Microsoft Azure sets its sights on more analytics workloads

Enterprises now amass huge amounts of data, both from their own tools and applications, as well as from the SaaS applications they use. For a long time, that data was basically exhaust. Maybe it was stored for a while to fulfill some legal requirements, but then it was discarded. Now, data is what drives machine learning models, and the more data you have, the better.

Two new Azure analytics GA releases, one preview and a big push on SQL DW

Azure Data Explorer and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 hit General Availability today. Visual Data Flows in Azure Data Factory launches as a public preview, and Microsoft touts major price/performance advantages for Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

German antitrust office limits Facebook’s data-gathering

A lengthy antitrust probe into how Facebook gathers data on users has resulted in Germany’s competition watchdog banning the social network giant from combining data on users across its own suite of social platforms without their consent. The investigation of Facebook data-gathering practices began in March 2016. The decision by Germany’s Federal Cartel Office, announced today, also prohibits Facebook from gathering data on users from third party websites — such as via tracking pixels and social plug-ins — without their consent.

A Flaw Found in E-Ticketing Systems Used By at Least Eight Airlines Could Be Exploited To Access Sensitive Information About Travelers

Eight airlines, including Southwest, use e-ticketing systems that could allow hackers to access sensitive information about travelers merely by intercepting emails, according to research published Wednesday by the mobile security company Wandera. From a news writeup: Researchers at security and data management company Wandera have uncovered a vulnerability affecting a number of e-ticketing systems that could allow third parties to view, and in some cases even change, a user's flight booking details, or print their boarding passes.

The next integration evolution — blockchain

Bilgin Ibryam Contributor Share on Twitter Bilgin Ibryam is a principal architect at Red Hat, committer and member of Apache Software Foundation. He is an open-source evangelist, blogger, occasional speaker and the author of Kubernetes Patterns and Camel Design Patterns. Here is one way to look at distributed ledger technologies (DLT) and blockchain in the context of integration evolution. Over the years, businesses and their systems are getting more integrated, forming industry-specific trustless networks, and blockchain technology is in the foundation of this evolutionary step.

Your Guide To Current Trends And Challenges In Data Mining

The state of data mining is eager to improve as we slowly step into the new year. Organizations of all shapes and sizes belonging to both the public and the governmental sector are focusing on digging deeper into organized data to help perfect future investments as well as the customer experience being served. Data mining is an essential knowledge extraction process that includes both collecting, cleaning, and organizing useful information.

Keeping up with the kollect-kash-ians: Data manager Komprise more than doubles funding

Thanks to whip-round from WD investment arm and co Data management startup Komprise has more than doubled its funding, collecting a $24m third round to grow its file-moving and managing tech.…

Microsoft acquires DataSense management from BrightBytes to step up its education play in Azure

One of Microsoft’s oldest and biggest verticals for its Azure cloud business has been education, and today it announced an acquisition that it hopes will help it deepen its reach: it has acquired DataSense — a data management platform that can be used to collect, integrate and report information from across a range of online education applications and services — from an educational technology company called BrightBytes, to integrate the functionality into Azure.

2nd Address picks up $10M from GV, Foundation to take on Airbnb in business travel

As Airbnb adds more features to court business users, a smaller startup has raised some funding to take it on in the $18 billion business travel market. 2nd Address, an Airbnb-style platform for business travellers looking for home rentals that extend beyond 30 days — as an alternative to staying in hotels — is announcing funding of $10 million from GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Foundation Capital, along with Amicus and Pierre Lamond.

Facebook warned over privacy risks of merging messaging platforms

Facebook’s lead data protection regulator in Europe has asked the company for an “urgent briefing” regarding plans to integrate the underlying infrastructure of its three social messaging platforms. In a statement posted to its website late last week the Irish Data Protection Commission writes: “Previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise to significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will be seeking early assurances that all such concerns will be fully taken into account by Facebook in further developing this proposal.” Last week the New York Times broke the news that Facebook intends to unify the backend infrastructure of its three separate products, couching it as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg asserting control over acquisitions whose founders have since left the building.