Davemichels

If you’re starting to work from home or just got a remote position, you’re probably looking forward to not spending time on a frustrating commute and staying in your pajamas until noon. Enjoy that for the first day or two! But if you’re planning to work from home for an extended period of time — or permanently — there are a few ways to make sure you can be productive at your job while still enjoying the perks of not having to travel to an office.

What works best for remote workers will vary from person to person. I’ve worked remotely in some form or another for the past five years and have found a routine that works for me, but your mileage may vary — and that’s okay. I think the most important thing to remember is to find what helps y...

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• Japanese company Bauhutte has a decked out gaming bed concept first noticed by PC Gamer.
• For now the setup is just a concept, but some items are available.
• The gaming bed accessories cost about $1,200, not including the cost of the bed. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Japanese company Bauhutte has eliminated the need for ever standing or even sitting again, thanks to its gaming bed concept.

The bed was first noticed by Christopher Livingston at PC Gamer, who called it "gaming's final form." A spokesperson from Bauhutte clarified to Business Insider that the photos show a concept, not a completed design, although some parts of the concept are available now through Bauhutte. The bed is not included.

The concept is designed for gaming, but it could also be perfect for remote workers. Many workers are now telecommuting either as a self-quarantine after potential exposure to COVID-19, the coronavirus disease, or simply to minimize the risk of contracting the disease.

Here's the concept. 

SEE ALSO: An architect in China created a wearable shield worn like a backpack designed to protect from coronavirus

It has everything a gamer needs.

Double monitors, cup holders, and speakers are all essential to the gaming experience.

For the truly committed, extra accessories make it possible to stay in bed all day. A snack cart with built-in cup holders and another cart with a keyboard are game-changers.

No need to log off even while lying down: another accessory hold up phones or tablets when even sitting up is too much effort.

Snack breaks will be quick and efficient; no need to get up.

All of the accessories for the concept cost about $1,200 total from Bauhutte, not including the bed itself. That price does, however, include the "gaming blanket" seen in the photo.

Source: Amazon

The novel coronavirus outbreak has forced a lot more people to work from home these days, and many of them are keeping in touch via video conferencing software like Zoom. If you find yourself in that position, you may have suddenly realized that the piles of toys, equipment, dirty clothes, and dust bunnies that you always took for granted are going to be very visible as you try to convince your co-workers that you are an expert in your field.

Don’t despair. If your company (like many others) uses Zoom in order to do its teleconferencing, you can hide all of that detritus using Zoom’s Virtual Background feature. The feature lets you use a still image or a video in the background to hide whatever is really going on back there — that is, if...

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• Google's Pixel 4a, the rumored low-cost version of the Pixel 4 it's rumored to be working on, will reportedly cost $400, according to a leaked billboard mockup posted by prolific leaker Evan Blass.
• That would make it the same price as Google's Pixel 3a and half the price of the $800 Pixel 4.
• It's one of several Pixel 4 leaks to have surfaced this week, coming after a video claiming to show a working version of the device recently leaked.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Rumors have been swirling for months that Google is planning to launch a new version of the Pixel 3a, its cheaper Pixel 3 alternative. Now, a new tweet from reliable leaker Evan Blass provides more evidence that another cheaper Google smartphone is on the way.

Blass posted photos that appear to show billboard mockups advertising the upcoming Google Pixel 4a, the less-expensive version of the Pixel 4 that's said to be in the works. One image suggests the Pixel 4a will cost $400, making it the same price as the Pixel 3a and half the price of the $800 Pixel 4. 

Google did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Blass has a strong track record when it comes to reporting accurate information on upcoming smartphones. Most recently, he published legitimate images showing what Samsung's new Galaxy S20 Ultra looks like ahead of Samsung's official unveil. 

It's one of several Pixel 4a leaks that have surfaced recently. Earlier this week, blog TechnoLike Plus posted a video claiming to show the Pixel 4a. The video revealed tons of details about the phone, including what it will look like, its processor, its memory and storage capacity, and more.

If the leaks are to be believed, we can expect the Pixel 4a to come with a borderless screen measuring around 5.7 or 5.8 inches, a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, a headphone jack, and a single-lens camera.

Google's cheaper smartphone would come at a time when a wave of less-expensive smartphones are expected to enter the market after years of sky-high smartphone prices.

Apple, for example, is rumored to be developing a successor to its $400 iPhone SE from 2016 that would resemble the iPhone 8, but with the same processor that powers the iPhone 11 lineup. Electronics maker TCL is also launching a new Android phone called the TCL 10 Pro this year that will cost less than $500 and boasts high-end features like an edge-to-edge display, in-screen fingerprint sensor, and a quadruple camera.

Google launched the Pixel 3a and its larger counterpart, the 3a XL, at its Google I/O developer conference last year in May. There's a chance the search giant could unveil the Pixel 4a around the same time, although the physical version of its annual event has been canceled over coronavirus concerns. 

SEE ALSO: Your smartphone carries more germs and bacteria than a toilet seat — here's how you should clean and disinfect it without ruining its screen

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In the weeks and months to come, a growing number of US citizens are going to be forced to work from home in a bid to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. In the process they’re going to run face-first into a US broadband market that has consistently failed to provide quality, affordable broadband to those who need it most.

In a Senate appropriations hearing this morning, several FCC Commissioners warned that the coronavirus will soon shine a very bright light on America’s stubborn “digital divide.”

“With social distancing and even quarantine being required, as they may soon be in many American communities, broadband connections will become even more vital,” FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks told hearing attendees.

Starks recommended that the FCC expedite approval of experimental licenses to expand existing wireless networks, pressure carriers to deliver cell towers on wheels (cows) to the hardest hit US communities, and launch a “connectivity and economic stimulus” plan to help speed up broadband deployment to the hardest hit US communities.

“Everyone in the telecommunications sector must step up,” he added. “The time is now. Americans are going to need broadband in their homes—to help them telework to keep the economy strong; to help them understand medical information, and potentially connect with medical care via telemedicine; and to help our youngest learners continue to grow.”

It’s easier said than done.

In Congressional testimony earlier this year, former FCC lawyer Gigi Sohn estimated that some 141 million people in the US lack access to fixed broadband at speeds of 25 Mbps, the FCC’s base definition of broadband. A recent study indicated that roughly 42 million Americans have no access to either fixed or wireless broadband whatsoever, nearly double FCC estimates.

A lack of competition means US consumers pay some of the highest rates for broadband in the developed world. It also means that US internet service providers (ISPs) have very little incentive to shore up terrible customer service, expand broadband into rural markets, or avoid bad behavior like spurious surcharges or arbitrary broadband usage caps.

It’s a problem that’s not exclusive to rural areas. In New York City, 29 percent of households don’t have broadband, and 46 percent of families living below the poverty line don’t have service—usually due to high prices. It’s worse in less affluent cities and minority neighborhoods long neglected when it comes to broadband upgrades.

As the US looks to reduce the rate and spread of COVID-19 (flattening the curve, as infectious disease experts call it) a growing number of schools and businesses will urge students and workers to telecommute. One Seattle school district has shuttered classrooms for the next two weeks, forcing some 23,500 students to go online.

A United Nations report last week indicated that some 300 million schoolchildren are missing class worldwide as a result of the outbreak. 22 countries have begun closing schools as they try to manage the spread of the disease.

As US cities begin to follow suit over the next few weeks, American students are going to get a crash course in the availability and affordability problems that have long plagued US broadband, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told hearing attendees.

"Now is absolutely the time for the FCC to talk about the coronavirus disruption," she said. "We are going to expose some really hard truths about the scope of the digital divide."

Last week, Washington Senator Maria Cantwell wrote a letter to FCC boss Ajit Pai, urging drastic action to prepare for what’s coming.

“I request that the FCC consider whether temporary measures using its authority under section 254 of the Communications Act of 1934 could be used to facilitate at-home connectivity for students to keep up in class should remote schoolwork become necessary due to COVID-19 closures,” she wrote.

Rosenworcel and Starks both told Congress that Pai should reverse his efforts to neuter low-income broadband programs like Lifeline, and instead expand them to help deliver mobile hotspots to impacted students. That could prove particularly important if libraries—often the only hope of connectivity for many low income Americans—also decide to close their doors.

Even then, it’s hard to quickly fix a decades-old broadband affordability and availability problem caused by feckless regulators, Congressional corruption, and monopoly domination of a broken telecom market. For many students and US residents caught in the wake of this dysfunction, the check for our collective apathy is about to come due.

• Cybersecurity company Exabeam says that two employees who attended the RSA Conference in San Francisco have tested positive with coronavirus. 
• One of the employees, a 45-year-old man with a heart condition, is very ill, Bloomberg reports.
• RSA was one of the few big tech events go on as planned amid the spread of coronavirus, with the support of San Francisco Mayor London Breed. San Francisco would ultimately declare a state of emergency right around the time the conference began.
• Other big events like the Game Developers Conference and Google Cloud Next, both slated to be held in San Francisco, have cancelled or otherwise postponed to a later date.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Two attendees of the RSA cybersecurity conference – one of the few tech trade shows to go one amid coronavirus fears – have tested positive for the virus, according to the conference and their employer, Exabeam. 

One of the two employees is reportedly very ill with the virus. 

"We learned that two individuals who attended RSA Conference 2020 have recently tested positive for COVID-19," conference organizers said on its website Tuesday.  

The California-based cybersecurity firm Exabeam tweeted Tuesday that "We recently learned and are saddened to share that two of our employees have tested positive for Coronavirus (COVID-19)."

When a Twitter user asked if the employees were at the company's booth at the 40,000-attendee trade show two weeks ago, the company responded "The two individuals who were at the conference may have been at our booth. If you visited our booth please be vigilant about monitoring yourself for symptoms and following guidelines to prevent possible infection."

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that an RSA attendee who appears to work for Exabeam "is seriously ill with respiratory issues." The news agency reported that the employee was a 45-year-old man from Connecticut with a heart condition. 

Robert Siegel, an immunologist at Stanford University, said conferences are particularly conducive to spreading viruses. In fact, if you wanted to create the ideal system to spread something like the coronavirus, convening thousands of people from all over the world, packing them into a confined space where they shake hands and talk at close quarters, and then spitting them back out in different directions would be a good way to do it, he suggsted.

"In terms of spreading respiratory viruses, this is greatly facilitated by close contact between large groups of individuals, and by people arriving from and dispersing to distant locations," he said. 

Mobile World Congress, South By Southwest and many smaller conferences before and since have cancelled at great cost because of the coronavirus crisis. The Game Developers Conference cancelled its San Francisco trade show as RSA wrapped up, despite encouragement from the city's tourism marketing agency. 

RSA went on, even as sponsors pulled out

The RSA conference posted frequent reminders to attendees to wash their hands and avoid handshakes if they were uncomfortable. The conference also referred attendees to health guidance from the Centers For Disease Control and other agencies. 

But it persisted in putting on the conference, even as sponsors IBM, AT&T, and Verizon pulled out as a cautionary measure.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed released a letter to RSA attendees the Friday before the conference that told them "San Francisco is open for business and events are proceeding as planned...We must set an example to prevent fear, rumors, and misinformation from guiding our actions." The letter noted that "the virus is not circulating in our community."

Five days later as the conference got under way, Breed declared a state of emergency in the city due to the virus. Breed and the department of health stressed that the emergency declaration was to help the city prepare in case the virus situation worsened.

The day of the declaration, Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco's director of health, said that "This is a global outbreak that is entering a new phase, and we must be prepared." He added, "This is not business as usual."

That same day RSA President Rohit Ghai opened the conference with a keynote in which he said "thanks to Mayor London Breed and her office for collaborating with our conference team to ensure a healthy and safe event for all." 

San Francisco continued to encourage conferences after the declaration of emergency. "The City continues to encourage people to attend events and conferences," wrote Andy Lynch, a member of the mayor's staff, on February 28. 

More than 118,000 people have been infected and over 4,200 have died of the virus. The US has reported 28 deaths.

San Francisco reported 14 total cases on Tuesday. On Monday the city banned non-essential group events held in city-owned facilities for two weeks.

RSA orgnizers declined to comment beyond the post on its website. Exabeam declined to comment beyond its tweets. The San Francisco Mayor's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

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Boulder communications infrastructure firm Zayo Group Holdings is officially a private company again.

Zayo’s new owners, global investment firms Digital Colony Partners and the EQT Infrastructure IV fund, officially closed on their $14.3 billion purchase of the company that specializes in providing “mission-critical bandwidth to the world’s most impactful companies” on Monday.

The shocks that rocked the market didn’t have any impact on Zayo shareholders. They were paid the $35 per share price announced in May, at the time a 32% premium over the stock’s weighted six-month average, according to Zayo.

Unlike some other high-profile Colorado companies that were purchased and then disappeared (See: Qwest) or moved their headquarters to other states when new leadership took over (See: Chipotle Mexican Grill), Zayo is staying put and aims to grow in place, Zayo CEO and co-founder Dan Caruso said Monday.

“It’s kind of, I think, a feel-good story,” Caruso said. “I think the best news for the Front Range and for Colorado is that Zayo gets to continue forward as a company headquartered here in Colorado and continue to create jobs. It will continue to grow and continue impacting the community in a lot of positive ways.”

The company employs 1,150 people in Colorado, mostly in Boulder and Denver, officials say.

Caruso, also a co-founder of now gone Level 3 Communications, launched Zayo as a startup on Boulder’s Pearl Street in 2007. The company eventually went public in late 2014, it’s initial public offering bringing in around $400 million. But a major shareholder last year complained about management turnover issues and strategy changes in a letter suggesting a sale was in the best interest of shareholders.

Zayo was at a point in its life as a public company where its long-term interest was no longer the same as those of many shareholders with shorter-term outlooks, Caruso said Monday. The $35 per-share price satisfied shareholders and was a good entry point for the new owners.

“We certainly will be able to focus more on the day-to-day execution of the business” now, he said, adding that he expects Digital Quality and EQT to invest in acquiring more infrastructure to fuel growth.

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Zayo, today, has 133,000 miles of fiberoptic cable running to thousands of buildings in North America and Europe, company officials said Monday. It also operates 44 data centers.

The company’s clients including tech giants like Facebook and Google, media companies such as ESPN and mobile carriers including AT&T and Verizon. On Monday, Caruso proudly pointed out local clients hooked into Zayo’s network including Denver Public Schools and the UCHealth system.

Zayo reported a net income of $79.3 million for the second half of 2019, up from $52.3 million in the second half of 2018. Digital Colony and EQT have also taken on $5.9 billion of Zayo’s net debt via the purchase.

If you were a software company employee or venture capitalist in Silicon Valley before 1993, chances are you were talking about “Information Systems Software” and not “Enterprise Software.” How and why did the industry change its name?

The obvious, but perplexing answer is simple — “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

As befuddling and mind-numbingly satisfying as it is to your local office Trekkie, the industry rebranded itself thanks to a marketing campaign from the original venture-backed system software company, Boole & Babbage (now BMC software).

While the term “Enterprise” was used to describe complex systems for years before 1993, everything changed when Boole & Babbage signed a two-year licensing agreement with the then-highest-rated show in syndication history to produce an infomercial.

Star Trek fans have been talking about this crazy marketing agreement for years, and you can read the full details about how it was executed in TrekCore. But even Trekkies don’t appreciate its long-term impacts on our industry. In this license agreement with Paramount, Boole & Babbage had unlimited rights to create and distribute as much Star Trek content as they could. They physically mailed VHS cassettes to customers, ran magazine ads and even dressed their employees as members of Starfleet at trade shows. Boole & Babbage used this push to market itself as the “Enterprise Automation Company.”

Commander Riker says in the infomercial, “just as the bridge centralizes the functions necessary to control the USS Enterprise, Boole’s products centralize data processing information to allow centralized control of today’s complex information systems.” This seemed to scratch an itch that other systems companies didn’t realize needed scratching.

Not to be outdone, IBM in 1994 rebranded their OS/2 operating system “OS/2 Warp,” referring to Star Trek’s “warp drive.” They also tried to replicate Babbage’s licensing agreement with Paramount by hiring the Enterprise’s Captain Picard (played by actor Patrick Stewart) to emcee the product launch. Unfortunately, Paramount wouldn’t play ball, and IBM hired Captain Janeway (played by actress Kate Mulgrew) from Star Trek: Voyager instead. The licensing issues didn’t stop IBM from also hiring Star Trek’s Mr. Spock (played by actor Leonard Nimoy) to tape a five-minute intro to the event:

Outside of OS/2, IBM’s 1994 announcement list included 13 other “enterprise” initiatives. Soon, leading software companies began to rebrand themselves and release products using the term “enterprise software” as a valuable identifier. MRP software makers like SAP and Baan began embracing the new “Enterprise” moniker after 1993 and in 1995, Lotus rebranded itself as an “Enterprise Software Company.”

“Enterprise” was officially the coolest new vernacular and after industry behemoth IBM bought Lotus in 1996, they incorporated “Enterprise” across all of their products. And while Gartner’s 1990 paper “ERP: A Vision of the Next-Generation MRP II” by Wylie is the technical birth of ERP software, no one cared until Commander Riker told Harold to “monitor your entire Enterprise from a single point of control.” The ngram numbers don’t lie:

Almost 30 years later, we live in a world in which business is run on enterprise software and the use of the term is ubiquitous. Whenever I see a software business plan come across my desk or read an article on enterprise software, I can’t help but give Commander Riker a little due credit.

• Cisco Executive Vice President David Goeckeler is leaving the tech giant to take on a new role as CEO of data storage company Western Digital.
• The company also unveiled changes to its engineering team aimed at beefing up its cloud strategy.
• Another key executive, Amy Chang of the tech giant's collaboration team, is going on leave to focus on family.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

A key Cisco executive is leaving the company, as the tech giant has sought to beef up its cloud strategy with more changes to its engineering team.

Cisco said Executive Vice President David Goeckeler is stepping down to take on a new role as CEO of data storage company Western Digital. 

"We will miss you but we will all be your biggest fans!" Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said in a tweet.

The tech giant also said Amy Change, another executive vice president in charge of Cisco's collaboration products, is going on leave for family reasons.

Goeckler is departing just four months after sending a memo on a major reorganization aimed at stressing Cisco's focus on the cloud and consolidating its efforts in the networking and data center markets.

"While I know these updates may seem like a significant change, it's important to understand, this alignment will create new opportunities for driving synergies across domains and will strongly position the company against our competitors," Goeckeler said in the memo.

Cisco unveiled additional changes, focused on its engineering team. The company's enterprise networking and cloud will now be led by senior vice president Todd Nightingale, who joined the tech giant when it acquired Meraki, the cloud IT management company.

Cisco's mass-scale infrastructure division is now led by senior vice president Jonathan Davidson, who joined Cisco three years ago after a long stint at rival Juniper Networks. The company said it has yet to name the head of its security and applications business.

The company's emerging technologies and incubation group will be led by senior vice president Liz Centoni, a 20-year Cisco veteran, and its core hardware platforms group will be led by senior vice president Eyal Dagan, who joined Cisco in 2016 when it acquired Leaba Semiconductor.

"We are always looking to build the strongest portfolio and platforms for the future," a Cisco spokesperson told Business Insider. "Cisco's new engineering team structure aligns with our transformation strategy."

That transformation is essentially about major changes in Cisco's business model. Cisco emerged as a tech powerhouse by dominating the market for networking equipment used for private data centers. Like other major traditional enterprise tech companies, Cisco has had to adapt to the cloud, which let businesses set up networks on web-based platforms, which made it possible to scale down or abandon private data centers. 

That has hurt Cisco's business, but the company is eyeing new trends led by hybrid cloud in which businesses set up networks in the cloud while keeping huge chunks of their data and applications on in-house data centers. The tech giant has also explored other opportunities, such as selling components, including semiconductors, directly to public cloud companies.

Got a tip about Cisco or another tech company? Contact this reporter via email at bpimentel@businessinsider.com, message him on Twitter @benpimentel or send him a secure message through Signal at (510) 731-8429. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: Two startup founders explain why they took the unusual move of going from Amazon's cloud to Oracle's

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• Amazon is recommending employees in New York and New Jersey work from home until the end of March as the coronavirus continues to spread. 
• The company is asking employees in the Seattle area and Italy to work remotely as well. 
• There are now 142 confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York State, including 20 cases in the New York City area. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon is recommending that its employees in New York and New Jersey work from home as the coronavirus continues to spread. 

The company advised employees on Monday to work remotely beginning March 10 until the end of the month, according to an internal memo seen by Business Insider. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the news. 

"In light of new COVID-19 guidance from the New York Health Department that was issued on March 9, we are changing Amazon's guidance for New York and New Jersey corporate office employees to recommend that all employees based in these locations and who work in a role that can be done from home," the memo said.

There are 142 confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York state, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Monday, including 20 cases in New York City. Mayor Bill de Blasio has asked all New Yorkers to consider working from home. The company has more than 8,000 employees across its tech hub and fulfillment centers in New York City, according to the Journal.  

"The email left it a little open ended as far as working with your manager to establish expectations," an Amazon employee in New York City told Business Insider, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "But direction from my senior manager to our team was pretty clear that we should not come in this week and would re-evaluate at the end of week."

Amazon issued a similar directive to employees at its Seattle headquarters last week after an employee in its Seattle office and two in its Italy offices tested positive for the coronavirus. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter have also asked employees to stay home.  

"We continue to work closely with public and private medical experts to ensure we are taking the right precautions as the situation continues to evolve," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider in an email. "This includes recommending that employees who are able to work from home in Seattle/Bellevue, the Bay Area, New York, New Jersey and the Lombardy region/Asti province of Italy do so through the end of March."

The coronavirus, which began in Wuhan, China, more than two months ago, causes a respiratory disease known as COVID-19. Cases have been recorded in more than 100 countries, more than 111,000 people have been infected, and more than 3,900 people have died from the virus. Though the vast majority of cases are in China, nearly 770 deaths have been reported outside of mainland China, including 22 in the US.

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• Kubernetes is a fast-growing cloud project started at Google and becoming an increasingly big focus for many tech giants.
• According to a report from the job search site Indeed, Kubernetes jobs have exploded in the past five years.
• These are the top five companies that are hiring the most for Kubernetes roles, including IBM and Microsoft.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A popular cloud project started at Google is continuing to shake up the IT market, and now more companies are looking for developers who know how to work with it.

This project, called Kubernetes, uses a type of technology called containers, which makes it easy to move around applications and run them anywhere they want, whether on a laptop, on the cloud, or in a private data center. 

It was first released in 2014, and since then, it's become especially widespread because it's open source, meaning it's free for anyone to use, download, or modify. And from Google itself to other companies of all sizes like Spotify, Lyft, and "Pokémon Go" developer Niantic, it's become crucial for many companies to run their large-scale applications. It was also a driving force behind IBM's $34 billion purchase of Red Hat last year.

Because so many companies are now using Kubernetes, expertise in the technology has quickly become one of the fastest growing tech skills. According to a report from the job search site Indeed, Kubernetes jobs per million grew by 2,141% between October 2015 and October 2019. From October 2018 to October 2019 alone, Kubernetes jobs per million rose 53.33%.

"The increasing demand for these skills is a reflection that employers are finding that containerization and related abilities are really helpful for maintaining development of these products," Indeed's North America head of research Nick Bunker told Business Insider.

The top five Kubernetes-related roles companies are looking for are DevOps engineers, software engineers, software architects, cloud engineers, and full stack developers. Kubernetes has especially become crucial to DevOps, a software engineering philosophy that combines development and operations, because it can help programmers with rolling out new features and keeping applications running smoothly without downtime.

"Kubernetes is interesting and it's a sign of bigger broader skills that are increasingly in demand," Bunker said.

Below are the top five companies that are hiring the most for Kubernetes roles.

SEE ALSO: IBM cancels its biggest event of the year over coronavirus fears, as it makes a new rule that employees can’t go to a conference with over 1,000 attendees

5. Cisco

Cisco joined forces with Amazon Web Services to build the Cisco Hybrid Solution for Kubernetes on AWS. This allows tech companies to develop and run apps wherever they want, whether it's on the cloud or in private data centers. 

This gives more flexibility for companies that store their data in private data centers but are working to move to the cloud. With Cisco's product, companies can build new cloud applications while still managing applications that are partly or fully on premises.

4. Verizon

While people may not think of the telecommunications conglomerate Verizon as a tech company first and foremost, it has over 80 cloud applications, many of which use Kubernetes.

For Verizon, Kubernetes is key to helping it move to the cloud. While many of its apps are already on the cloud, it needs to keep much of its sensitive data in private data centers. Kubernetes allows its developers to write apps that work with both, and move between them.

3. Microsoft

Although Kubernetes started at Google, a perennial rival, the technology has become popular enough that Microsoft has rushed to embrace it as a way to keep up with its cloud competitors. It has its own managed Kubernetes service called Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to help customers with managing their cloud applications. 

And last year, Microsoft announced Kubernetes-based event-driven autoscaling (KEDA), which allows developers to automatically scale their applications in response to what's happening in the system.

2. VMware

Kubernetes is becoming an increasingly big part of VMware's strategy. It has an entire portfolio of Kubernetes products and services called VMware Tanzu. Last year, VMware announced Project Pacific, an initiative to build Kubernetes into its long-running virtualization product vSphere.

VMware has also been doing some shopping to add some more Kubernetes capabilities to its arsenal. It acquired the cloud application platform company Pivotal, as well as the Kubernetes support company Heptio, founded by two of the original creators of the software.

As COO Sanjay Poonen previously told Business Insider, VMware aims to "create the largest force working on Kubernetes."

1. IBM

IBM has its own managed Kubernetes offering called IBM Cloud Container Service. On top of that, last year IBM acquired Red Hat for $34 billion. Red Hat was one of the first companies to work with Google on Kubernetes and is still one of the project's top contributors. It also has its own enterprise Kubernetes-based product called OpenShift.

Now that Red Hat is officially under its umbrella, IBM is looking for developers who can work with these Kubernetes products

Besides Kubernetes itself, IBM decided to buy Red Hat to build a stronger hybrid cloud, which allows companies to run their applications both on the cloud and in private data centers. Since Kubernetes makes it easier for developers to move applications between the cloud and private data centers, that's another reason why IBM is looking for these skills.

IBM also has its own Kubernetes projects in the works. In November, IBM announced a new open source project called Kui to help developers be more productive when building Kubernetes applications by visualizing operational data from their project.

• Oracle is trying to expand its cloud presence by attracting more startups.
• It's an uphill battle, but the tech giant has convinced a few startups to switch from Amazon Web Services, the most dominant player in the cloud.
• Two startup founders explain why they made the switch, praising what they say is Oracle's more customer-friendly approach and other incentives.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

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When H.O. Maycotte and his cofounders launched Molecula in 2017, the entrepreneurs followed the lead of many other startups: they set up their network on Amazon Web Services, where small and large companies alike can rent functionally unlimited computing power from the retail giant's hyper-efficient data centers. 

But last year, the Austin, Texas data virtualization firm changed course, taking a path considered more unusual for a young tech company: they shifted away from Amazon, and towards Oracle Cloud, as a way to support the needs of their growing businesses.

"We started with AWS because it was easy," Maycotte told Business Insider. But shifting to Oracle offered other advantages, he said: "Oracle just gives us an unbelievable amount of support."

In fighting for a bigger piece of the cloud market, Oracle has been trying to attract customers that first made Amazon the giant of that space: startups. It's an uphill battle, but Oracle's startup offensive, which the tech giant unleashed two years ago with its Oracle For Startups program, has scored a few wins — even at the expense of Amazon.

These successes were based on Oracle's bid to project a kinder, gentler image, one not typically associated with the tech behemoth known at times for aggressive sales tactics. Indeed, Business Insider recently reported that Thomas, a 120-year-old company, used Amazon Web Services as a way to ditch its Oracle databases after it recieved a surprise $1 million bill.

'A customer-driven ethos'

Jean Atelsek, an analyst with the tech research firm 451Research, said Oracle has taken steps to boost its profile in the startup world. For example, she said, the company has hired talent from Amazon and Microsoft which is "infusing some of the customer-driven ethos that has driven AWS's success in particular," she told Business Insider. 

Analyst Ray Wang of Constellation Research said Oracle has been "bringing the best out of their competitors to come over." Two key Oracle executives are from Amazon: Don Johnson, who heads Oracle's cloud infrastructure business, and Ariel Kelman, who recently joined to become the company's chief marketing officer.

"No doubt the always-free tier announced last year is encouraging experimentation," Atelsek also said.  

She was referring to Oracle's announcement late last year that it was giving free access to its cloud infrastructure and autonomous database, which meant organizations, developers, students, and educators will be able to build networks and use applications on the company's platform. Oracle founder Larry Ellison also said the company would guarantee to Amazon clients that they would pay much less by using the Oracle cloud.

Making it easy for startups

The company said its Oracle for Startups program offers a range of benefits,  including cloud credits, discounts and mentoring resources. "We want to remove all friction around cost as a startup scales their business," the spokesperson tol Business Insider.

Making it easy for a startup to set up a network in the cloud was also how Amazon built a huge lead in the cloud, and a sizable startup customer base. Companies like Airbnb and Dropbox used AWS as the technical foundation to grow their businesses, without needing to incur the cost of buying or renting their own servers.

"AWS from the bottom up is really easy to spin up," Maycotte of Molecula said. "Anybody can just go create an account within seconds, you're up and running."

Amazon is so dominant that it simply made sense for another entrepreneur, Simcha Shore, to set up his startup's network on AWS. 

Shore is founder and CEO of AgroScout,  an Israel-based agriculture analytics company which uses data including those collected by drones to help farmers monitor diseases and other issues in their farms.

"We started taking images using small drones, and we started to have more and more data," he told Business Insider.  "I didn't think about the cloud at the time. I was just looking for a place to put the data. … Like most startups, the easiest or most accessible was Amazon. Everything cloud is Amazon. So we started using the Amazon cloud."

Atelsek of 451Research said Amazon is known for offering more services and adding features "in response to customer demand." "Its customer-driven ethos is admirable," she said. 

But Shore of AgroScout said he had a different experience. The AgroScout platform needed more capabilities in terms of uploading images and processing data, and his team grew dissatisfied with Amazon.

"It wasn't helping us do what we needed to do," he said. 

The cloud lock-in dilemma

His team found a better fit with Oracle, he said. "The Oracle team was just there for us. They understood our vision,  and understood that we're a small startup. It was more about the people we got to work with."

Amazon has routinely accused rivals in the traditional enterprise tech industry of offering limited options that cause customers to be trapped in product offerings. 

In a recent blog post, Amazon executive Matt Asay pointed to "old guard vendors like Oracle that use complicated licensing strategies to lock customers in, particularly with their databases."

"We have seen thousands of customers fed up with expensive, punitive licensing terms of older database vendors like Oracle and Microsoft," he wrote. 

But Maycotte of Molecula said that was a problem his startup he encountered with Amazon prompting the shift to Oracle.  

"We're starting to see a real change in these clouds to focus on lock, on product offerings that are that are trying to get customers to get stuck, for lack of a better word in their environments," he said. "And I think that Oracle has done a really good job of trying to stay neutral."

Aseltek of 451Reserach said Oracle claims tens of thousands of users signed up but the company has not disclosed the number of startups that eventually became paying customers. The company not immediately be reached for comment on the number of startups that have participated in the program.

"I can't say whether startups are abandoning AWS for Oracle," Aselte said. But she said Oracle's "cloud business is really trying to make a name for itself as being like an eager, more nimble startup within the Oracle colossus."

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Microsoft has introduced a call records API as part of Microsoft Graph. The API is currently in beta and provides usage and diagnostic information about calls and online meetings. The API provides information for calls made through Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business.

Nearly 200,000 Xfinity customers nationwide who pay for their phone numbers to remain unlisted or unpublished had their contact information mistakenly posted online last fall, the company confirmed Wednesday.

Comcast, Xfinity’s parent company, could not say how many of those customers are in Colorado, but several have voiced their concern to the state’s attorney general or on official Xfinity forums, lamenting the disclosure and pushing the company to do more to compensate victims of the mistake.

For years, customers have had the ability to pay a small sum per month to ensure their phone numbers and personal information remain off of telephone and online directories.

But in January and February, thousands of people across the country received letters from Xfinity telling them the company had inadvertently published personal information on Comcast’s online directory, Ecolisting.com. The issue affected 2% of Comcast’s 9.9 million voice customers, the company said.

Comcast discovered the issue in November, shutting down the online directory while offering customers a $100 credit. Because the online directory has been shuttered, Comcast will no longer offer nonpublished and nonlisted services.

“We are working with our customers directly to address this issue and help make it right, and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again,” Leslie Oliver, a Comcast spokeswoman, said in a statement.

In light of the privacy breach, the company offered to change customers’ numbers at no charge, and it set up a phone line (877-213-9812) for people to voice concerns or ask questions.

But customers who had their numbers mistakenly released complained on Xfinity’s community message board that although the company corrected its mistake, it’s impossible to put that information back in the box once it’s released.

“I’m now published all over the web because of their error,” one user wrote.

Other customers said the release wasn’t just an inconvenience. Law enforcement officers, judges and domestic abuse victims are some of the people who pay for unlisted or unpublished numbers.

“Xfinity has compromised the safety of myself and my family by publishing my identifying information for others to see,” another user wrote. “Simply providing a $100 credit is not good enough considering the mess I am going to have to deal with.”

Lawrence Pacheco, spokesman for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, said in an email that the state’s consumer protection team could not find any complaints about Xfinity releasing unlisted numbers but urged any concerned consumers to submit reports to stopfraudcolorado.gov.

“Complaints about telecommunications providers is one of the top 10 complaints our office received last year,” Pacheco said.

This is not the first instance in which Comcast mistakenly released customer information.

In 2015, the cable operator paid a $33 million settlement after accidentally publishing names, phone numbers and addresses of about 75,000 customers.

California’s attorney general at the time, Kamala Harris, called it a “troubling breach of privacy.”

• Microsoft says it has seen a 500 percent increase in meetings, calling, and conferences on its Teams workplace chat app in China, amid the coronavirus outbreak.
• This comes after the company told Business Insider on Monday that it is offering customers and partners free six-month trials of the premium version of its Teams chat app as coronavirus fears have led to an increase in remote work. 
• Other videoconferencing and collaboration tools like Zoom and Google Hangouts are also expanding their free versions amid the outbreak. Zoom has seen increased usage as well.
• Microsoft is asking all employees at its Seattle-area headquarters and in the San Francisco Bay Area to work from home until March 25 amid fears about the spread of coronavirus.
• Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

Microsoft says it has seen a huge increase in usage of its workplace chat app, Teams, in China, amid the coronavirus outbreak.

"We've recently tested service continuity during a usage spike in China. Since January 31, we've seen a 500 percent increase in Teams meetings, calling, and conferences there, and a 200 percent increase in Teams usage on mobile devices," Microsoft says in a blog post. 

This comes after the company told Business Insider on Monday that it is offering customers and partners free six-month trials of the premium version of its Teams chat app as coronavirus fears have led to an increase in remote work. 

Teams already has a free version which places limits on certain features. For example, free Teams users can't record meetings, and they only get 2 GB of file storage, as opposed to the full terabyte enjoyed by paying customers. Microsoft is now offering a free six-month trial that includes all those features. 

It is also updating the free app. On March 10 it will lift restrictions on its free Teams app to lift its restrictions on user limits and allow users to schedule meetings for video calling and conferencing.

That six-month free trial for Teams was first offered in China and is now offered globally. 

Other video-conferencing and collaboration tools are taking similar measures as Microsoft, and seeing increases as well. Zoom said it saw a huge increase in users of the free version of its product since the coronavirus started, although its CFO this week said that its still to early to tell what kind of impact the spike will have on the business going forward. 

Last week Zoom lifted the 40 minute meeting time limit for the free version of product in China, as CEO Eric Yuan said he wanted to do something to help those affected by the outbreak. 

Additionally, Google on Tuesday said it would offer the premium version of its Google Hangouts Meet videoconferencing service to all G Suite customers.

Collaboration tools like Teams could benefit from the coronavirus outbreak as more companies ask employees to pause travel and work remotely. Analysts expect cloud-software companies like Zoom, Slack, and Dropbox to benefit from increased usage. 

Microsoft itself is asking all employees at its Seattle-area headquarters and in the San Francisco Bay Area to work from home until March 25, as the coronavirus spreads in both areas.

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BMW has a new logo, marking the biggest change to the company’s branding since the iconic emblem was introduced in 1917. As with many modern redesigns of logos made to chase today’s trendy aesthetic of a super flat ultra-minimalist style, the new BMW logo sacrifices the company’s well-known identity in favor of presumed modernity.

There are two major changes to the updated logo. The first is largely positive: BMW is reverting back to a flatter design that ditches the very dated 3D effects and shading that were introduced in 1997 with a design that resembles the simpler logo the company has been using since 1963.

The second change is the removal of the black outer ring in favor of a transparent background, which just looks plain bad.

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• Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said that he expects the coronavirus outbreak to show companies that remote working is the future, and it will "dramatically change the landscape." 
• Yuan said that even before coronavirus started driving more remote work, it was an increasing trend, especially in Silicon Valley, and other companies are now just starting to realize the benefits it offers.
• Zoom stock has been up dramatically in recent weeks, as Wall Street bets that coronavirus will drive more usage of the videoconferencing tool and services like it. But Zoom is striking a more cautious tone about the potential impact on its business.
• "We have definitely seen an uptick in usage, but a lot of that is on the free side, so it's very early to tell whether or not that's going to convert long term into paying customers," CFO Kelly Steckelberg said.
• Zoom is now also asking all employees based at its headquarters in San Jose, CA to work from home. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said that he expects the coronavirus outbreak to change the landscape for videoconferencing tools, as more companies start to have employees work remotely in a bid to stem the spread of the virus.

"Video is the future of communication...given the coronavirus, I think overnight, almost everybody really understands they needed a tool like this," Yuan said on a call with analysts after releasing fourth quarter earnings results. "This will dramatically change the landscape." 

As the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, spreads, more and more companies are asking employees to work from home. Schools in affected areas like Hong Kong and Vietnam have been closed to try and prevent the spread of the virus. Even in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Zoom is based, some companies like Twitter have expanded their work-from-home policies.

Under those circumstances, companies are increasingly relying on tools like Zoom to help employees stay connected.

However, Yuan said that even before coronavirus started driving more remote work, it was a trend that was already gaining popularity, especially in Silicon Valley. Companies like Zapier and GitLab have all-remote workforces, something many see as one way work will change in the future.

Coronavirus shown that that future many come sooner than some thought. It has forced larger companies to see that they needed to make it possible for employees to work remotely in order to keep the business running when crises like coronavirus hit, Yuan added. 

Yuan said that if he were to start Zoom over from scratch today, he wouldn't have a single physical office and would make it an  all-remote company.

Increased usage due to coronavirus

Zoom said it has seen an big increase in users for the free version of its product due to coronavirus. However, the earnings results reported Wednesday didn't show much of that increased usage because much of the increase has been for the free version of its product, CFO Kelly Steckelberg said on the call. 

"We have definitely seen an uptick in usage, but a lot of that is on the free side, so it's very early to tell whether or not that's going to convert long term into paying customers," Steckelberg said.

When asked if Zoom has a strategy to convert those new free users to paid users in the future, Yuan said at the moment he is just focused on providing the best product to customers and making sure people impacted by coronavirus are able to benefit. 

"I would say, empathy, humanity and support for each other is more important, not revenue," Yuan said, adding that if Zoom focuses on giving its customers the best product it can, money and profits will eventually follow.

Zoom recently lifted the 40-minute time limit per video meeting for its free product in China in an effort to help those affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Yuan also said that Zoom is scaling its servers to be able to handle the increased usage. 

Yuan, who grew up in China's Shandong province, said in a blog post last week that he wanted to do something to help those affected as the virus continues to disrupt daily affairs, business operations, and school classes. 

Zoom itself has part of its research and development team based in China, but Yuan said they were not impacted by the coronavirus in China. Employees already know how to work remotely so they were able to continue working without disruption. 

Given a number of cases in Zoom's home state of California, Zoom is now asking all employees based at its headquarters in San Jose, CA to work from home as well. 

"Given the recent emergence and growing number of coronavirus cases in the US, we have directed our HQ employees to work from home, unless there is a business-critical need for them to be in the office," Yuan said on the call. 

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The Great Barrier Reef, the largest living structure on the planet, appears to be on the brink of yet another devastating mass bleaching event driven by prolonged exposure to extreme heat.

Between 2016 and 2017, half of all corals on the Great Barrier Reef died due to stress and starvation caused by back-to-back heat waves that were amplified by climate change. Only the southern third of the reef was spared significant losses during the disaster, which permanently degraded the ecosystem’s northern reaches.

Unfortunately, recent weather forecasts suggest that southern sanctuary—along with the rest of the Great Barrier Reef—may be in for another bout of heat-induced bleaching. While current models suggest the carnage won’t be quite as intense as it was three years ago, coral suffering is likely to be more widespread.

“We’re looking at an event that’s going to be far north all the way to the south,” said Mark Eakin, the coordinator for NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Program. “You’re looking at a bigger, more widespread event.”

For the past few weeks, the Great Barrier Reef has been running a fever, with temperatures along the 1,400 mile-long ecosystem hovering a degree Celsius or more above normal. At these temperatures, corals become stressed and start to bleach, jettisoning the colorful algae that provide them their food and turning a bloodless white. If the water remains warm for too long, the algae won’t return, and the corals will starve.

Experts worry the Great Barrier Reef is now uncomfortably close to that tipping point. Vast swaths of the ecosystem have reached eight “degree heating weeks,” a metric scientists use to describe how long corals have been in the slow cooker. In layman’s terms, it’s “where we expect to see widespread bleaching and significant mortality,” Eakin said.

Image: NOAA Coral Reef Watch

Already, Eakin said, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and others are confirming bleaching up and down the reef.

“NOAA’s latest bleaching forecasts are devastating,” Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, wrote in an email. He warned that the event is still building: “It’s likely to peak near the end of March if temperatures stay high,” he said. At the end of the month, Hughes will be conducting aerial surveys of the reef to determine the extent of the damage.

Following the last mass bleaching-induced dieoff, research led by Hughes determined that nearly a third of the 3,800 individual reefs comprising the Great Barrier Reef were transformed into a “highly altered, degraded system.” The worst deterioration occurred in the north, which lost a large proportion of the branching and table-shaped corals that create the 3D structures that reef-dwelling fish depend on for habitat.

Given the latest forecasts, scientists worry the south could fall into similar ecological disrepair. “The south didn’t bleach in 2016 or 2017, and the corals there are physiologically naïve and very vulnerable,” Hughes said.

At the same time, as coral reef scientist Kim Cobb of the Georgia Institute of Technology pointed out, another year of severe bleaching on northern reefs that are still limping along from the last event could further hamper their ability to recover. “Seeing [these events] happen in such close succession is alarming, frankly,” she said.

Climate change is playing a key role in these recurring heat shocks. Since the mid-1990s, March temperatures in the Coral Sea where the Great Barrier Reef is located have been running warmer than average, making it easier for a heat wave to push corals over the brink. A rapid attribution analysis conducted as the mass bleaching event was unfolding in April 2016 concluded that global warming dramatically increased the likelihood of the hot weather spell that preceded it.

Image: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Worldwide, the situation doesn’t look much better. A 2016 study examined global satellite temperature data and found that 97 percent of coral reefs have experienced warming since 1985, with 60 percent “warming significantly.” A paper published in 2018 found that globally, the frequency of coral bleaching events has quintupled since the 1980s, leaving reefs less time to muster a recovery in between.

For these jewel-toned underwater jungles, heat death is fast becoming an occupational hazard of life on Earth.

“It’s a sobering reality we’re in,” Cobb said. “We’re looking at a wholesale reorganization of global reef ecosystems, right under our eyes.”

“We never imagined that three mass bleaching events could occur within a 5-year period as early as 2016-2020,” Hughes added. “Climate change is here and now—not some distant threat at the end of the century.”

Google Cloud today announced its plans to open four new data center regions. These regions will be in Delhi (India), Doha (Qatar), Melbourne (Australia) and Toronto (Canada) and bring Google Cloud’s total footprint to 26 regions. The company previously announced that it would open regions in Jakarta, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Seoul and Warsaw over the course of the next year. The announcement also comes only a few days after Google opened its Salt Lake City data center.

GCP already had a data center presence in India, Australia and Canada before this announcement, but with these newly announced regions, it now offers two geographically separate regions for in-country disaster recovery, for example.

Google notes that the region in Doha marks the company’s first strategic collaboration agreement to launch a region in the Middle East with the Qatar Free Zones Authority. One of the launch customers there is Bespin Global, a major managed services provider in Asia.

“We work with some of the largest Korean enterprises, helping to drive their digital transformation initiatives. One of the key requirements that we have is that we need to deliver the same quality of service to all of our customers around the globe,” said John Lee, CEO, Bespin Global. “Google Cloud’s continuous investments in expanding their own infrastructure to areas like the Middle East make it possible for us to meet our customers where they are.”

• In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, Honeywell CEO Darius Adamczyk brushed aside the threat posed by quantum computing rivals like IBM and Google.
• Instead, he said the biggest hurdle is the company's reputation. Once known for its digital thermostats, Honeywell has pivoted under Adamczyk to become more of a technology firm serving industrial clients. 
• Its new quantum computer — currently the world's most powerful device — is a key step in that transformation journey. 
• Adamczyk said he expects the new quantum computer to generate revenue this year, and turn a profit in the next few years. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Honeywell officially entered the quantum wars with a bang, introducing on Tuesday what is currently expected to be the world's most powerful supercomputer — at least, compared to the others that have been publicly introduced.

The announcement was a blow to organizations like IBM and Google, which have bickered in recent months over whose quantum capabilities are more powerful.

And it raises the stakes in an increasingly intense battle not just between companies, but between countries, to lead on developing and commercializing the potentially revolutionary technology.

While it is still early days, Honeywell CEO Darius Adamczyk isn't sweating the competition. And his message for rivals and the marketplace is simple: Honeywell is open for business.

The announcement "speaks for itself. We have the best technology in quantum computing that's available in the world today," he told Business Insider in an exclusive interview. "We have a functioning quantum computer, one that really takes customers."

Quantum computers hold the promise to allow companies to run incredibly complex applications very quickly because algorithms can scale much faster compared to those used on standard devices. That's because the tech relies on qubits which, unlike a standard bit that can only act as a one or a zero, can be both of those values at once — significantly upping the processing power. 

Honeywell's approach is different than some competitors because it relies on a trapped ion system, where the qubits are suspended in air using electromagnets — ultimately reducing the number of errors.

But it's not just the computer itself that sets Honeywell apart, according to Adamczyk. It's also the ecosystem the company is building around the machine.

As part of Tuesday's release, Honeywell said it has made investments in two quantum computing software providers: Cambridge Quantum Computing and Zapata Computing. Unlike the quantum startups that focus on providing hardware for the supercomputers, those firms help with building applications and developing systems that increase the capabilities of the devices.

Reputational hurdles

The biggest challenge for the industrial conglomerate might be its reputation.

Honeywell is perhaps best known for manufacturing digital thermostats and other consumer products — a business it doesn't even operate any more.

Under Adamczyk, the firm has pivoted to be what he describes as a "software-industrial company," or a technology business that caters to the industrial sector. And a key part of that is the hundreds of millions of dollars Honeywell invested in its supercomputer.

"There's a big misnomer about who we are and what we do. We're very much a technology company," Adamczyk said. "This is more about the perceptions that Honeywell has to change, which obviously we are going to continue to do a better job of communicating. But the introduction of the world's most powerful quantum computer is a good step in that journey."

Adamczyk said the device will generate revenue this year — a claim supported by the news that JPMorgan Chase is Honeywell's first public customer. He also said he expects the venture to turn profitable in the next few years.

Part of why Adamczyk is so bullish on the trajectory is how powerful the supercomputer is — and the pace at which Honeywell expects to scale the capabilities.

Honeywell's computer has a quantum volume of 64, a metric that factors in the number of qubits and the complexity of the problem that the supercomputer must solve. That's double the amount the nearest competitor has disclosed publicly.

And Honeywell expects that to grow tenfold each year for the next five years, well beyond the pace at which others are anticipating to scale.

"Quantum volume is likely to be the best measure that we have for looking at machines in this era," Cambridge Quantum Computing CEO Ilyas Khan told Business Insider.

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Microsoft is allowing and encouraging its employees to work from home as the novel coronavirus outbreak continues to spread in countries around the world. The software giant has updated its guidelines for employees, allowing anyone based in Seattle or San Francisco to work from home through March 9th. Microsoft is also recommending that those who are feeling sick, have a compromised immune system, or have had contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19 (the disease caused by the novel coronavirus) should work from home.

In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, Microsoft reveals that around half of its “multiple sites” in mainland China are open with temperature screenings in place. Working from home is optional at Microsoft’s Chinese...

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• Google is making the premium paid features in its Hangouts Meet video-conferencing features free until September 30, extended from the previous date of July 1, to help businesses and schools keep operating remotely as they're impacted by the coronavirus.
• Those features include being able to have up to 250 participants per call, live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain, and the ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive. 
• "As more employees, educators, and students work remotely in response to the spread of COVID-19, we want to do our part to help them stay connected and productive." Google wrote in a blog post.
• Zoom, a leading competitor to Google's chat tools, lifted time limits on its free product for users in China and made its product free for schools. 
• Analysts say that cloud software tools that help people stay connected could actually benefit from increased usage due to the coronavirus, as more people work remotely.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Google is giving everybody free access to its advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing features for free until September 30, to help businesses and schools that have been impacted by the coronavirus disease, COVID-19. 

At the beginning of March, Google said it would make its premium Hangouts Meet features free until July 1. On Tuesday, that was extended to September 30. G Suite also now has over 6 million paying businesses as of March, up from 5 million in February 2019, the company told CNBC on Tuesday.

In a blog post, the company said "as more employees, educators, and students work remotely in response to the spread of COVID-19, we want to do our part to help them stay connected and productive." 

Hangouts is part of Google's G Suite set of productivity tools, alongside Google Docs and Sheets. It also has an education focused version of its product and an enterprise version for large businesses called Hangouts Meet, in an paid enterprise version of G Suite. It's that premium version that will be made free until the end of September.

Those features include being able to have up to 250 participants per call, live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain, and the ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive. 

This comes well after Zoom, a competitor to Google's Hangouts Meet tool, lifted time limits on its free product for users in China and made the product free for schools. 

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, many schools and offices have been closed. Tools like Google Hangouts, Zoom, and Cisco's WebEx are being used to allow classes to continue remotely for students of all ages and grade levels. Zoom, for its part, has seen a tremendous spike in usage, even as it faces scrutiny over its security and privacy practices, going from 10 million daily active users in December to 200 million by the end of March.

"We're committed to supporting our users and customers during this challenging time, and are continuing to scale our infrastructure to support greater Hangouts Meet demand, ensuring streamlined, reliable access to the service throughout this period," Google said in a blog post in March.

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Like most giant cable TV companies, AT&T is losing angry subscribers hand over first as they flock to cheaper, more flexible streaming services. AT&T lost a whopping 4 million pay TV subscribers last year; 1.16 million in the last three months of 2019 alone. Most of these “cord cutters” left for the usual reasons: high prices, sneaky fees, and terrible customer service.

So how is AT&T trying to fix it? By doubling down on all the bad ideas that caused the problem in the first place.

The company this week announced the launch of AT&T TV, a new creatively-named streaming TV service that was previously only available in 13 markets as part of a beta.

On its surface, AT&T’s new streaming service looks promising. The company insists that users can sign up for new streaming TV service starting at $50 a month. Users can also bundle 1 gigabit AT&T broadband (assuming it’s available) and TV service for $80 a month.

"Our customers told us what they want from their TV service and we built AT&T TV around that,” AT&T executive Thaddeus Arroyo said of the new offering.

But upon closer inspection AT&T’s offer begins to quickly unravel, unveiling a service that doubles down on all the things US consumers have made it very clear they don’t want.

For starters, AT&T’s promotional rates are only good for twelve months, after which the price of the service skyrockets. The company’s $50, $55, $65, and $70 per month rates all nearly double after twelve months to $93, $110, $124, and $135 per month, respectively.

AT&T’s advertised price also doesn’t include a bevy of misleading surcharges and fees, a tactic cable and broadband providers have long utilized to help them falsely advertise a lower price. AT&T doesn’t even tell you how much these added surcharges and fees will cost you until you actually order service, leaving you blindsided when your bill arrives.

There’s a $20 activation fee unless you order online. There’s an additional $8.49 per month “regional sports networks” fee for sports programming you may or may not watch. And should you cancel service before your contract is up—there’s an early termination fee (ETF) that will cost you $15 for each month left on your contract.

“With the proliferation of add-on fees, it’s nearly impossible for consumers to find out the full cost of a cable package before they get locked into a contract—and cable companies count on this,” groups like Consumer Reports have said of the practice. Lawmakers and regulators (usually) turn a blind eye to this behavior, despite it being glorified false advertising.

AT&T is offering users proprietary, Android-based streaming box to fuel the service. Your first box is free, but each additional box for other rooms in the house will run you $120 each. Most streaming alternatives have ditch the traditional cable box, the monopoly over which generates the cable TV industry an additional $21 billion every year.

Most streaming video alternatives usually lack such sneaky surcharges, contracts, ETFs, and hidden fees, resulting in consistently higher customer service ratings as a result.

AT&T’s price hikes are a byproduct of AT&T’s obsession with merger mania. AT&T spent more than $150 billion on mergers in the last five years alone (DirecTV, Time Warner), hoping this greater size and leverage would help it dominate the video space. To recoup that debt, AT&T is passing it off to its customers in the form of price hikes.

Consumers have made it very clear they’re tired of sneaky fees, misleading promotional rates, and proprietary, locked down cable industry hardware. Yet AT&T, after spending a year watching millions of customers run for the exits, is engaging in all the exact behavior that created this problem in the first place.

Twitter has announced that it will be “strongly encouraging” all of its employees around the world to work from home “if able,” as the company seeks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. The company hasn’t said how long it will be encouraging employees to stay home.

The request for employees to work at home isn’t a mandatory requirement, and those who prefer or need to come into Twitter’s offices will still be allowed to do so (except in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea, due to government restrictions there). Twitter’s announcement also notes that it’s working to increase deep cleaning and sanitizing, adding additional notices for good hygiene, and pre-packaging and pre-plating food to help avoid spreading...

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The company shrunk Messenger's mobile app from 1.7 million lines of code to 360,000 to reduce application size and increase speed. 

Near the end of last year, Google outlined a new strategy of bundling together new software tricks for its Pixel phones into “feature drops” instead of trickling those features out individually. Today, the company is announcing its second feature drop, with much of the new stuff available for the Pixel 2 and newer — but some Pixel 4 exclusives in there.

It introduces a new Motion Sense gesture for the Pixel 4 and 4 XL: just “tap” above your phone with a flat hand (without actually touching it) to pause and resume music or other audio that’s playing.

Personally, I’m someone who quickly turned off Motion Sense, so I’m more excited about the Pixel phones picking up more location-based smarts. “You can now set up a rule to automatically...

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Everyone agrees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that if you want to avoid the transmission of disease, including the novel coronavirus, the best way to do that is to wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water, and avoid touching your face. But if you’re traveling, or otherwise don’t have access to soap and water, the next best thing is a hand sanitizer.

Can’t find one? You’re not alone. With increasing public awareness about the coronavirus outbreak, hand sanitizers are becoming difficult — if not impossible — to find. (A quick search on Amazon found most pocket-sized dispensers and wipes listed as “Currently unavailable.”)

However, if you really want some to carry around and can’t find any in your...

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Jeep’s powerful new electric bike, which it first teased during its Groundhog Day-themed Super Bowl ad, is now available for preorder. But be forewarned: this one ain’t cheap.

The all-terrain electric mountain bike will go on sale in June 2020 for the wallet-destroying price of $5,899. That puts Jeep squarely in the top echelons of e-bikes in terms of price, alongside premium offerings from noted manufacturers like Specialized and Trek. It’s a risky move, too, considering you can get a really great e-bike for around $1,500. Even VanMoof, which is widely seen as the Mercedes-Benz C-Class of e-bikes, retails for around $2,000 less than what Jeep is asking for.

That said, you get a lot of...

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• U.S. cases of coronavirus are expected to skyrocket in the upcoming days, but a Yale health expert and radiologist says there's no reason to panic.
• The number of confirmed cases will increase in the next week or so as existing cases are identified, he said.
• As patients seek health care attention, even for the seasonal flu, facilities will be under stress to handle the volume of patients.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The United States is expected to see its number of coronavirus cases soar in the upcoming days, but according to Yale professor Howard P. Forman, a practicing radiologist and expert in healthcare management, you shouldn't be alarmed.

The confirmed number of coronavirus cases will likely appear to skyrocket, Forman explained in an interview with Yale Insights Sunday. But the documented numbers will increase because existing cases will become properly tested and identified.

"There is absolutely going to be an explosion in the number of identified cases," Forman told Yale Insights. "But how fast that number increases is highly dependent on how fast we can test."

Until now, the number of test kits in the U.S. has been inadequate, Forman said. But as testing becomes more readily available, cases current cases will be uncovered.

As more people seek treatment even for the seasonal flu, health care systems will be spread thin, especially when it comes to ventilator beds for patients with severe cases, according to Forman. But he says most hospitals and health facilities are equipped with emergency planning for scenarios like this (read more about what hospitals are being told by the CDC to do to prepare for the coronavirus here).

There are more than 87,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide and the death toll surpassed 3,000. The U.S. confirmed the first death from coronavirus over the weekend and the first case in New York City.

"The numbers may look gruesome over the next week or so, but these are existing cases that are finally being diagnosed," Forman said.

SEE ALSO: Companies around the world are telling their employees to work from home amid the coronavirus outbreak

READ MORE: Chinese car company Geely launched its newest compact SUV with an air-filtration system meant to combat the coronavirus

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