-lasting impact on the future of enterprise technology, but we can safely say that Intel’s position in the market will never be the same. We started the year on a high note, with new product launches and the execution of Pat Gelsinger’s strategy to leapfrog rivals in manufacturing processes. But rumors were swirling in the second half of the year, with rumors that not all was going to plan. This all came to a head on December 2, with the company announcing the surprise retirement of Gelsinger.

10:09 – Broadcom and VMware

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware is driving major changes, including shifts to subscription-only licensing and stricter partner requirements, such as a $500,000 revenue threshold. Smaller partners and customers are feeling the impact, while some organizations explore open-source alternatives like Proxmox. These moves aim to boost revenue but have sparked industry concerns and legal challenges over accessibility and fairness.

20:53 – That’s HPE’s Juniper Buy!

The biggest news in the networking industry comes from HPE’s announcement that they are buying Juniper in a blockbuster deal to take on the biggest players out there. HPE is gearing up to be an integral part of a new generation of enterprise IT focused on delivering the products and services that are necessary for new adavances like AI and hybrid cloud. The first step in this new journey is buying the backbone of the networks that power clouds, service providers, and end users in the campus.

26:59 – Fabulous Fabs and CHIPS!

The 2022 CHIPS act aimed to secure America’s access to advanced semiconductors, doling out money to build fabs in the United States. The sheer amount of money tilted the market, with every company in the space asking for cash to support their operations here. While it’s too soon to say whether these subsidies are going to work, not to mention what the next administration will do, we can say that there are more chip fabs being built in the USA than ever, with Intel, TSMC, Samsung, Micron, and others actively expanding. But who’s going to build and work in these fabs? And what products will they make? We’ll be watching in 2025 as they come online.

34:37 – Transforming Data Protection

The market for backup and recovery continues to transform into data protection to emphasize the security aspects of platforms. And it means big moves designed to turn these companies into more critical components of the infrastructure. Consolidation was a big theme of the year, with several acquisitions happening as well as a big IPO and some new advances designed to work with the way that companies consume data and the regulations that require them to keep it safe.

41:29 – Nuking GPUs in Pennsylvania

The voracious appetite of AI chips has entered pop culture, becoming just as much a criticism of the technology as hallucinations and job losses. Major IT companies have scaled back their carbon-neutral promises and are looking at nuclear energy as an option. Yet nothing has stopped them from building ever-larger AI clusters in the race to dominate this new space.

46:09 – My Co-Pilot is a Dog

Microsoft embraced AI in 2024 but it seemed to be hit or miss. Their work with OpenAI continued to be one of the bigger stories of the year. However, their implementation of the solutions they built using AI seemed to fall flat. The elephant In the room came courtesy of CoPilot Recall. Let’s see how we got there.

52:44 – AI Infrastructure Baby!

AI is the hottest topic in tech, and the enterprise IT companies are focusing on it, too. Storage and networking companies are re-tooling their products and plans to capitalize on the AI training market, announcing new offerings all year long to keep the GPUs fed. And the chipmakers aren’t slowing down, with NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm and others announcing new AI processors this year. AI infrastructurue even became a new Tech Field Day topic this year! Let’s take a closer look.

1:00:10 – It’s Snowing Data (Breaches)

There are three big breach stories that we wanted to cover from this year. The first invovles Christmas in the summertime. Or, more appropriately, snow fallout from Snowflake. This database hack had far reaching implications for a number of infrastructure players and services alike. Taylor Swift fans were in the same boat as storage admins and even the phone company as the world seemed to melt down around them.

1:03:25 – Crowd Strikes Back

The second big security story of the year was from a little update gone wrong that caused no end of trouble the world over. People woke up in the early morning hours of June 26th to find a whole host of services offline. People couldn’t buy things at the store. Airlines were grounded. It’s like everything went on strike.

1:07:14 – Salt Typhoon

The end of the year saw yet another huge hack that we will definitely be talking about well into 2025. The state-back group Salt Typhoon found ways into critical telecom infrastructure and started doing everything they could to upset the balance of power. Reports of political candidates being hacked had the government scrambling to react and even recommending encrypted applications they had been railing against only months prior.

1:10:18 – DOJ Gonna DOJ

While it’s too soon to say what the next administration will do, the current US Department of Justice is actively pursuing antitrust investigations into many prominent tech firms. NVIDIA, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Apple, and many others faced scrutiny this year, but it seems that Google will be the first to face sanctions. What’s the state of antitrust in big tech?

The Weeks Ahead:

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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The big story this week is the continued fallout from Salt Typhoon. The US government is feeling the heat from the expsoure of so many telecom companies and they want answers. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has announced a proposed set of rules that would require companies that participate in the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to have a yearly requirement to certify their cybersecurity risk management plans to prevent hackers from getting in. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has gone even further and proposed a draft bill to secure telecom networks with the FCC implementing specific requirements instead of simple certifications.

1:21 – StormForge Rightsizes JVMs

StormForge has introduced a new feature for optimizing Java Virtual Machine (JVM) workloads on Kubernetes, focusing on rightsizing these workloads by leveraging JVM-specific metrics. Traditional tools often only consider container-level memory usage, but StormForge’s solution uses machine learning to analyze detailed Java metrics, including heap size requirements. This provides precise recommendations for heap sizing and Kubernetes resource allocations. The platform supports both manual and automated implementation of these recommendations, aiming to enhance resource efficiency, reduce costs, and optimize performance. Currently, this feature is available in limited access, with interested users invited to sign up.

Read More: StormForge Expands Rightsizing Capabilities With JVM Workload Optimization

4:11 – Cisco Switches Vulnerable to Verification Exploit

Cisco NX-OS has a new bug that you need to be aware of. The vulnerability could allow an attacker with physical access to the switch to bypass image signature verification for the operating system. The exploit does require physical access in order to bypass the bootloader because it is in the switch BIOS before the OS loads. Security patches have been released and upgrading is necessary to prevent the bug as no workarounds exist.

Read More: Hundreds of Cisco Switches impacted by Bootloader Flaw

7:29 – VMware by Broadcom Welcomes Partners Back to the Top

VMware by Broadcom has reveresed course on a decision to cut out partners for major accounts. The news comes as Broadcom announced that instead of taking the largest 2,000 customers direct they will instead only be taking the 500 biggest buyers private and will allow channel partners the opportunity to collaborate on deals with the remaining 1,500. The move is seen as a way to stem the flow of companies that are moving away from VMware solutions when license renewals come up by having local resources in partners that can leverage their relationships. While none of the largest VARs in the US have released any statements about the switch the community is generaly skeptical of this announcement and worried what might happen if Broadcom changes their mind again.

Read More: VMware by Broadcom Welcomes Partners Back to the Top

11:16 – Google Stabilizes Quantum Qubit for an Hour

Google released a paper this week that showed how far quantum computing has come in the past few years. The company was able to increase the number of hardware quantum bits, or qubits, dedicated to error correction in order to create a 105-qubit cluster that was stable for over an hour. Given the the life of the average qubit is less than a second under most condititions this feat was incredibly important. For more on what this means for the future of quantum computing let’s turn it over to our expert colleague, Dr. Bob Sutor.

Read More: Google gets an error-corrected quantum bit to be stable for an hour

16:49 – Open Source Flooded by Bad AI Bug Reports

The use of LLMs and GenAI in security is on the rise. However, one area that is seeing some pushback is in bug reporting. Security developers from the Python Software Foundation and the Curl project have noted a signifcant increase in the amount of bug reports that have been generated by AI tools. These reports look valid on the surface and take time to process, usually leading to no action being taken because they are hallucinations. The Curl mantainer specifically has said that he’s frustrated that people are using AI to send in bogus reports and clogging the system to the point where volunteer members are overwhelmed and may seek to stop helping the project.

Read More: Open Source Flooded by Bad AI Bug Reports

21:52 – Salt Typhoon Storms the Government

The big story this week is the continued fallout from Salt Typhoon. The US government is feeling the heat from the expsoure of so many telecom companies and they want answers. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has announced a proposed set of rules that would require companies that participate in the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to have a yearly requirement to certify their cybersecurity risk management plans to prevent hackers from getting in. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has gone even further and proposed a draft bill to secure telecom networks with the FCC implementing specific requirements instead of simple certifications.

Read More: Salt Typhoon forces FCC’s hand on making telcos secure their networks

Read More: US Senator announces new bill to secure telecom companies in wake of Chinese hacks

The Weeks Ahead:

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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The biggest news of the holiday weekend dropped on Monday. Pat Gelsinger has retired from Intel, effective immediately. David Zinsner, CFO, and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, newly named CEO of the Intel Product subunit, have been named as Co-CEOs while the board searches for a permanent member. Gelsinger has been the CEO since 2021. He has been focused on returning Intel to dominance in the chip market while also facing headwinds from industry transitions to mobile and AI computing. Intel stock prices rose on the news. This and more on The Gestalt IT Rundown.

1:14 – AWS Announces Nova AI Models

Amazon kicked off re:Invent with a bang, introducing a range of new AI models under the Nova brand. These next-generation models, available on Amazon Bedrock, offer capabilities like text, image, and video processing using generative AI algorithms.

Read More: Introducing Amazon Nova, our new generation of foundation models

5:35 – UK Company Bails on Broadcom Due to 1,000% Hike

UK-based Beeks Group, a cloud operator, announced this week that they are moving over 20,000 virtual machines from VMware to OpenNebula. This represents the majority of their virtual infrastructure. The reason for the move was a 10x increase in licensing costs according to Head of Production Matthew Cretney. The move has resulted in double the efficiency of managing the server infrastructure. The move comes amid changes to the VMware portfolio that have seen introductions of lower cost alternatives to VMware Cloud Foundation.

Read More: Company claims 1,000 percent price hike drove it from VMware to open source rival

9:36 – Chinese Say US Chips No Longer Safe

Chinese chipmakers have urged companies in the country to begin buying locally because US chips are no longer considered safe. The announcement comes after recent moves to restrict exports of technology and chips to China as the US relationship becomes frosty. There has been a bit of back-and-forth with sanctions and retaliations in the past couple of months. What was missing from the annoucement was any specificity about what made the US chips unsafe suddenly. China has recently banned exports of rare minerals needed for advanced manufacturing and today the US administration banned the sale of certain high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to buyers in restricted countries.

Read More: US chips are ‘no longer safe,’ Chinese industry bodies say in latest trade salvo

Read More: Biden Targets China’s Chip Industry With Wider Trade Bans

14:20 – EnGlobal Fighting Cyberattack

In an 8-K filing on Monday, energy sector services company EnGlobal said they are fighting a cyberattack and have restricted access to their systems. The incident occurred on November 25th and was reported inside the SEC window for these kinds of notifications. The attack appears to be encrypting files. EnGlobal does not have a timeline for full restoration of their systems. This incident follows a previous one oat the end of October that targeted another energy industry company, Newpark Resources.

Read More: US government contractor ENGlobal says operations are ‘limited’ following cyberattack

17:49 – Intel Forced to Control Their Own Fabs for CHIPS Cash

Before we take a look at the news of Pat Gelsinger’s retirement as Intel CEO, we have a smaller detail that came out Friday. $7 billion of the CHIPS Act funding that Intel is set to receive requires that Intel maintain control over their foundry operations. Intel must have 50.1% ownership and/or voting rights in the foundry business either directly or in a spin-out situation. The move is seen as a way to ensure that Intel does not take the money and run, so to speak, and continues to invest in their foundry operations over the long term.

Read More: Fine print in Intel’s CHIPS Act deal includes requirement to keep control of its foundries

21:52 – Pat Gelsinger Retires from Intel

The biggest news of the holiday weekend dropped on Monday. Pat Gelsinger has retired from Intel, effective immediately. David Zinsner, CFO, and Michelle Johnston Holthaus, newly named CEO of the Intel Product subunit, have been named as Co-CEOs while the board searches for a permanent member. Gelsinger has been the CEO since 2021. He has been focused on returning Intel to dominance in the chip market while also facing headwinds from industry transitions to mobile and AI computing. Intel stock prices rose on the news.

Read More: Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger

36:50 – The Weeks Ahead

AWS re:Invent – December 2 – 6, 2024

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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The week before Thanksgiving is always busy and this year was packed with great conferences. Supercomputing 24 took place in Atlanta and there was plenty to discuss with over 17,000 attendees learning about the latest technology. Let’s dive in to a few key announcements.

1:29 – Clumio Backtrack Announced by Commvault

If you need to restore billions of stored objects to an S3 bucket, Commvault has a solution for you. The new release is from the recently-acquired Clumio and is called Backtrack. The new solution uses S3 versioning to help track backup copies of objects. It also helps you manage those versions to keep them from growing out of control with a GUi-based calendaring system. Backtrack will be available in preview in December and generally available in the first quarter of 2025. Stephen, this is the first release from Clumio since the Commvault acquisition.

Read More: Commvault Unveils Clumio Backtrack: Providing Near Instant Recovery of Massive Datasets Stored in Amazon S3

7:11 – Aryaka Unveils New Survey Report Exploring Network Security Trends in Manufacturing

Aryaka’s latest survey explores network security challenges in manufacturing, revealing key issues like resource gaps, visibility, resilience, and cost control. Over 64% of respondents prioritize real-time network observability, while 54% stress the need for secure global connectivity. Manufacturers increasingly value converged solutions like Aryaka’s Unified SASE to streamline operations, enhance security, and address these evolving demands.

Read More: Aryaka Unveils New Survey Report Exploring Network Security Trends in Manufacturing

11:16 – Techstrong Launches PlatformEngineering.com

What could be more complicated than the cloud? If your organization has completed their cloud migration and started to build out the platforms and pipelines that leverage cloud environments you know there’s more than just making more clouds. There’s a special synergy between DevOps and cloud-native practices that has it’s own kind of language. That’s what the industry calls “platform engineering”. It’s a very unique way to look at the challenges faced by organizations growing beyond DevOps and cloud-native alone. How can you learn more about this new space? Thankfully our sister site TechStrong.TV has a new website dedicated to platform engineering, appropriately called PlatformEngineering.com

Read More: PlatformEngineering.com Launches: A New Hub for the Cloud-Native Era

15:25 – ISPs Say Their Customer Service is Great

ISPs are back in the news again as the FCC is poised to have some big changes in the next year. One of the things that is on the table is new regulations around mandated improvements to customer support. The ISPs are fighting back against those proposed regulations by saying market competition forces them to have great service or risk losing customers. Two different industry lobbying groups are opposed to the proposed rule change, which would require companies to offer live customer support representatives in a reasonable time frame. The ISP argument is the AI chat agents keep improving and can easily replace these folks.

Read More: ISPs say their “excellent customer service” is why users don’t switch providers

20:23 – Red Hat Donates Tools to CNCF

During Kubecon, Red Hat announced that they are going to donate some of their container tools to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). The tools include ComposeFS for overlay file systems and Buildah, a tool for building Open Container Initiative (OCI) images. The biggest donation has to be Podman, a set of container management tools Podman has been positioned as an alternative to Docker for many years and Red Hat has been building around it as a way to help train new users on container basics.

Read More: Red Hat to Donate Podman Along With Other Container Tools to CNCF

23:56 – Cybercrime Costs Brits Billions of Bills

Reuters is reporting that cyberattacks have cost British businesses $55 billion over the past five years. The attacks awere specficially measured in lost revenue, with the number amounting to 1.9% of the total revenue reported over that period. The biggest offenders are email compromise and data theft. Surprisingly, only 61% of businesses were running anti-virus software and 45% were not using firewalls.

Read More: Cyberattacks cost British businesses $55 billion in past five years, broker says

28:27 – Announcements from Supercomputing 2024

The week before Thanksgiving is always busy and this year was packed with great conferences. Supercomputing 24 took place in Atlanta and there was plenty to discuss with over 17,000 attendees learning about the latest technology. Let’s dive in to a few key announcements.

Read More: Supercomputing 2024: A Playground for the Future of Technology

Read More: NSG Comes to SC24 with Money Map, AI Blueprint

Read More: This is the Next-Gen NVIDIA ConnectX-8 SuperNIC for 800Gbps Networking

Read More: HPE Slingshot 400 Brings a Liquid Cooled 51.2T Switch and 400Gbps Networking

The Weeks Ahead:

AWS re:Invent – December 2 – 6, 2024

Mobility Field Day 12 – November 20 – 21

AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Pay rates for IT security professionals are rising faster than inflation, but burnout and stress are growing faster. A survey of UK security professionals revealed the fast pace of modern security and the risk of unknown failure is causing skilled practitioners to leave the field. Would yet more pay fix the problem, or is there another way to address IT security staff retention? This and more on the Rundown.

1:19 – Can AMD Top NVIDIA?

In her ten years as CEO of AMD, Lisa Su has turned the company around by successfully entering the datacenter CPU and GPU markets, securing major revenues and positioning AMD as a serious competitor to Intel and Nvidia. With record-high revenues, rapid growth in the Instinct GPU business, and increased sales in datacenter products, AMD is on track to potentially achieve parity with Nvidia in datacenter GPU sales and rival Intel in server CPU revenue by 2025 or 2026.

Read More: AMD Will Need Another Decade to Try to Pass NVIDIA

3:50 – Quantum AI Isn’t a Thing

Combining Quantum computing and AI seems like a recipe for headlines and funding. Bob Sutor, an experienced Quantum computing expert, suggests that Quantum computing might solve some problems better than AI but that Quantum computing is still very early. It seems that quantum computing might become another accelerator for specialised computation tasks.

Read More: AI + Quantum: Hype or True Breakthroughs? – Report Summary

7:13 – MinIO Introduces AIStor

We’ve been covering MinIO on the Rundown for years, and they’ve been a frequent Tech Field Day presenter too. Now they have introduced their next-generation enterprise product, dubbed AIStor. This release adds a complete AI storage stack, from key manager, console, to catalog, and has more tricks up its sleeve: The new promptObject capability brings self-describing metadata, AIHub is a drop-in replacement for Hugging Face, and S3 over RDMA challenges NFS over RDMA, not to mention GPUDirect.

Watch: MinIO Presents at AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1

12:23 – Amazon Employee Details Exposed in MoveIt Breach

Doesn’t Amazon have a public cloud platform they use to build software and services for their business? It seems that a breach of the MoveIt secure file transfer service led to the work contact details of 2.8 million Amazon employees being stolen, probably by ransomware organisations.

Read More: Amazon Confirms Employee Contact Info Stolen Through Hack

15:20 – Marslink is Further Away than Starlink

Shouldn’t Starlink be called Earthlink? That would make more sense now that SpaceX proposes putting a system in orbit around Mars, probably called Marslink. Naturally, SpaceX wants NASA to fund the deployment of a satellite network service around Mars as part of Elon’s efforts to reach the red planet.

Read More: SpaceX Pitches NASA on ‘Marslink,’ a Version of Starlink for the Red Planet

18:19 – AI is writing Google’s Code

AI is generating more than 25% of Google’s code, according to Sundar Pichai. That 25% of code still needs to be reviewed by a human before it is accepted, so it is unclear how much productivity Google gains from AI code generation. We wonder whether organisations without Google’s vast code base and extensive AI experience can gain value from AI-generated code.

Read More: Google CEO says more than 25% of the company’s code is now AI-generated – is this the future of software development?

22:05 – Amazon Won’t Go Nuclear

Amazon’s data centers are requiring more and more power, especially now that AI is ramping up. One way that providers are trying to increase power to those data centers is by reviving the nuclear energy industry in the US. For the plants that are still in operation, companies like Amazon are trying to draw more power from the reactors while the older ones are refurbished and reactivated. The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) just issued an order that rejected Amazon’s request to draw an additional 180 megawatts of power from a Susquehanna power plant. The data center in question, built by Talen Energy and acquired by Amazon back in March, was co-located next to the plant in an effort to optimize power delivery. The FERC cited issues with what would happen if the contract for the Talen center preempted power delivery to th rest of the power grid.

Read More: Amazon’s nuclear datacenter dreams stall as watchdog rejects power deal

26:41 – Is IT Security Too Stressful for the Money?

Pay rates for IT security professionals are rising faster than inflation, but burnout and stress are growing faster. A survey of UK security professionals revealed the fast pace of modern security and the risk of unknown failure is causing skilled practitioners to leave the field. Would yet more pay fix the problem, or is there another way to address IT security staff retention?

Read More: Cybersecurity salaries are rising, but some professionals wonder if the stress and burnout is worth it

The Weeks Ahead:

AppDev Field Day 2 – November 12 – 13

Mobility Field Day 12 – November 20 – 21

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Another Trump presidency could bring significant implications for enterprise tech, particularly through a focus on deregulation, increased M&A, and expanded Big Tech investments. this also extends to advancements in military technology, Israel’s influence on cybersecurity, the impact of initiatives like StarLink and rural broadband on connectivity, nuclear energy, AI, the CHIPS Act, and the expanding space industry. Altogether, these insights suggest that a pro-deregulation agenda, aiming to remove ten regulations for each new one introduced, could profoundly shape the future of enterprise technology. This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

1:54 – Log-in Bug Infects Okta

Okta recently disclosed a security vulnerability that allowed users to log in without a correct password under specific conditions, such as usernames over 52 characters, the presence of a stored cache key, no two-factor authentication, and Okta’s authentication agent being down or overloaded. Okta has since fixed the issue by updating its cryptographic algorithm and advises affected customers to review access logs from the past three months.

Read More: Okta Bug Allowed Log-Ins Without a Correct Password

4:14 – Nuclear Amazon Datacenters Denied over Safety Concerns

Back on Oct 2, Tom and I talked about nuclear power for AI datacenters. Amazon’s plans to power new U.S. datacenters with nuclear energy faced a setback after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected an agreement allowing it to draw additional power from the Susquehanna nuclear plant, citing potential impacts on grid reliability and consumer costs. Despite FERC Chairman Willie L. Phillips advocating for approval, FERC ruled that the proposal lacked sufficient support, raising concerns over preferential treatment and the potential effects of similar arrangements on the grid in future cases.

Read More: Amazon’s nuclear datacenter dreams stall as watchdog rejects power deal

Read More: Endangered bees stop Meta’s plan for nuclear-powered AI data center

7:56 – Microsoft Recalls Recall. Again.

Microsoft has once again delayed the release of its new AI Recall feature for Copilot Plus PCs, pushing the preview for Windows Insiders to December. Recall, which was originally slated for an October release, has been plagued by concerns about its security and privacy implications. The delays stem from Microsoft’s efforts to address these concerns by making Recall an opt-in feature that can be fully uninstalled. Microsoft has been working to fix bugs in how the feature appears and is controlled in Windows 11. The company remains committed to delivering a secure and trusted experience with Recall.

Read More: Microsoft is delaying the recall feature for CoPilot Plus PCs again, all we know

10:58 – Cloudera Launches Private Link

Cloudera recently launched the Cloudera Private Link Network, a service designed to provide secure, internet-free connectivity across multi-cloud environments. This network allows data to travel securely between customer workloads and Cloudera’s Control Plane without traversing the public internet, addressing privacy and regulatory concerns for industries like finance, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. By using services like AWS PrivateLink and Azure Private Link, the Private Link Network enables consistent security across cloud providers, reducing the complexities of cross-cloud setups and lowering total costs by simplifying network management. This development marks Cloudera’s effort to support enterprises with strict data protection needs in leveraging multi-cloud environments efficiently. For more on this, let’s turn to our colleague Mitch Ashley.

Read More: Cloudera Launches Private Link for Secure Multi-Cloud Connectivity

14:50 – Google Cloud gets Multi-Factor Authentication

In response to rising cyber threats and high-profile data breaches, Google has announced that it will require all Google Cloud users to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) by 2025. Starting this month, users will receive reminders to implement MFA, with mandatory enforcement beginning in the new year. This policy shift, aimed at protecting against unauthorized access through stolen credentials, aligns Google with other cloud giants like AWS and Microsoft, which have also moved to enforce MFA. Google says this requirement addresses the heightened security risks in enterprise cloud environments, where sensitive data remains a prime target for cyberattacks.

Read More: Google Cloud to make multi-factor authentication mandatory in 2025

17:33 – Supermicro Faces Financial Woes as NVIDIA Seeks New Suppliers

Needham suspended its buy rating for Super Micro Computer (SMCI) after Ernst & Young resigned as auditor, citing governance issues and concerns about financial transparency amid an ongoing DOJ investigation and Hindenburg Research’s allegations of accounting manipulation. In response, NVIDIA is redirecting AI server orders to other suppliers to maintain supply chain stability, as Supermicro’s stock faces volatility and potential delisting risk.

Read More: Super Micro shares tumble following disturbing news

Read More: Nvidia steps in to restructure Supermicro orders, reshaping AI supply chain

22:07 – What Another Trump Presidency Means for Enterprise Tech

Another Trump presidency could bring significant implications for enterprise tech, particularly through a focus on deregulation, increased M&A, and expanded Big Tech investments. this also extends to advancements in military technology, Israel’s influence on cybersecurity, the impact of initiatives like StarLink and rural broadband on connectivity, nuclear energy, AI, the CHIPS Act, and the expanding space industry. Altogether, these insights suggest that a pro-deregulation agenda, aiming to remove ten regulations for each new one introduced, could profoundly shape the future of enterprise technology.

The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day 36 – November 6 – 7

AppDev Field Day 2 – November 12 – 13

Mobility Field Day 12 – November 20 – 21

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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Hatfields and McCoys. Lakers and Celtics. GIF versus GIF. The rivalries of our time are always storied. One of the biggest seems to be cooling, however. AMD and Intel have announced a new partnership aimed at countering the surge of ARM-based designs. The companies are trying to standardize aspects of the x86 instruction set in order to make it easier for ISVs to write code that runs on both Intel and AMD chips without a fragmented code base that reduces performance and encourages developers to move to a more unified architecture like ARM. This and more on this week’s Gestalt IT Rundown.

1:41 – Platform9 Launches Private Cloud Director

Platform9 has a new solution for private clouds. Private Cloud Director helps you build solutions that run on any infrastructure using distributed software defined networking (SDN) and cluster resource management. The details were shown during Cloud Field Day 21 as well as demos of the platform.

Watch Platform9’s Videos: Platform9 Presents at Cloud Field Day 21

5:45 – xAI Builds The Biggest AI Supercomputer

There’s a new big dog in the AI supercomputer space and it DOESN’T run on InfiniBand. xAI’s Colossus is powered by 100,000 NVIDIA Grace Hopper GPUs, with plans to double that number. It took 122 days to design Colossus and only 19 days to install all the racks and get to the training. How can you run a massive project like this without InfiniBand? Well that’s thanks to Spectrum-X Ethernet, the custom AI-focused version developed by NVIDIA. The core of the xAI Spectrum-X network runs at 800Gbps and is used to feed systems running the Bluefield-3 DPU in order to accelerate performance.

Read More: NVIDIA Ethernet Networking Accelerates World’s Largest AI Supercomputer, Built by xAI

9:53 – Evading Sanctions for Profit

With AI becoming a hot new area for chip manufacturers to make a mountain of money, everyone wants to get in on the action. One of the ways that companies are skirting the rules to keep the money machine going is by adjusting technology to evade export restrictions. As we’ve covered on the Rundown many times, the US is restricting export of certain types of chips and chipmaking tools to China. That doesn’t mean people aren’t trying to get around it. Companies facing export bans are using creative interpretations of the rules to evade sanctions and importing large numbers of chips through shell companies.

Read More: Fab Whack-A-Mole: Chinese Companies are Evading U.S. Sanctions

15:34 – Satya Nadella Takes Pay Cut for Security Issues

It’s been a bad year for Microsoft on the security front. Between all the email compromises and password spraying attacks the tech giant has gotten a black eye. It’s so bad that Satya Nadella released a memo stating that employee pay would be lined to security expectations and milestones in some cases. And one of those cases appears to be his. In a new filing with the SEC, Nadella has asked the Microsoft board to reduce his incentives by 50%. Granted, he’s only losing about $5.5 million but it’s a step in the right direction.

Read More: UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

19:06 – OpenAI in Talks with Broadcom for Custom Chips

OpenAI is reportedly in talks with Broadcom to develop AI chips that are specific to OpenAI inferencing models according to a Bloomberg report. The people sourced in the reporting also mentioned that OpenAI is talking to TSMC for custom chips as well. The move would be a big shift away from using GPU-based models like the ones favored by NVIDIA. Stocks for both companies rose on the news.

Read More: OpenAI, Broadcom Working to Develop AI Inference Chip

24:13 – Salt Typhoon Sweeps Up Political Audio

Earlier this month we discussed the hacking group Salt Typhoon and how they had gained access to lawful intercept recording data in major US telecom companies. During that story we discussed the far-reaching impact of intelligence gathering. This week we saw reports that Salt Typhoon has been gathering data on US politicians, including Donald Trump, JD Vance, and other parts of their campaign. The group has also compromised devices for politicans on the other side of the political spectrum, including Chuck Schumer.

Read More: Chinese Hackers said to have collected audio of American Calls

28:40 – AMD and Intel Reach Historic Partnership

Hatfields and McCoys. Lakers and Celtics. GIF versus GIF. The rivalries of our time are always storied. One of the biggest seems to be cooling, however. AMD and Intel have announced a new partnership aimed at countering the surge of ARM-based designs. The companies are trying to standardize aspects of the x86 instruction set in order to make it easier for ISVs to write code that runs on both Intel and AMD chips without a fragmented code base that reduces performance and encourages developers to move to a more unified architecture like ARM.

Read More: Collaborations and Innovations in Tech – A Recap from The Six Five Webcast

Read More: Hell Freezes Over as AMD and Intel Come Together for x86

Read More: Intel and AMD Form x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group to Accelerate Innovation for Developers and Customers

41:08 – The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day 36 – November 6 – 7

AppDev Field Day 2 – November 12 – 13

Mobility Field Day 12 – November 20 – 21

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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At Open Compute Summit this past week, key trends shaping the future of computing and infrastructure were discussed. One major concern is the global data center energy consumption, which is projected to triple by 2030, highlighting the urgent need for more efficient energy solutions. As technology advances, the shift from a 3nm process to a 2nm process is proving costly, with design costs estimated to reach a staggering $725 million, according to ARM. In response to both power demands and design challenges, liquid cooling is gaining momentum, emerging as a vital technology to improve efficiency and manage the increasing heat output from advanced computing systems. This and more on The Rundown.

1:36 – BMC Starts Two New Companies

BMC announced plans to create two independent companies, BMC and BMC Helix, to accelerate growth and better serve customers. BMC will focus on its Intelligent Z Optimization and Digital Business Automation units, while BMC Helix will drive innovation in digital service and operations management using AI. The transition is set to begin in early 2025, following BMC’s strong track record of growth and market leadership.

Read More: BMC Announces the Creation of Two Independent Companies

4:06 – CEO Indicted for Fraud

The chief executive of an IT services company was indicted Wednesday for duping the Securities and Exchange Commission into believing his company’s data center was certified at the highest rating level for reliability for managing sensitive government data. Justice Department officials contend Deepak Jain created a company in Maryland called Uptime Council to inspect and audit data centers for customers including the SEC that, from 2012 through 2018, paid Jain’s company approximately $10.7 million for the use of a data center in Beltsville, Md.

Read More: Data Center Company CEO Indicted for Major Fraud and Making False Statements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

7:10 – Microsoft goes Agentic AI

Microsoft is jumping into the AI agent field in November, with public agents for enterprises like McKinsey, bringing the largest software company to the agentic AI race. This means stiff competition for Salesforce, ServiceNow and others.

Read More: Microsoft to roll out new autonomous AI agents next month, fending off challenge from Salesforce

10:37 – Amazon Teams Up with US Department of Justice

News broke last week that the US Department of Justice had taken down Anonymous Sudan, a pair of professional criminals that were selling their services. Their particular specialization was using Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks to take down sites on demand for as little as $100 per day. One of the major contributors to the arrest of Anonymous Sudan was AWS. Tom School, Distinguished Engineer, started detecting traffic back in June of 2023 and used internal AWS tools to identify the proxy servers used by the group so they could be identified as soon as new one popped up.

Read More: Amazon helps the US Department of Justice thwart international cybercriminal group Anonymous Sudan

14:30 – Perplexity Is getting Sued by Media Giants

Perplexity AI was sued by News Corp this week, after the New York Times did so last week, for allegedly scraping their news content and using it in their AI models. The IP lawsuits underscore the tensions between news organizations and companies like Perplexity.

Read More: Perplexity is sued by Dow Jones and ‘New York Post’ for copyright infringement

16:44 – Sophos Acquires Secureworks

Sophos has announced they are aquiring XDR vendor Secureworks. The deal, valued at $859 million or $8.50 per share, is an all-cash transaction expected to close in early 2025. Sophos said they are looking to expand their offerings around XDR and provide solutions at different organization sizes from enterprise to SMB. Secureworks had been acquired by Dell back in 2011 and had an IPO in 2015. Dell had been looking to sell Secureworks as early as 2019 and had engaged investment bankers to explore sale and takover options for Secureworks.

Read More: Sophos to Acquire Secureworks to Accelerate Cybersecurity Services and Technology for Organizations Worldwide

20:00 – Exciting Developments from Open Compute Summit

At Open Compute Summit this past week, key trends shaping the future of computing and infrastructure were discussed. One major concern is the global data center energy consumption, which is projected to triple by 2030, highlighting the urgent need for more efficient energy solutions. As technology advances, the shift from a 3nm process to a 2nm process is proving costly, with design costs estimated to reach a staggering $725 million, according to ARM. In response to both power demands and design challenges, liquid cooling is gaining momentum, emerging as a vital technology to improve efficiency and manage the increasing heat output from advanced computing systems.

Read More: Key Takeaways from OCP Global Summit 2024

Read More: Liquid Cooling Takes Center Stage at OpenCompute Summit 2024

31:41 – The Weeks Ahead

Cloud Field Day 21 – October 23 – 24

Networking Field Day 36 – November 6 – 7

AppDev Field Day 2 – November 12 – 13

Mobility Field Day 12 – November 20 – 21

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

View Details

At Commvault SHIFT 2024, The Futurum Group’s Daniel Newman and Patrick Moorhead sat with CEO Sanjay Mirchandani, who discussed Commvault’s strategic pivot towards a cloud-first approach in cyber resilience. This shift involves key acquisitions, such as Appranix and Clumio, and new partnerships with AWS and Google, aimed at enhancing cloud data protection and recovery. Mirchandani also introduced the concept of “Continuous Business,” highlighting its distinction from traditional business continuity by emphasizing ongoing readiness and adaptability in a dynamic digital landscape.

2:57 – Chip Boom Continues with Record-Breaking Demand

Global semiconductor sales jumped 20.6% year-on-year in August 2024, reaching $53.1 billion, with the Americas leading the growth at 43.9%, driven by AI, cloud computing, and automotive demand. Despite the strong recovery, supply chain disruptions and ongoing US-China geopolitical tensions pose significant risks to the industry. While export controls and national security concerns remain, the sector is expected to continue rebounding due to persistent demand across multiple sectors.

Read More: Global semiconductor sales up 20.6% to record $53.1B as trade wars rage on

5:47 – Accenture Pushes Agentic AI Built on NVIDIA

Accenture is positioning itself at the forefront of the emerging agentic AI wave by expanding its partnership with Nvidia to leverage advanced AI capabilities within its operations. The company is launching the Accenture Nvidia Business Group, which will employ an “army of agents” to tackle complex workflows, enhance efficiency, and deliver customized solutions for clients. While agentic AI presents significant opportunities for innovation, Accenture acknowledges the challenges of data security, ethical considerations, and the necessity for human oversight as these systems become increasingly autonomous.

Read More: Accenture Melds Smarts and Wares with NVIDIA for Agentic AI Push

10:53 – AMD AI Chips to Challenge NVIDIA

AMD announced the release of its MI325X AI accelerator in 2025, followed by the MI350 series, which will feature 256GB of memory and 6TBps throughput, surpassing NVIDIA’s H200 series. Additionally, the company introduced the AMD Pensando Pollara 400 Ethernet accelerator and a new 5th Gen EPYC processor that improves performance by up to 17%, while CEO Dr. Lisa Su stressed the importance of leveraging open-source software and building an ecosystem around the ROCm stack to compete effectively in the market. For more on this story, let’s bring in Techstrong.ai’s Mike Vizard to discuss what this means.

Read More: AMD Extends AI Accelerator Lineup to Challenge NVIDIA

13:22 – Geopolitics’ Impact on Digital Infrastructure

In his latest column on Every.to, Gareth Edwards explores the British government’s decision to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, an event that will lead to the retirement of the widely used .io domain suffix in the tech and gaming industries. This geopolitical shift highlights the interconnectedness of global politics and digital infrastructure, as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) prepares to eliminate the “IO” country code, impacting numerous existing websites. Citing historical precedents like the fall of the Soviet Union and the breakup of Yugoslavia, Edwards cautions tech founders to consider the implications of their domain name choices, as real-world events can significantly affect the digital landscape.

Read More: The Disappearance of an Internet Domain

16:53 – Cisco sells their stake in Rubrik

Cisco has sold its nearly $6 million stake in cybersecurity firm Rubrik, following the company’s April IPO. Despite the sale, the two companies maintain a strategic partnership, with Rubrik joining Cisco’s SolutionsPlus program in August, making its products available on Cisco’s Global Price List.

Read More: Cisco sells stake in cybersecurity firm Rubrik – report

20:49 – CTERA’s Data Intelligence Enhances GenAI with File Data

CTERA has launched its Data Intelligence offering, designed to enhance retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, by linking cloud file services data to chosen GenAI models, providing real-time private context to improve response accuracy. CEO Oded Nagel highlighted that the service enables organizations to securely integrate their proprietary data with AI, delivering relevant insights while maintaining data privacy, through features such as semantic engines, identity-based access, and customizable virtual assistants. CTERA’s solution supports both on-premises and cloud deployments, addressing challenges related to unstructured data and facilitating effective AI interactions within enterprise environments.

Read More: CTERA launches Data Intelligence to link file data to AI models

25:28 – Commvault Shift’s Cyber Resilience for the AI Era

At Commvault SHIFT 2024, The Futurum Group’s Daniel Newman and Patrick Moorhead sat with CEO Sanjay Mirchandani, who discussed Commvault’s strategic pivot towards a cloud-first approach in cyber resilience. This shift involves key acquisitions, such as Appranix and Clumio, and new partnerships with AWS and Google, aimed at enhancing cloud data protection and recovery. Mirchandani also introduced the concept of “Continuous Business,” highlighting its distinction from traditional business continuity by emphasizing ongoing readiness and adaptability in a dynamic digital landscape.

Read More: Shifting to Cloud-First Cyber Resilience with Commvault

Gestalt IT Live Blog: Commvault Shift 2024 Live Blog

As we discussed on the September 25th episode of The Rundown, Commvault announced the acquisition of Clumio. This integration, which will launch later this year, aims to accelerate Commvault’s vision of a resilient, cloud-first enterprise by leveraging Clumio’s expertise in AWS to bolster cyber recovery and resilience for customers and partners.

Read More: Commvault Acquires Clumio and Extends Cloud Resilience Capabilities on AWS

Commvault announced significant updates including full availability of its Commvault Cloud platform on AWS, support for Google Workspace protection, and a partnership with Pure Storage to help financial customers comply with the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which comes into effect in January 2025. The new offerings, such as Cloud Rewind and the Cyber Resilience Dashboard, aim to enhance cyber resilience by enabling rapid recovery from cyber incidents while ensuring that applications and data are restored efficiently and securely across multiple cloud environments.

Read More: Commvault expands cloud and cyber resilience solutions, including Cloud Rewind

38:51 – The Weeks Ahead

Security Field Day 12 – October 16 – 17

Cloud Field Day 21 – October 23 – 24

Networking Field Day 36 – November 6 – 7

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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A big cyberattack attributed to groups backed by the Chinese government has telecom providers worried. In this new report, investigators have determined that the group, known as Salt Typhoon, has had months-long access into the network infrastructures of companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies. That access includes visibility over the infrastructure used for lawful intercept, which is the Internet version of tapping a phone. Per the report, the Salt Typhoon hackers appeared to be engaged in a data collection mission, trying to obtain as much data as possible from US businesses as well as those that they do business with.

1:06 – Samsung Begins 1TB QLC 9th-Gen V-NAND Production

Samsung Electronics has started mass production of the industry’s first 1TB quad-level cell (QLC) 9th-generation V-NAND, designed to offer high-performance, high-capacity solutions for AI applications, consumer products, and enterprise SSDs. This new technology features a 286-layer structure, providing 86% higher density than previous generations, along with significant improvements in write performance, data retention, and reduced power consumption. Samsung aims to strengthen its leadership in the growing enterprise SSD market, particularly as demand for AI applications surges.

Read More: Samsung targets AI with first mass production of quad-level QLC V-NAND

4:26 – Datacenter Maintenance Could Cause Security Issues

Information week had an interesting story about the security risks associated with dust and fluff accumulating inside servers in data centers. The danger seems to be more about overheated servers that shut down because their fans no longer move enough air to keep them cool.

Read More: Dust Bunnies on the Attack: Datacenter Maintenance Issues Pose Security Threats

7:41 – Equinix joint venture to spend $15B building 1.5GW of AI Datacenters

Equinix and it’s joint venture partners, GIC and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, will build multiple datacenter campuses across the US. The datacenters will boost AI and cloud growth for Equinix customers in the US.

Read More: Equinix Agrees to Form Greater Than $15B JV to Expand Hyperscale Data Centers in the U.S. and Support Growing AI and Cloud Innovation

11:28 – Cisco Teams Up With Coreweave

Cisco is apparently looking to make an investment into CoreWeave. Fresh off a Series C funding round, CoreWeave is a popular company for cloud-based GPU clustering. Cisco is reported to be looking to invest and raise the valuation of CoreWeave to nearly $23 billion. Analysts are wondering if this is a chance for Cisco to influence the transition from Infiniband to Ethernet fabrics.

Read More: Why Cisco reportedly wants in on CoreWeave’s rent-a-GPU racket

14:58 – Commercial WordPress Hosting Stoush

Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, believes that WPEngine is profiting off the confusion between the WordPress brand and the WPEngine brand. WPEngine customers were briefly blocked from accessing the WordPress software distribution servers, preventing security updates to WPEngine based web sites. Access has been restored but Mullenweg still wants WPEngine to pay his company, Automattic millions of dollars for a license to the WordPress trademark.

Read More: The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained

18:51 – Oscium Acquires MetaGeek

Oscium is acquiring MetaGeek from Auvik. Specifically, Oscium is getting the MetaGeek brand along with the code for the MetaGeek tools like Chanalyzer and inSSIDer. Co-founder Brian Tuttle is returning to the company to lead software development. Tom, MetaGeek has presented at Field Day in the past.

Read More: Oscium Announces Acquisition of MetaGeek, Expanding Wireless Network Solutions Portfolio

22:24 – Nation State Actors Tap the Taps

A big cyberattack attributed to groups backed by the Chinese government has telecom providers worried. In this new report, investigators have determined that the group, known as Salt Typhoon, has had months-long access into the network infrastructures of companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies. That access includes visibility over the infrastructure used for lawful intercept, which is the Internet version of tapping a phone. Per the report, the Salt Typhoon hackers appeared to be engaged in a data collection mission, trying to obtain as much data as possible from US businesses as well as those that they do business with.

Read More: U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack

31:12 – The Weeks Ahead

Security Field Day 12 – October 16 – 17

Cloud Field Day 21 – October 23 – 24

Networking Field Day 36 – November 6 – 7

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

View Details

Microsoft has revamped its AI-powered Recall feature, shifting from automatic to opt-in use with enhanced security measures like full encryption and Windows Hello authentication, addressing privacy concerns. California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB-1047, which aimed to regulate AI models, citing concerns that smaller models outside the regulation’s scope might pose greater risks. Meanwhile, OpenAI is facing a leadership shakeup as CTO Mira Murati and other key executives depart, coinciding with a shift in the company’s focus toward a more traditional startup model under Sam Altman’s leadership. This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.

0:58 – Rackspace Gets Attacked, Logically

Hosting provider Rackspace realized they had a problem on their hands when one of their third party tools was exploited to gain access to monitoring servers. While the name of the tool wasn’t publicly disclosed at the time of the breach it was later determined that a component of ScienceLogic was at fault. The self-hosted install fell victim to a zero-day exploit that doesn’t currently have a CVE attached. Rackspace quickly took the interface offline to mitigate the damage. When pressed, ScienceLogic didn’t disclose anything had happened or which tool was at risk to prevent further exploitation.

Read More: Rackspace internal monitoring web servers hit by zero-day

4:09 – Hurricane Helene Disrupts Critical Supply Chain

Devastating floods in North Carolina’s tiny town of Spruce Pine, America’s sole source of high-purity quartz, threaten to disrupt the global supply chain for microchips and solar panels. The town, battered by Hurricane Helene, produces ultra-high-quality quartz essential for manufacturing semiconductors and solar panels, with experts warning that prolonged disruption could have far-reaching consequences. As recovery efforts continue, the world holds its breath, awaiting the full extent of damage to Spruce Pine’s critical quartz mines and the potential ripple effects on the tech industry.

Read More: A tiny town just got slammed by Helene. It could massively disrupt the tech industry

8:34 – Tech Giants and Government Support Spark a New Nuclear Renaissance?

The rapidly growing demands of artificial intelligence are sparking a new era in nuclear energy, as tech giants and the US government join forces to meet the power-hungry needs of AI data centers. With AI’s insatiable thirst for energy driving a surge in electricity demand, major players like Microsoft and Google are turning to nuclear power as a clean and reliable solution. From restarting dormant reactors to investing in cutting-edge nuclear technology, the AI revolution is breathing new life into the US nuclear energy sector.

Read More: Nuclear power’s AI renaissance

14:11 – F5 Launches NGINX One

F5 has launched NGINX One, an integrated application networking platform that simplifies the management of load balancing, APIs, and cybersecurity across hybrid cloud environments. This SaaS platform centralizes the deployment and management of NGINX instances, providing additional telemetry and AI capabilities to streamline DevOps workflows and reduce the complexity of managing modern cloud-native applications. By enabling more dynamic and flexible provisioning of networking services, NGINX One aims to replace rigid legacy approaches and adapt to evolving IT needs.

Read More: F5 Delivers on NGINX One Platform Promise

17:34 – NIST Gives Tips on Passwords

It looks like NIST is ready to put some password guidelines in place. In a new draft with a boring number for a name, NIST is making some suggestions about password policies. Things like maximum lengths of 64 characters, Unicode options, and even guidance on knowledge-based questions and password hints are included. However, the wording of the prompts does fall back on SHALL and SHOULD variations which means we may not get everything we want.

Read More: NIST Recommends Some Common-Sense Password Rules

22:20 – AI Safety Roundup

Recall Reloaded: Microsoft Unleashes Enhanced AI Search, Now with Added Safeguards

Microsoft has announced a significant overhaul of its controversial AI-powered Recall feature, transforming it from an automatic function to an opt-in experience with enhanced security measures. The tech giant has responded to privacy concerns by implementing full encryption, virtualization-based security, and Windows Hello authentication for the feature that captures screenshots of user activity. This revamp, which includes the ability to completely uninstall Recall, marks a major shift in Microsoft’s approach to integrating AI capabilities in Windows while prioritizing user control and data protection.

Read More: Microsoft’s more secure Windows Recall feature can also be uninstalled by users

AI Safety Bill Vetoed by California Governor

California governor Gavin Newsome vetoed SB-1047 this week. The bill was aimed at regulating AI models and forcing developers to impose safety kits and kill switches. The state reason behind the veto is the specifics behind the size of the model that would be subject to scrutiny, with Newsome saying that smaller models that are not subject to the regulations could end up being more harmful as a result. The bill had been hotly debated on both sides of the AI aisle, with proponents saying regulation was crucial to growth and opponents saying it didn’t go far enough.

Read More: California governor vetoes controversial AI safety bill

Mass Executive Exodus at OpenAI

Ah, remember the great OpenAI power struggle? Seems like it was forever ago, but it’s been eleven months. Guess it’s time for another one! In this case, CTO Mira Murati, Research VP Barret Zoph, and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew all announced they are leaving. This news comes on the heels of a story from Reuters that OpenAI is restructuring away from their non-profit focus and more toward a traditional startup model that would consolidate power with Altman. Fears that Altman was too powerful led to his ouster back in November of 2023 but he was rehired very shortly and his opponents at the time eventually left the company.

Read More: OpenAI Execs Mass Quit as Company Removes Control From Non-Profit Board and Hands It to Sam Altman

40:39 – The Weeks Ahead

AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1 – October 2 – 3

Commvault Shift – October 8 – 9

Security Field Day 12 – October 16 – 17

Cloud Field Day 21 – October 23 – 24

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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We’re happy to have Dr. Bob Sutor joining us this week on the Rundown, since he covers quantum and advanced computing for The Futurum Group. IBM made two important announcements in the quantum space this week. The first announcement was Qiskit, a quantum SDK that runs on Python for quantum computers. This promises to bring quantum compute to a more mainstream audience and converting the underlying code to Rust. This solution is much faster than competing solutions from Google, Amazon, and Quantinuuum. IBM is also putting together an app store for quantum applications and runtime functions, including from third-party developers. This matches the moves that we have seen in areas like cloud and AI, and serves to push IBM as the leader in quantum computing. This and more on The Rundown.

1:57 – Qualcomm to Buy Intel?

Qualcomm is exploring a potential acquisition of Intel, a move that could strengthen both companies and enhance U.S. leadership in the chip industry, despite potential antitrust review. Intel, under CEO Pat Gelsinger, is pursuing strategic changes to boost its competitive edge, including expanding its manufacturing capabilities and investing in next-generation technologies. A successful deal would significantly broaden Qualcomm’s portfolio and position both companies for growth in the rapidly evolving AI and semiconductor markets.

Read More: Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

4:11 – Kioxia No Longer Planning IPO

Kioxia has postponed its planned IPO, which we discussed on the August 28 show, due to challenges in achieving its target valuation amid a broader market downturn. Despite recent improvements in memory chip prices, the company has been impacted by a slump in the chip market, which they had already previously delayed its IPO in 2020. Kioxia, with a 14% share in the flash memory market, remains focused on listing when market conditions improve.

Read More: Exclusive: Bain-backed chipmaker Kioxia scraps October IPO plan, sources say

6:42 – Announcements from Dreamforce

At its Dreamforce conference, Salesforce introduced Agentforce, a suite of AI-powered agents designed to streamline app development and improve customer experiences across industries. The platform’s low-code AI tools, new partnerships, and enhanced AI models aim to drive adoption of these autonomous agents, helping businesses automate tasks and unlock the full potential of their data. By integrating AI more deeply across its ecosystem, Salesforce seeks to differentiate its offering and support customers in modernizing operations and achieving higher ROI through scalable AI solutions. For more on this, let’s turn it over to The Futurum Group’s Keith Kirkpatrick who was at the event.

Read More: Dreamforce Announcements Focus on AI, Agentforce, and Cloud Enhancements

16:32 – Commvault Buys Clumio

Commvault just announced its acquisition of Clumio, an AWS data protection specialist we’ve previously discussed here on the Rundown. The acquisition enhances Commvault’s cyber resilience capabilities for cloud-native applications and allows the company to leverage Clumio’s innovations, including rapid access to Amazon S3 data during critical recovery operations, expanding its offerings for AWS-based businesses. Clumio’s expertise in protecting complex data sets will now reach a global scale through Commvault’s platform.

Read More: Commvault Accelerates Cyber Resilience Capabilities for AWS with Acquisition of Clumio

20:07 – CISA Wants to Say Ciao to Ivanti EOL Units

In a very telling move, CISA has made a statement telling customers to move off of Ivanti Cloud Services Appliance 4.6. The notice comes as yet another security update has been released and Ivanti is not porting it to versions prior to 5.0. The CISA has been very up front about exploits this year and Ivanti is no stranger to having issues with their underlying code quality.

Read More: Ivanti Releases Security Update for Cloud Services Appliance

22:47 – Veeam Acquires Alcion

Veeam announced today that they are acquiring Alcion. Alcion has focused on SaaS backups since being founded back in 2022. Veeam had led an investment round for Alcion in 2023 and Veeam had also acquired Kasten, which was the startup that had been founded previously by Alcion founders. In addition to the acquisition, Niraj Tolia will move into the vacant CTO role at Veeam to help guide the integration between all the products.

Read More: Veeam, the #1 Data Resilience Company, Appoints Niraj Tolia as Chief Technology Officer to Accelerate Innovation of Data Resilience as a Service

25:29 – Qiskit and IBM’s New Quantum Innovations

We’re happy to have Dr. Bob Sutor joining us this week on the Rundown, since he covers quantum and advanced computing for The Futurum Group. IBM made two important announcements in the quantum space this week. The first announcement was Qiskit, a quantum SDK that runs on Python for quantum computers. This promises to bring quantum compute to a more mainstream audience and converting the underlying code to Rust. This solution is much faster than competing solutions from Google, Amazon, and Quantinuuum. IBM is also putting togetther an app store for quantum applications and runtime functions, including from third-party developers. This matches the moves that we have seen in areas like cloud and AI, and serves to push IBM as the leader in quantum computing.

Read More: Quantum in Context: IBM Qiskit Boosts Software Development Speed

Read More: Microsoft unveils new quantum computing hybrid solution in Azure

34:27 – The Weeks Ahead

Networking Field Day Exclusive with Nokia – September 24

AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1 – October 2 – 3

Commvault Shift – October 8 – 9

Security Field Day 12 – October 16 – 17

Cloud Field Day 21 – October 23 – 24

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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We have talked at length this year about Intel’s efforts to turn the ship and add more profitability to the ledger. One of the crown jewels in that portfolio is the foundry business. It has been the recipient of a large amount of government funding through the CHIPS Act. But it is also playing catch up with TSMC and others. New broke yesterday that Intel has announced that the foundry business will be spun off into separate subsidiary entity. The new unit will have it’s own board and be free to seek outside funding, perhaps even going public at some point. Intel stock jumped 8% in after hours trading on the news. This follows a long string of changes for the company during Pat Gelsinger’s tenure.

0:55 – OpenAI and o1

A new AI model from OpenAI, code-named “Strawberry” that can perform human-like reasoning tasks, could give it a temporary edge in a crowded field. But should humanity be happy? The o1 model series is designed to spend more time computing the answer before responding to user queries, though it can’t browse the web or analyze files yet. OpenAI, which is expected to announce a $6.5 billion round of funding any day, said the o1 series works best in math and coding.

Read More: OpenAI’s New Strawberry Model Can Think Like A Human

3:22 – Fortinet Suffers Data Breach (Again)

Fortinet is back in the news for yet another data breach. This time, attackers were able to nab about 440 GB of data from a misconfigured Azure Sharepoint server. The culprit, calling themselves “Forti – (B-word)” uploaded the data to Amazon and shared the credentials to an S3 bucket for verification. The attacker tried to extort money from the security firm but was rebuffed so they moved to next step. Fortinet has not confirmed the nature of the stolen files but has notified affected customers.

Read More: Fortinet confirms data breach after hacker claims to steal 440GB of files

6:18 – Salesforce, NVIDIA get together to develop AI-powered avatars.

The Jensen Huang world tour continues. This week, the leather jacketed AI guru had Marc Benioff open for him during Dreamforce 2024 where it was announced that Salesforce is the latest company to cozy up to the AI giant. The outcomes of all this new hardware? Autonomous agents and interactive avatars. The move is part of the larger AgentForce announcement from last week that has SalesForce gearing up to take on Microsoft.

Read More: Salesforce, NVIDIA Forge AI Alliance Over Autonomous Agents, Avatars

9:35 – Mastercard Acquires RecordedFuture

When you’re MasterCard, you have unlimited credit. So why not go shopping? In this case, the credit card giant is paying $2.65 billion for threat intelligence firm RecordedFuture. The two companies already have a robust partnership with RecordedFuture helping prevent credit card fraud. The current plan is to integrate fraud prevention and identity services together to provide more holistic threat intelligence, both for MasterCard customers as well as others in need of cybersecurity help.

Read More: Mastercard splurges $2.65B on another big cyber purchase – Recorded Future

12:17 – HPE Pursues $4 Billion in Damages

The saga of HPE and Autonomy isn’t quite finished yet. After a successful trial aagainst former CFO Sushovan Hussain back in Janaury, HPE is now seeking $4 billion in damages from Mike Lynch. You may pause at that statement because Lynch and five others were killed when their yacht sank in a freak storm. CEO Antonio Neri says that HPE has a fiduciary responsiblity to get that money back from the estate of Lynch. They are also seeking repayment of legal fees in the neighborhood of $50 million.

Read More: HPE CEO: ‘Best interest of shareholders’ to pursue $4B damages from Lynch estate

14:36 – Kubecost Acquired by IBM

IBM wants to keep a close eye on the bottom line for their customers, so they’re picking up Kubecost to make it happen. The startup helps people monitor their cloud spending by controlling and optimzing container usage. It helps avoid overprovisioning and also has API access to billing which means customers get up-to-the-minute pricing for their deployments. The acquisition is specifically targeting FinOps teams. With more on this story let’s go to our cloud expert Steven Dickens.

Read More: IBM Acquires Kubecost to Broaden Hybrid Cloud Cost Management Capabilities

18:56 – Intel Foundry Business To Become Subsidiary

We have talked at length this year about Intel’s efforts to turn the ship and add more profitability to the ledger. One of the crown jewels in that portfolio is the foundry business. It has been the recipient of a large amount of government funding through the CHIPS Act. But it is also playing catch up with TSMC and others. New broke yesterday that Intel has announced that the foundry business will be spun off into separate subsidiary entity. The new unit will have it’s own board and be free to seek outside funding, perhaps even going public at some point. Intel stock jumped 8% in after hours trading on the news. This follows a long string of changes for the company during Pat Gelsinger’s tenure.

Read More: Intel stock jumps on plan to turn foundry business into subsidiary and allow for outside funding

28:59 – The Weeks Ahead

Edge Field Day 3 – September 18 – 19

Networking Field Day Exclusive with Nokia – September 24

AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1 – October 2 – 3

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

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AT&T has decided enough is enough. They have filed a lawsuit over the tactics they claim are putting first responders and critical government services at risk. AT&T is claiming breach of contract because of the new support policy enacted by Broadcom after the VMware acquisition. The key point comes in an amendment in their support agreement that says that AT&T can renew their current support contracts for up to two more years provided they do so before the expiration of their current contract. They are exercising that option now but VMware by Broadcom is not honoring the renewal. AT&T stated they don’t have an issue with the business model change, just that it affects them right now and is making them pay more.

1:05 – Juniper Enhanced Data Center Networking with AI

Juniper announced some new enhancements to their leading data center networking platforms today. And it’s all about the AI! Some of the new features include service level awareness for AIOps as well as Impact analysis, which builds on the service awareness to help resolve trouble tickets faster and speed network recovery. This is all thanks in part to the massive investments that Juniper has made in AI with Marvis and other technologies for years.

Read More: Juniper Revolutionizes Data Center Assurance with Industry’s Only AI-Native Cloud Services and Intent-Based Networking

4:01 – AWS and Oracle Team Up

Oracle and AWS today announced the launch of Oracle Database@AWS, a new offering that allows customers to access Oracle Autonomous Database on dedicated infrastructure and Oracle Exadata Database Service within AWS.

Read More: Oracle and Amazon Web Services Announce Strategic Partnership

8:36 – Feds Force Focus on Fixing Flaws in BGP

The White House is ready to secure BGP. Last week the US Federal government released a statement about how the lack of security with BGP could potentially interfere with critical communications traffic. The protocol is famously insecure, with no inherent mechanism to validate source authority. This has led to some pretty famous blunders, such as Pakistan hijacking the entire Internet in 2008 or the numerous times China has redirected traffic through their servers due to misconfigurations. The Whitehouse appears to be backing stronger protections suggested by the Department of Justice and FCC over the past couple of years.

Read More: White House thinks it’s time to fix the insecure glue of the internet: Yup, BGP

12:40 – Broadcom Earnings Show Issues with Chips

Broadcom posted their Q3 revenue numbers and it was impressive. They earned $13.07 billion, which was buoyed by their semiconductor division with $7.25 billion. However, the big numbers contain a telling story. The AI-related chipset business made $3.1 billion but Hock Tan said that the numbers for the non-AI chips have “bottomed out”. The CEO expected an increase in that area of the market as more AI-focused features drive demand for the non-AI versions but investors caused the stock price to dip just a touch in after hours trading.

Read More: VMware revenue bounces for Broadcom, chips were a little undercooked

19:09 – Airvine Debuts Concrete-Proof Ethernet

Tech Field Day presenter Airvine has debuted a new technology designed to get around concrete walls. Or, more appropriately, go right through them. WaveCore is the name of the new product, which was developed as an outgrowth of their existing WaveTunnel solution. Dave Sumi of Airvine said that, while WaveTunnel was successful with interior walls there was a need to go through some very thick exterior walls as well. WaveCore functions as a point-to-point Ethernet bridge capable of speeds of up to 3 Gbps through a wall 18-inches thick. It uses a 6 GHz radio to do the heavy lifting.

Read More: Foot-thick wall workaround: Gigabit network links beamed through solid concrete

23:20 – Broadcom Sued by AT&T

AT&T has decided enough is enough. They have filed a lawsuit over the tactics they claim are putting first responders and critical government services at risk. AT&T is claiming breach of contract because of the new support policy enacted by Broadcom after the VMware acquisition. The key point comes in an amendment in their support agreement that says that AT&T can renew their current support contracts for up to two more years provided they do so before the expiration of their current contract. They are exercising that option now but VMware by Broadcom is not honoring the renewal. AT&T stated they don’t have an issue with the business model change, just that it affects them right now and is making them pay more.

Read More: AT&T Sues Broadcom Over VMware Contracts ‘Bullying’

34:17 – The Weeks Ahead

AI Field Day 5 – September 11 – 12

Edge Field Day 3 – September 18 – 19

Networking Field Day Exclusive with Nokia – September 24

AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1 – October 2 – 3

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

View Details

This year, at the smallest VMware conference in many years, Broadcom made some important announcements. As we’ve previously discussed, VMware Cloud Foundation 9 was detailed, along with Tanzu Platform 10, an enhanced Edge Orchestrator platform, VeloCloud Software-Defined Edge, and more. Although we miss the community coming together at VMworld every year, this smaller VMware Explore conference is very much in line with the direction taken by Broadcom since their acquisition of the company. This and more on The Rundown.

1:40 – AnandTech Shuts its Doors

After 27 years setting the standard for online tech journalism, AnandTech has published its last article. The popular tech news site, which was revered by industry insiders and tech enthusiasts, was known for impartiality, depth, and never sensationalizing the news. Although some were worried when founder and namesake Anand Lal Shimpi left for Apple, the site just continued to deliver excellent news coverage for decades. But it appears that the current owner, Future LLC (no relation to Gestalt IT parent Futurum) will cease publishing new articles on the site, thankfully keeping existing articles and forums online. The company also owns Tom’s Hardware, which will continue.

Read More: End of the Road: An AnandTech Farewell

3:02 – Rumors Fly that Intel is Changing Course

The rumor mill is going wild that Intel’s financial troubles are about to knock the chipmaker off of Pat Gelsinger’s intended course. We’ve heard that next-generation chip fabrication isn’t going well, leading to an executive’s departure. Others say Intel is looking to spin off the fab business altogether, or perhaps sell the Altera FPGA business. All of this would be a significant departure from the plans set in motion by Pat Gelsinger.

Read More: Exclusive: Intel CEO to pitch board on plans to shed assets, cut costs, source says

6:43 – Cloud providers consuming all the GPUs for AI

While Dell, like other server vendors has experienced a huge growth in dedicated AI server sales there is a scarcity of Nvidia GPUs that is making delivering these servers hard. NVIDIA GPUs are being gobbled up by hyperscalers before they reach Dell and other OEMs. It may still be some time before we see the racks full of Dell PowerEdge XE9680L servers with Blackwell GPUs that Michael Dell mentioned at Dell Technologies world.

Read More: Dell’s AI Server Business Now Bigger than VMware Used to Be

9:54 – Hammerspace Pulls Out a Server

Hammerspace produces a respected data virtualization platform, enabling applications like AI training to access any data anywhere. One of the strengths of Hammerspace is that it is pure software, and can run just about anywhere. But now the company is announcing a partnership with reseller Arrow to ship a storage virtualization appliance based on Dell hardware.

Read More: Hammerspace Expands Global Data Platform with New Appliances

12:25 – AMD Is Ready to Take On NVIDIA

The latest MLCommons results just came out, and they sure make AMD look great! We have long speculated that AMD’s Instinct series is competitive with Nvidia’s best AI processing GPUs, and now there’s data that says exactly that. But Nvidia still has an incredible market share lead over the competition.

Read More: The First AI Benchmarks Pitting AMD Against NVIDIA

15:13 – California Readies an AI Kill Switch

The state of California is awfully worried about AI! The state legislature has overwhelmingly passed a bill requiring a so-called kill switch to all AI systems in case they get out of hand. Now it’s on to Governor Gavin Newsom, who is under pressure to veto the bill. But even if he does, there appears to be support in the state legislature to override his veto and make it law.

Read More: California legislature passes controversial “kill switch” AI safety bill

18:05 – A Smaller VMware Explore Still Delivers News

This year, at the smallest VMware conference in many years, Broadcom made some important announcements. As we’ve previously discussed, VMware Cloud Foundation 9 was detailed, along with Tanzu Platform 10, an enhanced Edge Orchestrator platform, VeloCloud Software-Defined Edge, and more. Although we miss the community coming together at VMworld every year, this smaller VMware Explore conference is very much in line with the direction taken by Broadcom since their acquisition of the company.

Read More: What’s Happened at VMware Explore 2024 Las Vegas?

28:02 – The Weeks Ahead

AI Field Day 5 – September 11 – 12

Edge Field Day 3 – September 18 – 19

Networking Field Day Exclusive with Nokia – September 24

AI Data Infrastructure Field Day 1 – October 2 – 3

Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

View Details

This week kicked off the annual Hot Chips conference and AI has once again dominated the conversation. There were a lot of stories to talk about, from wafer scale chips to silicon photonics, Cerebras’ giant leap into AI Inferencing, Microsoft Azure’s MAIA 100 AI Accelerator, IBM’s On-Chip DPU, Broadcom’s AI Compute ASIC, Intel’s Guadi 3, and more. Let’s dive in on this episode of The Rundown.

0:54 – Kioxa Files for IPO

It’s IPO time for Kioxia! The storage giant has filed paperwork with the Tokyo Stock Exchange to go public in October. Kioxia is valued at 1 trillion yen, or approximately $10.3 billion. Kioxia has been planning to go public for several years but thanks to COVID and a momentary slowdown in the NAND flash market it has taken some time to recover. The primary investor in Kioxia is Bain Capital, with Toshiba having the remaining 40% stake.

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