Technology

Commvault acquires data backup provider Clumio

Published

3 hours ago

September 24, 2024

Commvault acquires data backup provider Clumio

It must be M&A season.

Commvault, a publicly traded data protection and management software company, today announced that it intends to acquire data backup and recovery provider Clumio for an undisclosed sum.

The deal is expected to close in early October. Commvault says it’s not material to its earnings and that it’ll be funded with cash on hand.

Clumio, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, was founded in 2017 by Poojan Kumar, Kaustubh Patil, and Woon Ho Jung. It largely serves to protect AWS workloads, though it introduced support for Microsoft 365 back in 2020.

As of February, Clumio was notching double-digit millions of dollars for annual recurring revenue — up 400% from 2022 to 2023 — and acquiring customers like Atlassian, Duolingo, and LexisNexus. The firm raised $261 million in venture capital from investors including Index Ventures, NewView Capital, and Sutter Hill Ventures prior to Tuesday’s exit.

“At Clumio, our vision was to build a platform that could scale quickly to protect the world’s largest and most complex data sets,” Kumar, who was recently appointed Clumio’s chairman after stepping down as CEO in June, said in a statement. “Joining hands with Commvault allows us to get our cloud-native offerings to AWS customers on a global scale.”

Commvault CEO Sanjay Mirchandani sees Clumio complementing Commvault’s existing “cyber resilience” tools for software built on AWS. Now, he says, Commvault can offer enterprises expanded choice to protect and recover their data and cloud-native apps.

AWS-dependent or no, the data backup and recovery market is massive — which no doubt factored in to Commvault’s M&A decision. According to market analytics firm KBV Research, the global data backup and recovery sector was worth $12.9 billion in 2023, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.9% from 2017 to last year.

Businesses face increasing threats related to ransomware. There’s also the issue of data center disasters like the fire that hit France’s OVH in 2021, leading to significant data loss. In some countries, data management-related regulations like the EU AI Act are coming into force, many with strict data retention and provenance stipulations.

“In the event of an outage or cyberattack, rapidly getting back to business is paramount to our customers,” Mirchandani said in a press release. “Combining Commvault’s industry-leading cyber resilience capabilities with Clumio’s exceptional talent and technology advances our recovery offerings, strengthens our platform, and reinforces our position as a leading software-as-a-service provider for cyber resilience.”

The news comes on the heels of Commvault’s purchase of cloud app resilience company Appranix earlier this year, and after Commvault’s expectation-beating Q1 results.

Commvault, originally formed in 1988 as a development group in Bell Labs focused on data management, backup, and recovery, was designated a business unit of AT&T and spun off as its own enterprise in the late ’90s. Commvault went public in 2006, at which point it moved its corporate headquarters from Oceanport to Tinton Falls, New Jersey.

Commvault’s other acquisitions to date include software-defined storage startup Hedvig and cybersecurity company TrapX.

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Servers computers

Why you should or shouldn't buy used servers!

Published

9 mins ago

September 25, 2024

NewsAdmin

Why you should or shouldn't buy used servers!

Bob Pellerin (CTOBOB) looks into what to look for in a used server. Reliable machine can be had. Keep in mind that the more recent a server is, the most likely it will run newer operating systems.

The parts most likely to fail on serves are:
– Drives
– Power supplies
– Fans

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Technology

Spotify’s AI Playlist is now rolling out to more Premium Subscribers – here’s who’s getting it next

Published

14 mins ago

September 25, 2024

NewsAdmin

If you’ve been a Spotify premium subscriber eager to try out the music streaming service’s AI chops at building playlists based on prompts, we have good news. After rolling out AI Playlist to Premium subscribers in the UK and Australia earlier in 2024, the feature is now expanding to the United States, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand in English.

So, you can now use Spotify’s AI to create a playlist based on a prompt that can be as short as a single word. You will need to be a Premium member, though, which in the United States starts at $11.99 a month for an individual, $16.99 per month for Duo (aka two accounts), or $19.99 a month for a family subscription.

The feature, dubbed AI Playlist, can be found on the Spotify app for Android or iOS – not on desktop or the web. Just ensure you’re running the latest version of the app. For instance, I have no updates, and I’m not yet seeing it.

Using AI to build a playlist

Once the feature arrives in your Spotify app associated with the right subscription, you’ll open the app and tap “Library” in the bottom right corner. Then, hit the plus sign in the top right and find AI Playlist as an option.

From there, you’re off to the races as you enter a prompt and watch as a playlist is created. Spotify notes that the more detail provided the better, but you can also refine it further after its first list is made and give it another prompt. You can use words, numbers, or emojis, but Spotify won’t allow offensive words. It also suggests when you’re first playing around with this feature, be specific – potentially with a genre, location, or even characters.

As with any AI, specifically a chatbot, which is close to what this is, results will vary, and Spotify is quick to repeat that AI Playlist is in beta. Considering Spotify is already pretty spot on with music recommendations, adding in this level of customization and personalization via AI is a cool feature that we’re eager to try out.

It’s rolling out now in English for Premium subscribers in United States, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand now after being available for several months in the UK and Australia. If you’re keen to try it, keep your Spotify app updated on your mobile and check to see if “AI Playlist” appears. Until then, you’ll need to create your next fire playlist the old-fashioned way … manually.

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Technology

Sharp rise in problematic teenage social media use, study says

Published

36 mins ago

September 25, 2024

NewsAdmin

Sharp rise in problematic teenage social media use, study says

Getty Images A morose looking teenager stares at a smartphone

A major international study suggests there has been a sharp rise in what it calls “problematic” social media use among young people since the pandemic.

Researchers came to the conclusion after surveying almost 280,000 children aged 11, 13 and 15 across 44 countries.

The Health Behaviour In School-aged Children (HBSC) study found, on average, 11% of respondents engaged with social media in a problematic way in 2022 – compared to 7% in 2018.

England, Scotland and Wales all recorded figures above that average.

The report’s authors say the findings “raise urgent concerns about the impact of digital technology on the mental health and well-being of Europe’s youth”.

They say more action is needed to “promote healthy online behaviours.”

“Problematic use is most common amongst 13-year-olds – it sort of peaks in that early adolescence phase and girls are more likely to report problematic social media use than boys,” said the study’s international co-ordinator Dr Jo Inchley, from the University of Glasgow.

She said the research also revealed how much time young people spend online.

“Across the study as a whole, we found just over a third of adolescents report continuous online contact with friends and others,” she said.

“That means almost all the time throughout the day they are connected online to friends and other people.”

The report does not conclude all that time spent online is detrimental.

Instead, teenagers who were heavy, but not problematic, users of social media reported stronger peer support and social connections.

But for the “problematic” minority it found social media use was associated with addiction-like symptoms including:

neglect of other activities in favour of spending time on social media
frequent arguments about use
lying about how much time is spent online
an inability to control social media use and experiencing withdrawal

It also highlights concerns about the proportion of teenagers considered to be at risk of “problematic gaming” – something it suggests applies to boys more than girls.

That designation applied to 15% of teenagers in England – the second highest proportion across all countries studied.

The average proportion of boys who played daily was 46%, but this figure stood at 52% in England and 57% in Scotland.

And 13-year-old boys in England reported the highest rate of long gaming sessions, with 45% of boys of that age indicating that they played for at least four hours on gaming days.

Positive and negative consequences

The study has been published by the European arm of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Dr Hans Henri P Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, said the findings made clear social media could have both positive and negative consequences for young people.

He said there needed to be more “digital literacy education” to help young people develop a healthy approach to being online, and governments, health authorities, teachers and parents all had to play their part.

“It’s clear we need immediate and sustained action to help adolescents turn the tide on potentially damaging social media use, which has been shown to lead to depression, bullying, anxiety, and poor academic performance,” he said.

Ben Carter, Professor of Medical Statistics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, described the report as a “useful snapshot of the evidence”.

But he pointed out it was difficult to agree on a definition of what “problematic social media” was, making gathering data on it challenging.

Nonetheless, he said the study was a “valid contribution to the evidence base”.

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Servers computers

Dell PowerEdge 4220 Server Rack – 42U Data Center Enclosure

Published

52 mins ago

September 25, 2024

NewsAdmin

Dell PowerEdge 4220 Server Rack - 42U Data Center Enclosure

Dell 4220 42U PowerEdge Enclosure. Complete Server Rack.
For more info call 877-307-7225.
Website: www.global1resources.com.
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Technology

Watch a robot peel a squash with human-like dexterity

Published

57 mins ago

September 25, 2024

NewsAdmin

Watch a robot peel a squash with human-like dexterity

A robot that peels vegetables in the same way that people do demonstrates a level of dexterity that could help move delicate objects along a manufacturing line.

Prototype robots are often tasked with peeling vegetables to test their ability to carefully handle awkward objects. But these challenges are usually simplified, such as the vegetable being fixed in place, or only testing single fruits or vegetables, like peeling a banana.

Now, Pulkit Agrawal at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have developed a robotic system that can rotate different types of fruit and vegetable using its fingers on one hand, while the other arm is made to peel.

“These additional steps of doing rotation are something which is very straightforward to humans, we don’t even think about it,” says Agrawal. “But for a robot, this becomes challenging.”

First, the robot was taught in a simulated environment, receiving an algorithmic reward for a proper rotation and a punishment if it rotated the wrong way or not at all.

Next, the robot was tested under real-world conditions by tasking it with peeling fruits and vegetables such as a pumpkin, radish and papaya. It used one hand to rotate the produce, using feedback from touch sensors, while a human-controlled robot arm did the peeling.

The robot can hold and rotate a vegetable in one hand, while the other arm peels
Tao Chen, Eric Cousineau, Naveen Kuppuswamy, Pulkit Agrawal

The algorithm struggles with smaller, more awkwardly shaped vegetables, such as ginger, says Agrawal, but the team hopes to expand its capabilities.

Grasping and reorienting objects are challenging tasks for any robot, and the speed and firm grip of this one is impressive, says Jonathan Aitken at the University of Sheffield in the UK. It could be useful in factories where objects have to be moved from one machine to another with the correct orientation, he says.

However, it is unlikely to be used in an industrial setting for peeling vegetables because other approaches already exist, such as automatic potato peelers, says Aitken.

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Technology

Fierce new Monster Hunter Wilds trailer reveals release date

Published

1 hour ago

September 25, 2024

NewsAdmin

Fierce new Monster Hunter Wilds trailer reveals release date

Capcom has treated us to another long look at Monster Hunter Wilds, including that all-important release date. The hunt is on beginning February 28, 2025, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

The latest trailer for the next entry in the massively popular Monster Hunter franchise showed off a more personal side to the story, opening with a child fleeing the wrath of the White Wraith and introducing us to many of the characters we can look forward to bonding with while slaying giant beasts. The adorable Palicos are back in full force, helping with cooking and on the battlefield as they have in prior games. In one instance a hunter was knocked out and saved by a Palico dropping a health potion on them.

Monster Hunter Wilds – Release Date Reveal Trailer | PS5 Games

Speaking of monsters, a number of impressive beasts appeared here, though none that haven’t been shown in prior trailers, including a massive water-born creature that leaps and dives through the water and a large hairy beast that the hunter uses their grappling hook to crush with some debris in the environment. However, the star of the show remains The White Wraith Arkveld. This is the game’s premier monster and “big bad” that the plot will center around hunting. This is described as a species of monster that was believed to be extinct, yet has reappeared and wreaks havoc on the world and its people.

Weather has been a major focus for Monster Hunter Wilds, and this trailer shows a few more instances of how the landscape and ecology can shift based on the current weather. Minor examples show how rain can cause a river to become a flood, while sandstorms can cut visibility down to nearly nothing and cause deadly lightning strikes.

Monster Hunter Wilds will come out on February 28, 2025, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Preorders are live right now with a special Layered Armor Guild Knight Set and Hope Charm Talisman offered as bonuses.