To stay competitive and adapt amid a rapidly evolving digital and economic landscape, keeping up with emerging technologies is not a nice-to-have; it’s essential. Those that fail to do so risk falling behind their competitors, missing out on valuable opportunities for growth, efficiency gains, and innovation in today’s highly dynamic and interconnected business environment.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing industries and driving transformative changes across various sectors. But, as models and data continue to grow, massive computer power is required to train and deploy AI systems.

 

Leveraging AI with HPE Greenlake

HPE GreenLake offers supercomputing capabilities that are equipped to handle the constantly growing demands of AI workloads at scale. And with that, you can unleash the full potential of your AI initiatives, ensure real-time processing of complex data sets, and foster innovation.

Here are five ways HPE GreenLake can help you leverage AI to power growth and maintain your competitive advantage:

1.       Improved productivity: With the ability to power AI models trained on large amounts of textual data, HPE GreenLake can help you leverage AI at a deeper level, using profoundly more data, to tackle emerging AI challenges more effectively, automate processes, streamline operations, and better allocate resources for increased operational efficiencies and productivity.

2.       Data-driven insights: HPE GreenLake delivers a trusted, enterprise-grade AI/ML and analytics cloud-like experience that allows you to mine continuous streams of value from data, uncover trends, identify patterns, and make critical correlations across large-scale data sets. These data-based insights empower you to make more strategic and profitable business decisions to optimize processes, improve customer experiences, and stay ahead of the competition in today’s data-centric business landscape.

 

3.       Quicker time-to-innovation: By providing on-demand access to powerful compute resources in a scalable infrastructure, HPE GreenLake reduces the time required for AI model development, so you can experiment with new ideas, iterate quickly, and adapt to changing market demands. This, in turn, empowers you to bring innovative products, services, and experiences to market faster, while also staying agile and responsive to customer needs.

 

4.       Scalability and flexibility: HPE GreenLake makes it easy for you to scale your AI capabilities as needed to accommodate fluctuating demands and next-generation architecture. Plus, using continuous monitoring, you can right-size capacity and even enable capacity-bursting on-site, on demand.

 

5.       Sustainable AI: Large AI models require massive computing power and energy to train. With its supercomputing capabilities, HPE GreenLake enables you to train, tune and deploy your AI models using renewable energy. Beyond cost efficiencies, a commitment to sustainable AI practices will boost your brand image and may even help you attract and retain top talent.

 

Thriving in Today’s Digital Landscape

As AI continues to take the world by storm, the speed and ease with which you are able to operationalize AI models that can harness massive amounts of data can mean the difference between staying ahead of the competition and falling behind in today’s fast-paced digital landscape. By delivering a trusted, enterprise-grade AI/ML and analytics cloud-like experience, HPE GreenLake can help you rapidly integrate and leverage AI technologies in your business processes—so you can maintain a competitive edge and thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape of today.

Contact Zunesis for more information on how to unlock the power of AI with HPE GreenLake.

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the world of storage and data management at an unprecedented pace. This emerging technology is not only streamlining the way organizations store, process, and manage enormous volumes of data, but it’s also significantly improving the insights gleaned from this information. Offering advanced algorithms and machine learning capabilities, AI is powering the future of storage and data management—and is expected to transform the way businesses handle and use their data.

 

Here are six ways AI is changing the game:

 

1. Improved data analysis: By identifying intricate patterns and trends in large datasets, AI improves the accuracy and speed of data analysis, leading to quicker and more precise insights. With this higher caliber of insights, you can make quick, well-informed decisions that align with your business goals and support profitability and growth.
2. Predictive maintenance: With the ability to analyze historical data and real-time usage patterns, AI algorithms can be used to predict when equipment failures are likely to occur and proactively flag them to the right people, mitigating the risk of expensive downtime and devastating data loss.
3. Intelligent data storage: AI can analyze data usage patterns and automatically move less frequently accessed data to more cost-effective storage tiers. It also makes it easy for you to quickly locate specific data by indexing and tagging information for easy search and retrieval. With critical data that’s readily available and accessible when you need it, AI technology powers more efficient operations, better resource allocation, and more informed decisions.
4. Better data security: With the ability to identify potential threats and anomalies in data usage patterns, AI technology allows you to take immediate action to prevent major security breaches. Additionally, using AI-driven encryption methods, you can ensure your sensitive data is protected both at rest and in transit, making it infinitely more difficult for hackers to access or steal important information.
5. Automated routine tasks: With the ability to automate routine data management tasks, AI can streamline workflows, minimize processing time, reduce human error, and enhance the overall efficiency of data management processes, ultimately leading to cost savings and increased productivity.
6. Enhanced disaster recovery: AI not only automates backup and recovery processes, but it can also identify potential risks and vulnerabilities and deliver real-time alerts and notifications in the event of an outage or data loss. With a higher degree of control and reliability in your disaster recovery efforts, your business can recover from disasters more quickly to reduce the impact of unexpected events, improve business continuity, and ensure critical operations can be resumed quickly.

Harnessing the Potential of AI-Driven Storage

As organizations generate and store ever-increasing amounts of data, AI will continue to play a crucial role in helping businesses manage and utilize that data to drive innovation, optimize operations, and make data-driven decisions that fuel growth.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), with solutions like HPE InfoSight, is leading the charge in harnessing the potential of AI-driven storage and data management technologies. At Zunesis, we are committed to helping you capitalize on HPE’s AI-powered solutions to ensure a seamless, optimized, and forward-thinking data management strategy tailored to your specific needs and objectives.

For more information about how to transform your storage and data management processes with HPE powered by AI, contact us here.

For those of you who think that on January 1, 202 at 12:00 AM the world is going to go back to the way it was before COVID reared its ugly head, I have bad news for you; we’re still going to be in this fight. I wish it wasn’t true. I really do! However, contrary to the Peter Pan story, there is no Neverland; only the reality of what we face today.

Right now, in late November, we’ve regressed to nearly the same lifestyle we had when the country closed down in March. The worst part is that we already know what the casualties will be if it continues. I apologize for sounding like ‘Dave, The Downer,’ but not being realistic about what the immediate future holds for us would be incredibly naïve and unintelligent.

 

How To Handle the Future

How do we handle what the near future will provide us? The first and most obvious goal is to rely upon your friends and family for support. We can’t go at it alone. There’s strength in numbers. One finds strength in functioning organizations as well.

There’s also strength in ‘think tanks.’ Heck, there’s been plenty of time to think about everything to the point of exhaustion. However, if one uses his/her time wisely and merges his/her ideas with their respective teams, more options will be available. These can be used to take on the next initiative or to overcome the next hurdle. Now, that’s the benefit of having time alone to think and then spend more time collaborating with your teammates.

 

New Scenarios

However, there’s also a danger of having time alone to think. Since I work with an IT Solutions provider, I will focus on those scenarios that may be on your mind. Those brilliant (cough, cough) folks who dreamt up the scheme about sending money overseas to that nice person (they have to provide their bank account information first) so they can store it in an official bank account are cooking up all kinds of different scenarios.

Some of these evil actions will include even more advanced ways of attacking an organizations’ infrastructure. We’ve already had two clients succumb to this and the ‘reconciliation’ costs are astounding. If you know about ransomware, you know what I am talking about. There’s a 50/50 chance of not even getting back company information afterwards too. Last week, an article in Forbes mentioned British Airways, LifeLabs, and Marriot International all experienced data breaches.

Listed below are a few topics that are predicted to be trending in IT budgets in the year to come.

 

Travel Budgets Used for IT projects

The airlines are very close to their ‘rock bottom,’ and many will likely disappear in COVID’s version of the Bermuda triangle. Forbes also mentioned the company’s budgets for 2021….

“will shift from travel to IT technology spend. This trend will likely continue even after there is a vaccine because everyone is realizing that doing business via the internet and platforms like Zoom is fine. Travel budgets can now be redeployed to “shore up” projects that need a little extra funding — such as cybersecurity and enabling high availability at the edge.”

For many IT implementations, travel is not needed. Zunesis has been hugely successful with doing deployments remotely.  The only difficult part of these deployments is the ‘racking and stacking’ of these machines. Well, there are certified IT movers and many customers are even willing to ‘rack and stack’ the machines themselves in order to maintain social distancing.

 

Ethical AI

Based on consumer privacy issues over the last five to ten years, consumers are finally putting their foot down. Forrester believes the following…

“Over the next few years, firms will deliberately choose to do business with partners that commit to data ethics and adopt data handling practices that reflect their own values and their customers’ values.”

As we all know, there’s been a lot of ‘discussion’ surrounding this topic lately. I am looking forward to witnessing how this trend will evolve. Gartner also mentions this but instead of calling it ‘Ethical AI,’ they call it ‘Privacy-enhancing computation.’

 

Edge Computing

This is a slam dunk. We’ve even seen this rise in technology well before Covid. If there’s a way to minimize data disruption, Edge Computing is definitely at the frontier of expanding technology. Gartner also feels that ‘Distributed Cloud’ can…

“help organizations provide their services physically closer, latency is reduced, as are the costs of data, helping to ensure compliance with laws that dictate data must remain in a specific geographical region. Gartner notes that distributed cloud is the future of cloud technology generally.”

 

Total Experience

Via Forbes, Peter High of the CIO Network defines Total Experience as…

“Total experience combines customer experience, user experience, employee experience, and ultimately multi-experience to impact and transform business outcomes. The overlap in these experiences can be improved with technology, and it enables companies to take advantage of disruptive aspects of the current pandemic such as distributed customers, remote work, virtual and mobile.”

It’s about time this was on the forefront. A seamless transaction? What a concept and I am glad to see this as one of the most important IT trends for 2021. Our way of working changed overnight it seemed. Adjusting to the ‘new normal’ with regards to tangible and intangible products has been challenging; especially in education.

 

Always Changing

These are just some of the changes to expect in the Infrastructure Technology world. There are a lot of dynamic strategies taking place. We will be covering these as we close out 2020 and come out swinging in 2021. We’ll come out on the other side of this as more immune and adaptable than ever before. So, while it may not go back to normal at the stroke of midnight on January 1^st, 2021, we’re on our way to the Promised Land!

 

 

Mental Health Awareness

Since 1949, the United States has recognized Mental Health Awareness Month in May. Over the last few months, I’m sure many of us have been concerned about our mental health just as much as our physical health. I can say personally that I have been feeling a bit anxious in this new world.

Depression and anxiety disorders left untreated can affect people’s education and livelihood.  Together they’re estimated to cost the global economy $1 trillion each year in lost productivity. The CDC reports that 50% of us will experience some type of mental illness at some point in our lives.

A large percentage of IT workers already feel stressed on a regular basis. Now, IT professionals are under a new sense of pressure. They have had to move work forces to remote settings and handle an increase in tech support due to the is move. On top of that, there is an increase in security risks. Like the rest of America, they are under the new stresses that have come with this new normal.

 

Tech Therapy

The coronavirus is driving a mental health crisis for many, but tech can help tackle it. One technology gaining in availability is telehealth services. Not only used to check physical symptoms with your doctor, one can contact mental health professionals via phone, video conference or chat. Online platforms like TalkSpace and BetterHelp help those with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other conditions remotely.

This is also beneficial for rural America. Many must travel hundreds of miles to get to a nearby hospital or clinic. Telehealth enables help for this segment of America. Many vets live in more rural areas and must travel an average 25 to 50 miles for healthcare.  The US Department of Veterans Affairs has nearly 20,000 telehealth visits daily, an 800% increase since before the pandemic.

 

AI Help

There are AI based applications available that serve as chat therapists.

Woebot is one example. It is an AI-based chatbot that provides cognitive behavioral therapy. It monitors daily, one-on-one interactions with users using natural language processing. Then, it delivers a personalized version of therapy to the user.

The University of Colorado recently used machine learning AI to develop changes in speech. Subtle differences in speech can suggest a mental health decline. Shifts in tone or pace can indicate mania or schizophrenia. Memory loss can also be a symptom of cognitive and/or mental health problems.

 

Game Time

Even though we may be trying to limit screen time, video games can aid in elevating someone’s mood. They allow users to escape and immerse themselves into another world. Some video games main purpose is treating a mental health condition.

One example is Endeavor by Akili. This helps children who have ADHD. It brings together world-class neuroscience with the latest technology and video game entertainment. It’s a digital medicine not delivered through a pill or syringe but through a video game experience.

Virtual Reality or VR is another tool. Explore Deep is a meditative virtual reality controlled by breathing. It serves as an intervention for those with anxiety. Players navigate through a serene and poetic underwater world. Movement is controlled by slow, deep breathing. It uses a self-explorative, visually stunning underwater seascape and biofeedback mechanics.

 

Wearable Technology

Wearable technology helps to monitor sleep, physical activity and more. It is also a key tool to detect possible disorders in the first phase. The applications collect information and evaluate the activity of the user through biomarkers.

One device, TouchPoint is a neuroscientific wearable that is placed on each wrist in the morning or at night to induce the boy to calm before going to sleep. It’s uses include before, during or after a stressful situation. It reduces 70% of someone’s stress in thirty seconds.

Another example is Spire.  It is a wearable device that works with a smartphone application that tracks one’s breathing. This helps to reduce stress.  The device measures your breath via the expansion and contraction of your torso. Then, it analyzes and categorizes your breathing as calm, tense, or focused. It sends an alert to you if you need to reset your breath.

 

 

What Can you Do?

These are strange times that we are all in right now. What can you do to help your mental state? First, create reasonable expectations for yourself, your managers and your coworkers.

Understand that your productivity won’t necessarily be the same. Don’t beat yourself up and remember to be kind to yourself and others.  Maintain social work connections by doing things like check-in phone calls or virtual happy hours.

Try some stress-reducing techniques such as yoga, meditation or other mindfulness practices. Start a new hobby or learn a new skill that may fulfill your life in new ways. Make sure you take breaks during the day. Staring at a screen for eight plus hours is not a recommended practice.  Make sure to take regular breaks to stretch, walk around the block or get a healthy snack.

As a company, communication is key. Businesses should share resources on mental health assistance that is available for employees. At the same time, don’t overwhelm employees with information. Provide regular concise communication and address concerns weighing on employees.

 

How Can Zunesis Help?

Zunesis wants to help ease some of the stress felt by IT Professionals at this time. We have a wide variety of assessments to look over your current infrastructure. We also offer a Customer Connect program to allow for a free look into an IT issue at your company.

 

 

AI and Big Data Analytics: Undercover Weapons

Technology is an important element of all of our lives. It is taking center stage right now in the fight against coronavirus. AI and Big Data Analytics are leading the way in forecasting, diagnosing and more. Here are examples of technology in action.

 

AI to identify, track and forecast outbreaks

The World Health Organization notified the public of a flu-like outbreak in China on January 9.  BlueDot, a Canadian health monitoring company, had already warned its clients of the outbreak on December 31. The company uses an AI (Artificial Intelligence)-driven algorithm that scraps foreign-language news reports, forums and blogs, and announcements from public health officials.  This enables the company to give its customers an early warning of possible outbreaks of Coronavirus in areas like Wuhan.  By analyzing global airline ticketing data, BlueDot correctly predicted that the virus would go from Wuhan to Bangkok, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo in the days following its initial outbreak by monitoring where the infected residents are headed next.

AI to help diagnose the virus

Artificial intelligence company Infervision launched a coronavirus AI solution that helps front-line healthcare workers detect and monitor the disease efficiently. Imaging departments in healthcare facilities are seeing increased workloads created by the virus. This solution improves CT diagnosis speed. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba also built an AI-powered diagnosis system they claim is 96% accurate at diagnosing the virus in seconds.

 

AI to process healthcare claims

It’s not only the clinical operations of healthcare systems that are being taxed but also the business and administrative divisions as they deal with the surge of patients. A blockchain platform offered by Ant Financial helps speed up claims processing and reduces the amount of face-to-face interaction between patients and hospital staff.

 

Drones to deliver medical supplies

One of the safest and fastest ways to get medical supplies where they need to go during a disease outbreak is with drone delivery. Terra Drone is using its unmanned aerial vehicles to transport medical samples and quarantine material with minimal risk between Xinchang County’s disease control centre and the People’s Hospital. Drones uses included patrolling public spaces, track non-compliance to quarantine mandates, and for thermal imaging.

Artificial intelligence is not going to stop the new Coronavirus or replace the role of expert epidemiologists. But speed matters during an outbreak. As the Coronavirus is circulating, there’s community spread. We want to spot those outbreaks quickly and intervene to keep them small. AI surveillance is becoming a useful tool in efforts to monitor and respond to the global outbreak.

Zunesis is here to help with technology needs for our healthcare providers, first response teams and more.

HPE Worldwide Ambassador Summit

Over the last several years, I have been lucky enough to be invited to attend the Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Worldwide Ambassador Summit. This is an invitation-only event where invitees learn about the strategy, products and programs HPE is currently working towards. We are asked to provide feedback on what is working, what is not working and how the programs are impacting the channel. There were several takeaways from the event which are summarized below.

 

Everything As a Service

Everything as a Service. All the executive sessions had the same overall message, HPE is the Edge-to-Cloud Platform-as-a-Service company. They are moving to an Everything as-a-Service model, from the Aruba Intelligent Edge to the HPE Hybrid Cloud. The target is to be open, cloud-native, intelligent, autonomous and secure at every level.

 

One of the key components to Everything as a Service is Greenlake. Greenlake is a program that brings the cloud experience on-premise. It is a true consumption model that provides Cloud like agility and economics, while keeping control on-premise. The customer achieves many cloud-like benefits. This includes rapid deployment, scalability, and consumption-based economics while maintaining control.

The catalog offers pre-designed, end-to-end solutions along with fully customizable options. Flex Capacity allows you to design and customize your own infrastructure solutions. One can select from a broad range of HPE and partner technologies and services.

 

Artificial Intelligence

Similar to most industry news, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) was a major topic. HPE is incorporating AI into every technology, from the edge to compute to storage and networking. AI in the infrastructure is essential in the hybrid cloud world to simplify and reduce the complexity in managing infrastructure and ensure optimal performance and efficient resource use. HPE InfoSight is one of those AI solutions that predicts and prevents problems across the infrastructure stack. It ensures optimal performance and efficient resource use.

 

Clearpass Device Insight

With the introduction of cloud applications and software, plus the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, networks have become extremely important to business and have become more complex. Aruba ClearPass Device Insight provides visibility across the network and provides the context of all connected devices. With Device Insight, attributes such as device type, vendor, hardware version and behavior and accessed resources are available. This allows the more granular information when creating access policies, reducing security risks and meeting key compliance requirements.

 

Composability

The last topic we spent a lot of time discussing was Composability. HPE introduced the concept with the introduction of the Synergy platform. They didn’t stop there. Today they also have the Composable Rack and Composable Fabric.

The Composable Rack can Automate IT operations and deliver applications and services faster. It uses standard HPE Rack mount servers, current management tools, along with the Composable Fabric. This solution enables rapid deployment of your choice of HPE SimpliVity, VMware virtual machines, Red Hat OpenShift containers, or bare metal workloads for new cloud-native workloads. HPE Composable Fabric provides flat, wire-once, and top-of-rack 25G server connectivity. It features programmatic control, easy rack-to-rack scaling, and broad compatibility with existing data center networks.

This fabric not only enables composable element connectivity but also directly affects the integrity and performance of the underlying infrastructure and applications. Traditional, enterprise networks focus on north/south workload traffic between clients and servers. They are not designed to handle the distributed and varied nature of modern scale-out applications that require machine-to-machine communication over the network.

Our solution architects at Zunesis are knowledgeable in all of these areas. Reach out to Zunesis today to find out more about these focus areas.

Heart Disease and Technology

What if heart conditions could be monitored from home?

What if there were predictive analytics to predict someone’s risk of heart disease?

We are getting closer and closer to this being a reality.  February is American Hearth Month. Heart disease is the leading killer in the world. It is responsible for over 17 millions deaths each year. This could rise to 23 million by 2030.

The medical costs are astronomical. The American Heart Association states the the annual cost of this disease is over $500 billion in the United States alone.

This topic is close to my heart. Many members of my family as well as friends have suffered from heart complications and strokes.  If these evolving technologies were available back then, it would have made a major difference.

More and more technologies are approved by the FDA every day. From wearable technology to digital stethoscopes, technology is being developed to assist humans with heart conditions. I am going to highlight just a few of the products that are gaining traction in the healthcare industry. The cardiovascular disease technology market is expected to exceed $40 billion by 2030.

 

Digital Stethoscope

Eko‘s digital stethoscope uses algorithms to assist with the treatment and prevention of heart disease. Recently, a suite of algorithms were approved by the FDA. The algorithms can alert technicians of the presence of heart murmurs and atrial fibrillation (AFib) during a physical exam. This is essentially converting the classic stethoscope into an early detection tool.

Eko’s AI is able to identify the heart murmurs with 87% sensitivity and 87% specificity. The average traditional stethoscope only has a sensitivity of 43% and specificity of 69% when detecting valvular heart disease. When detecting AFib, AI can detect 99% sensitivity and 97% specificity when analyzing the one-lead ECG tracing. The algorithms reports fast or slow heart rates which is typically indicative of heart disease.

A simple part of your annual exam that has been the front line tool for over two centuries could be the game changer when detecting life threatening conditions. Treating these conditions early could make all the difference.

Technology developed using artificial intelligence (AI) could identify people at high risk of a fatal heart attack at least 5 years before it strikes. This is according to new research funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

 

Remote Management of Heart Disease

Some of the biggest trends around cardiovascular disease revolve around remote patient monitoring. Remote Patient monitoring is where consultations can be consulted over video calls. Patient reads and information are accessible through a digital platform. The patient uses wearables such as skin patches, accessories and smart clothing to monitor the patient’s condition.

Beyond disease management, remote patient monitoring can help to see if patients are adhering to their current regiments. It is can also be vital for clinical trial monitoring and pre/post op monitoring. The ability to predict or prevent future cardiac events may occur based on the data being relayed. At home innovations are used to monitor hypertension, heart failure and arrhythmias.

In-body microcomputers have been developed where a pea-sized V-LAP sensor sits withing the heart. The sensor provides real time data to health professionals. When pressure in the heart elevates, it sends alerts the doctors in time.  It charges remotely via an external chest strap that is fitted by the patient. It can collect and transmit data to doctors at anytime.

Do you own an Apple Watch? The optical sensor can detect atrial fibrillation in the background. The market for these items will continue to grow. We live in a world where data is everywhere.

Being able to access that data from the comfort of your home, can alleviate the stress of some patients. In addition, it will help alleviate medical costs by reducing visits to the hospital.

 

Virtual and Augmented Reality

Virtual and Augmented Reality is the new reality for training medical staff. A training in a VR headset can put the operators in a virtual cath lab with a 360 degree view of the room and equipment. 3-D renderings of diseases vessel segments are viewable as well.

NovaRad has FDA clearance for the first surgical AR system. The surgeon wears an AR headset. He or she can superimpose and co-register a CT or MRI dataset onto a patient on the OR table. They can virtually slice through a patient to pre-plan a procedure and mark the skin for incisions.

Philips Healthcare is developing a cath lab AR system which allows interventional radiologists or cardiologists to use hand movements or voice commands without breaking a sterile field. They will be able to call up an ultrasound in their AR visor. Review CT imaging datasets that they can slice in mid-air or view 3-D holograms of the anatomy.  Hand movements rotate or slice the images .

 

 

The Future

These are just a few of the technologies out there that are helping improve the lives of cardiac patients. I can only imagine the developments that are to come.

Pets suffer from heart disease as well.  Colorado State University is already using cutting edge technology to assist with heart disease in dogs.

Some of these things I could only have imagined in Sci-fi films are now a reality. I only can hope that these developments will help save lives for years to come.

Zunesis already actively works with some medical institutions. My hope would be that some tools that we can provide them will take them to the next level in heart disease prevention.

 2020 – The Future

 

It’s almost the weekend. Almost Christmas. And, almost the year 2020! 2020…doesn’t that sound insane?!

 

When I was a kid, 2020 always sounded like a distant, unreachable year that would consist of flying cars and the people of earth living on settlements on distant planets.  Yet, here it is just a few days away.

 

Although we have seen considerable technological developments in the last 30-40 years, it is not quite the sci-fi landscape we thought it might be by now. That being said; there was a special journey, in the world of IT, that has led it to where it is today. Much like the special journey that has brought us to an event even closer than 2020….the premiere of the new Star Wars movie!

 

A Galaxy Far Far Away

 

The 9^th Star Wars film (or 11^th if you include spinoffs) and final installment in the “Skywalker Saga”, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker premieres tonight!  Given our close-proximity to this cinematic event as well as the year 2020 being just on the horizon, I decided to recap the saga and highlight technological milestones that occurred within each year that a Star Wars film was released. So, let’s take a look at what happened “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far way” as well as not so long ago right here on planet Earth!

 

Star Wars: Episode IV- A New Hope

Year: 1977

George Lucas creates groundbreaking first Star Wars film that redefined the space-opera as well as the modern blockbuster. It went on to become the highest grossing film of 1977 and ends up spawning a massive franchise (hence how we got here *wink*).

What happened in tech?

The first personal computers are made available to be sold to public consumers. The Apple II, Commodore PET 2001 and the TRS-80 computers are commonly referred to as the “1977 Trinity” of personal computers.

 

Star Wars: Episode V- The Empire Strikes Back

Year: 1980

The biggest movie at the time (Star Wars still reigning supreme from its release 3 years prior) now had to attempt to outdo itself with the biggest sequel of all time. And boy did it deliver! From the introduction of classic characters like Yoda and Lando Calrissian, lightsaber duels, a cliffhanger ending, and the infamous “No, I am your father” line…the second entry into the Star Wars story was bigger and better in almost every way and is still revered as the best in the series.

What happened in tech?

Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel and Xerox introduce the DIX standard for Ethernet

 

Star Wars: Episode VI- Return of the Jedi

Year: 1983

The original trilogy comes to a close with a third film that introduces new planets, new villains, character shifts and the revelation that Luke and Leia are actually twin siblings of the Skywalker lineage! Say whaaat?!

What happened in tech?

The migration of ARPANET to TCP/IP was officially completed. The new protocols were permanently activated, essentially “giving birth to the internet”.

 

Star Wars: Episode I- The Phantom Menace

Year: 1999

George Lucas returned to the director’s chair for the first time since the original Star Wars, 22 years prior. With the rise of CGI, he was able to flesh out some of his ideas that had previously been impossible and helm a new trilogy of prequels delving into the origins of Anakin Skywalker and other major characters. Highly anticipated, The Phantom Menace was the highest grossing film of 1999.

What happened in tech?

A high level of concern arose in 1999 with the fast approach of the year 2000 (or Y2K as we called it back then). The previously unforeseen realization that many systems and programs had been designed around the last two digits of the calendar year, thus making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. Organizations all over the world upgraded their computer systems in anticipation of the problem and very few actual issues occurred. Phew!

 

Star Wars: Episode II- Attack of the Clones

Year: 2002

The story gets taken a further 10 years down the road from its predecessor, with a new actor portraying Anakin and an even more elaborate look into the backstory of the Star Wars universe.

What happened in tech?

Funny enough, this entry is also notable from a technological standpoint as it was one of the first motion pictures shot completely on a high-definition digital 24-frame system, as well as being the last Star Wars film to be released on VHS in the United States. The end of an era!

 

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

Year: 2005

Speaking of the end of eras, the final entry in the prequel trilogy brought us the fall of Anakin Skywalker to the darkside of The Force. Arguably considered the best of the prequel trilogy. Revenge of the Sith was once again the highest grossing film the year of its release. Quite the track record!

What happened in tech?

Microsoft releases the Xbox 360 gaming console in North America. Storage, memory and computing power that at one time had seemed impossible was now available for home use on a personal gaming system!

 

Star Wars: Episode VII -The Force Awakens

Year: 2015

The epic saga returns picking up where the original trilogy left off. A new director and cast take the reins, while also bringing back series-staples Harrison Ford (Han Solo), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) and Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker)!

What happened in tech?

The Apple Watch is released. One of the first “smart watches” of its kind. It quickly became the fastest selling wearable device, selling 4.2 million units.

 

Star Wars: Episode VIII- The Last Jedi

Year: 2017

Mark Hamill reprises his legendary role as Luke Skywalker in a big way. Important story pieces get put into place to set up the final entry into the epic 9-part “Skywalker Saga”!

What happened in tech?

The “WannaCry Ransomware Attack” targets computers around the world.  It infected the Microsoft Windows operating system by encrypting data and demanding ransom payments in the form of Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The attack is stopped within a few days due to emergency patches released by Microsoft. The discovery of a kill switch prevented infected computers from spreading WannaCry any further.

 

Star Wars: Episode IX- The Rise of Skywalker

Year: 2019

Huge amounts of anticipation abound for the 9^th and final chapter. It will wrap up various storylines, resolve cliffhangers, and attempt to satisfy fan expectations! After 42 years, the Star Wars saga finally finishes its sweeping tale, today, December 19^th, 2019!

What happened in tech?

Oh man. Where to begin! As you can see from this timeline, we have come a long way since 1977! From cloud computing, intelligent storage, advancements in Artificial Intelligence, predictive analytics (the list goes on). The techy and fantastical world first laid out in the original Star Wars comes closer to reality every day. Now we can only sit back and see where it takes us from here. The future seems exciting for tech lovers and Star Wars fans both!

 

May the force be with us all.

 

Zunesis looks forward to working with you in the next decade and seeing where technology takes us next.

What is Linux?

 

 

Strictly speaking, Linux is the kernel, or core of Linux distributions.  I like to think of the Linux kernel like the base plate for Legos. It’s where all other pieces attach to.

 

 

A distribution, or “distro” for short, is a complete operating system including a kernel, packages, package managers, and everything else needed.  In other words, distros are pre-assembled building block sets depending on user preference and needs.  Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu are examples of some of the more popular distros.  There are too many others to list here, but here are some resources to give you an idea.

 

 

Resource One

Resource Two

 

 

Linux Use Cases

 

 

As a long time Linux user, I can understand why it didn’t take off as a general purpose operating system like MS Windows.  There are just too many choices, differences between those choices, and perceived lack of standardization.  There’s also the reputation of being difficult to use. Why then would anyone want to use Linux, instead of Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X for example?  Like the number of distros, the number of Linux use cases is also very extensive, so I’ll cover just a few popular ones.

 

 

 

 

IoT

 

 

Open source software is typically free, though some commercially backed distros such as RHEL do charge subscription fees.  Linux runs on many different types of hardware such as IoT devices, personal computers, networking equipment, load balancers, supercomputers, and just about anything it seems. It can run on very low end or less common hardware.  This makes it perfect for IoT devices, where processing power may be limited, and cost needs to be kept down.

 

 

 

“The Cloud”

 

 

It also powers very high end hardware, including much of what powers “the cloud.”  Servers powering the internet need a reliable operating system that can run continuously without downtime, while maintaining a high level of security.  There are far fewer circumstances in which Linux based OSes require a reboot.

 

 

Though I wouldn’t recommend it for most use cases, it is certainly possible for Linux devices to run continuously for YEARS without a reboot.  It is also much easier to avoid viruses and malware.  This is great for web servers, databases, load balancers, routers, switches, firewalls, storage servers, virtual machine hypervisors, and many other pieces of critical IT infrastructure.

 

 

Containers

 

 

The trend to “containerize” everything has taken the world by storm.  Though MS Windows containers are now an option, until recently Linux was your only option.  It is a much more mature platform for containers.  There is much better documentation and support for containers on Linux.  It is much lighter weight which allows for much denser deployments, as well as portability.

 

 

One example of a popular container OS is Alpine Linux .  ” It is built around musl libc and busybox. This makes it smaller and more resource efficient than traditional GNU/Linux distributions. A container requires no more than 8 MB and a minimal installation to disk requires around 130 MB of storage. Not only do you get a fully-fledged Linux environment but a large selection of packages from the repository.”

 

 

AI

 

 

AI, machine learning, and deep learning are also getting a lot of attention these days.  Linux offers a number of advantages in this space, including better integration with containers.  There are many examples and lots of documentation to help someone building an AI project on Ubuntu for example.

 

 

Want to train your model in the cloud, but deploy at the edge to a low powered IoT device and/or container?  You will likely have a much easier time, along with better and more predictable results on Linux.

 

 

If you are considering an IoT or AI project, and/or the infrastructure required to support it, Zunesis has the expertise. Schedule an assessment today, we’d love to help!