Coronavirus has presented a situation most geeks probably didn’t anticipate: what happens when even the disaster recovery sites and business continuity plans are rendered useless. You can fly resources to alternative locations. But how do you run a global business when flights are grounded and countries regulate who can come in? For the $190 billion IT services and BPO sector, Covid-19 poses the twin challenges of business continuity and business growth.

Publication: The Economic Times 

Predicting what will happen in the next few years may seem like an audacious, if not outrightly pointless, task! The pace of change is so rapid that I often wonder what my business will be like even six months from today. But I’m going to stick my neck out and predict the Marketing Trends of the early 20’s. Let me begin by quoting a man who has been a marketing guru for five decades, and whose text book is still used at business schools all over the world.

Publication: Financial Express 

Cloud computing and cloud storage have generated significant interest and curiosity around the world. Every company needs cloud services in cloud computing and storage to maintain their business operations. In the past, owing to regulatory mandates banks and financial institutions weren’t allowed to move customer data to cloud. However, they are increasingly moving non-customer data such as data from enterprise applications to cloud.

Publication: DataQuest

Another big technology conference has been cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak. Amazon on Saturday said it has cancelled re:Mars 2020, its annual conference that focuses on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and other futuristic technologies. The event was originally planned to be held between June 16 and June 19 in Las Vegas, US. “Thank you for your interest in re:MARS 2020. Our top priority is the well-being of our employees, customers, partners, and event attendees. We have been closely monitoring the situation with COVID-19, and after much consideration, we have made the decision to cancel re:MARS 2020. ”

Publication: Hindustan Times 

Gaming PC hardware manufacturer Nvidia is asking gamers to fight the coronavirus through their powerful gaming PCs. Nvidia is asking gamers everywhere to download the Folding@home application. This is a distributed computing project for disease research in collaboration with the PC Master Race gaming community. The announcement was made through social media. Gamers who download the app on their computer will allow the spare processing power on that computer to be used for the tasks and programs of the app.

Publication: The Live Mirror 

The upcoming 8-core laptop monster shows massive gains over both the older Ryzen 7 3780U and Intel’s yet-to-be-released Tiger Lake U lineup. Again the tipster @TUM_APISAK has found a leaked 3DMark Time Spy benchmark listing for the Ryzen 7 4800U. This new top-of-the-line Renoir APU manages to score 1045 points on the GPU test and a remarkable 6061 points on the CPU test.

Publication: Techno Sports 

Midrange server revenue declined 14.1 percent to $3.3 billion. High-end server systems grew 8.9 percent to $2.4 billion. HPE is the #1 server supplier with revenue shares of 16.3 percent. Dell Technologies has server revenue shares of 15.7 percent. HPE’s server revenues were down 3.4 percent. Dell Technologies server revenue declined 9.9 percent.

Publication: InofoTech Labs 

Google is updating the ‘Live View’ feature in Google Maps app in a big way. Although this has already been shown by the firm as a part of its major update and in its 2018 IO developer conference. However, it is only now that this feature has started rolling out in some parts of the world. As a part of an update, the Live View feature, which until now was buried under several options and tabs, is now more prominent.

Publication: Hindustan Times 

E ven though the draft Personal Data Protection Bill has been referred to a House Select Com- mittee, the Government of India has made its intention clear that data localization (one copy of all data must stay within the shores of India) requirements will stay. Data center parks in public-private partnership (PPP) announced by the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget speech is probably meant to ensure that businesses find this proposition economically viable. It will not be surprising if further incentives announced for locating data centers within designated data center parks, much in the same line as manufacturing SEZs or Software SEZs/STPs.

Publication: ITNext

A rare ‘PlayStation’ prototype developed by Nintendo and Sony during the 1990s, sold for $360,000 at an auction. The ‘PlayStation’ is believed to be the “only surviving example of 200 pre-production consoles that spawned from a once promising partnership between Sony and Nintendo,” according to the US-based Heritage Auctions, which sold the console.

Publication: The Economic Times – ET Panache

Microsoft on Friday announced that co- founder Bill Gates has left its board of directors to devote more time to philanthropy. The 64-year-old stopped being involved in day-to-day operations at the firm more than a decade ago, turning his attention to the foundation named after him and his wife, Melinda. Gates served as chairman of Microsoft’s board of directors until early in 2014 and has now stepped away entirely, according to the Redmond based technology giant.

Publication: Deccan Chronicle