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Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

CACI International

CACI International Inc. – One Stop Destination for IT and Simulations Software Services.

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CACI International Inc. is an American information technology company that mainly works for the US federal government as 95% of the company contracts are from the federal government. The company headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia. Though it mainly works to provide IT services to the intelligence and the defense department of the government, it operates in different countries to offer custom software and IT services to its customers overseas.

The variety of services offered by CACI International Inc. includes manufacturing of technology systems, custom software development, integration and operations, simulation, and development of the proprietary database as well as software products.

The Back Story CACI International

Herb Karr and Harry Markowitz left their well-paying job at RAND Corporation to establish CACI in 1962. The company was founded on July 17 of the same year, and the main focus of the company was to sell the SIMSCRIPT simulation programming language. SIMSCRIPT is the first simulation programming language, which the two founders had developed at RAND Corporation.

CACI International
Image Source: politico.com

The optimized planning of starting the company brought $34,000 in revenue to the founders in its first year of operations. In 1963, the company bagged a contract from the government to develop an inventory control simulation for the Navy’s Ships Parts Control Center in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. In the first five years, the company released a compiler to translate the SIMSCRIPT programs named Simscript 1.5 and also started to work on information processing systems, QUICK QWERY being their first such proprietary product.

The Growth and Expansion

CACI started with the name California Analysis Center, Inc. and was later changed to Consolidated Analysis Center, Incorporated in 1967. The next year, just in six years of its inception, CACI went public and topped the revenues by $1 million.

For the ten years of its beginning, CACI was offering its services to various departments of the state government like from management of vehicle registration to licensing and wheeled-vehicle revenue support and from false emergency alarm billing systems to housing registration systems. And in 1974, the company put its first step forward to expand in other countries as well. CACI established its first headquarter in Europe, i.e., in The Hague. The other European offices were set up in the major cities in Europe, like London, Dublin, Milan, and Bermuda.  This expansion brought the company $1 million of revenues within three years. By the end of the decade, CACI had won contracts from the US Defence and the Department of Justice. 

In the 80s, CACI started to expand its operations and entered into the field of IT. During these years, it made revenues worth $100 million annually. In 1988, CACI developed and marketed optical imaging systems for records management as its proprietary product.

CACI International
Image Source: wikimedia.org

The beginning of the 90s made CACI experiment with the emerging networking technology. During the same time, the company made some of the major acquisitions, including American Legal Systems Corp., some shares of the government-owned SofTech, Pinpoint Analysis Ltd. and Miracle Products Ltd., etc. These years brought the company around $200 to $250 million annual revenues. The expansion into the IT sector made CACI start projects in partnership with names like AT&T, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Unisys, etc. By this time, the company had started to deal in computer hardware, software, and database products.

Beginning with the year 2000, CACI made some major investments and acquisitions. In 2002, it also moved from the NASDAQ to the Big Board on the New York Stock Exchange. Till now, the company had opened around 90 offices in the US and Europe. In 2004, the revenues of the company touched the $1 billion mark, and it became a Unicorn company. The average annual revenue for the company has been around $5.7 billion for the past few years, and approximately 23,000 employees are working for the company around the world. The company has been constant in the Fortune 1000 Largest Companies list for many years.

The CEO: John Mengucci

John Mengucci has been serving CACI as the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) since July 2019. He is known for his leadership skills as he has been working at some prominent positions at various big-name companies. Mengucci has a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Science from Clarkson University, which he completed in 1984. After he completed the bachelor’s degree, he started to work as a software engineer at Babcock & Wilcox in 1984 and then, joined Syracuse University in 1992 to pursue an MBA degree.

In June 2006, Mengucci became the president of the IS&GS-Defense department at Lockheed Martin, and in 2010, he was appointed as the president of the Global Solutions-Civil department of the same company. He then left the company to join CACI in 2012.

Altice Europe

Altice Europe – The Journey of the Famous French Cable and Telecommunication Company.

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Altice Europe is a France-based telecommunication company with a market capitalization of $4.8B. The company is the second-largest telecommunication and mass media company in France after Orange. A French-Israeli billionaire named Patrick Drahi founded Altice in 2001 as a cable television company. Today, apart from the TV service, Altice is a leader in internet and telephone subscription service.

The major countries of services for Altice include Western Europe, Israel, and the Caribbean. The company has also been providing its services in the US as one of the most used telephone and cable services. But in 2019, the company discontinued its operations in the US as a result of the spinning off of the company via an IPO in 2019.

A Brief Introduction

The company headquarters of Altice Europe lies in Woerden, Netherlands, and was founded in 2001 by Patrick Drahi. Cable television, Direct-broadcast satellite, broadcasting, broadband and telephony services, mass media are some of the fields Altice excels in and has its branches in several parts of the world. As of the records from 2017, the company is generating around €2,54 billion annual revenues and has over 47000 people working for it. Altice Dominicana S.A., Altice Portugal, Altice France (SFR), and Hot are some of its subsidiary companies. In the past 20 years, the company has seen many ups and downs, but still stands as one of the largest telecom networks in the world.

Altice Europe
Image Source: altice.net

The Founding Story of Altice Europe

The founder of Altice Europe, Patrick Drahi, was already working in the field of cable television. He left his position from his earlier cable TV business and sold his share in the UPC for approximately 40 million Euros. He then started another cable company with the name Altice ATCE.AS in Amsterdam. The company started its operation by buying several European cable companies. In the years between 2002 to 2007, he was able to merge multiple regional companies into one and established Numericable.

By 2009, Altice was also expanding to other countries by acquiring their regional cable companies, Hot from Israel being one of them. The company also acquired the operations of Orange Dominicana of Orange for $1.4 billion in 2013. The next year, Altice went on to overtake the subsidiary company of Vivendi, SFR. During the same time, Numericable also bought the operations of Virgin Mobile France.

Altice also acquired the 70% stakes in Suddenlink Communications that helped Altice to grow in the US, and in Portugal, the company bought Portugal Telecom. In March 2017, Altice also acquired Teads, a video ad-tech firm. The same year, Altice also rebranded the company logo, and the slogan, for both Altice Europe and Altice USA to unify the telecommunication operations of Altice under one name. The slogan was “Together Has No Limits”.

In June 2019, Altice had an IPO and spun off the USA division of the Altice group to become a self-governing entity. The resultant company has the same logo and is also chaired by Patrick Drahi but operates as an independent company.

The Founder: Patrick Drahi

Patrick Drahi was born on 20 August 1963 in Casablanca, Morocco. He belonged to a Jewish family, which moved to Montpellier, France, when Drahi was 15 years old. After completing his high school education, Drahi joined the École Polytechnique University in Paris, where he received an engineering degree and a post-graduate degree in optics and electronics.

Altice Europe Founder
Image Source: capacitymedia.com

Drahi started his career by establishing a cable business in France in collaboration with an American company. After selling his post at the company, he then founded Altice Europe in 2001.

Other than Altice, Drahi founded Numericable as well as an international news channel, named i24news which operates in French, Arabic, and English languages. He also owns the Israeli cable television company HOT. Drahi has been named the third-richest person in France by Forbes in 2015, and till 2016, he was the richest person in Israel. In 2021, he was at the 248th rank on the Billionaires 2020 list of Forbes.

Windows 10x

Windows Cancels 10x, Launched a New Update for Windows 10 Instead.

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Windows 10 have been one of the most popular OS by Microsoft, and before the pandemic, the company had announced an even better version of the OS, i.e., Windows 10x. But today, Microsoft took it to their official blog and revealed that the company doesn’t have any plans to release the much-anticipated Windows 10x, also known by the codename ‘Santorini’. Rather, it will revamp the existing Windows 10. Microsoft also released a new version of the OS, version 21H1.

The Early Announcement

In 2019, Microsoft had announced that the company will release a new OS, Windows 10x, along with Microsoft’s new dual-screen devices. It was at the time when Microsoft announced its dual-screen foldable laptop, the Surface Neo, in October 2019. The company called Windows 10x, and the dual-screen laptops, its most ambitious projects of all time. But exactly one year ago, the company changed its statement and revealed that it is also planning to release the OS for the single-screen laptops, and those will be the first to get access to Windows 10x. Even during the last announcement, Microsoft had not given any dates on when it will officially launch the OS for any of the devices.

The Cancellation of Windows 10x

Though the company was really excited about the new OS for its lightweight devices, Microsoft today announced that it is has pulled the plug on Windows 10X. The company revealed the information in a blog post that included the announcement of the new update to the existing Windows 10.

In the announcement, Microsoft said that it was intending to launch the 10x technology for a certain group of customers. But in the past two years of exploration and experiments, the company has concluded that 10x can serve a larger group of people, so launching it for only a specific group won’t be fair. So instead of launching a separate OS, windows 10x, the company will be incorporating the key foundational 10X technology into the existing Windows 10 and other products of the company so that all the Windows customers can get benefitted.

Windows 10x
Image Source: storial.in

“Instead of bringing a product called Windows 10X to market in 2021 like we originally intended, we are leveraging learnings from our journey thus far and accelerating the integration of key foundational 10X technology into other parts of Windows and products at the company,” said the head of Windows servicing and delivery, John Cable, in a statement. 

Microsoft also confirmed that it has already started to include some of the 10x features into the Windows products, like the new app container technology has already been integrated into the Microsft products like the Microsoft Defender Application Guard and the Voice Typing.

The New Version 21H1 Update

Microsoft, along with announcing the cancellation of Windows 10x, also announced the rollout of the new version 21H1 update for Windows 10. The company announced the update release in February 2021 and finally launched it in May. Microsoft claimed that the new update is a result of the ongoing work from home situation, and it will provide a better experience for the customers in terms of security, remote access, speed and quality.

According to the blog post, the update won’t be available right away, and the company is trying to help the customers to get the most out of it, so it is going to offer a reliable download to them. The update’s preview build was already available for the Windows Insider Program, and after the positive feedback from the community, the update is finally out for the customers.

How to Get the Update

The company has announced the new update for the devices running the Windows 10 version 2004 and further. The users can go to their Windows settings and select “Windows Update” under “Update & Security”. Here they have to select “Check for Updates”. The screen will show the “Download and install” option, and then, after clicking on that option, the update will download onto the computer. The update is similar to a monthly Windows update, and you can directly start updating the OS by running the downloaded file. According to the company, the update will run faster on Windows 10, version 2004, and version 20H2.

Android 12

The Android 12 Leak Reveals Changes in Notification and Widget before Google I/O Event

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Google is all set to host its annual Google I/O event starting from 18th May, and before that, we have got some information on what it has in store for its huge customer base. The so-called leak is said to be a mere preview of what Google has brought for its users in terms of the updated new Android 12 and other devices that the company is about to launch at the event.

Google I/O 2021

Google I/O is an annual developer conference hosted by Google every year. It is a two to three days event, mostly held in the month of May, where the company showcases and launches its new products and services. Starting from 2008, the company has hosted 13 such events and has introduced new technologies to its customers, Android being one of them. Last year’s Google I/O event got cancelled due to the spread of the Coronavirus, and this year, the company is hosting the conference online through a live stream. The keynote will start on Tuesday, May 18th, at 1 PM ET/10 AM PT and will end on 20th May.

The Last Minute Android 12 Features Leak

Google published its Google I/O event schedule on 15th May, and along with that, there has been some information leak about the products and services that are to be launched during the event. The ‘leak’ aka the preview of these services has also given a glimpse of the changes made to the all-new Android 12. Recently, a video from the Jon Prosser show included a few slides of a presentation on Android 12, and those slides have a lot to say about Android 12.

The slides suggest that the new Android 12 will come with a new and revamped UI. The first slide describes sentences like, “A beautiful new experience,” “Stronger privacy and security protections,” and “All of your devices work better together.” So clearly, the company has worked on the looks as well as the security settings for Android 12. Further, the slide shows that there have been changes to the widgets and the notification bar, as one of the slides include different looking brightness toggle, weather widget, analog clock widget, a snooze/dismiss toggle, new media widget and notifications. Other than that, one of the slides from the Prosser show also displayed a new keyboard design and a new lock screen with a larger clock.

There have already been a lot of talks about Android 12 through leaks and rumours, among which there are a few that quite matches the new information from the Jon Prosser show. Only a day’s wait, and we will be able to know if there is even a little information that is correct about Android 12. If the rumours come out to be true, the new Android 12 will be the one to get the most advanced updates.

What Else to Expect?

Though Android 12 is said to be the prime attraction of the event, the much anticipated Pixel Watch may also steal the limelight and interest many. Jon Prosser show has already given a glimpse of a circular watch from Google last month. So we can expect the launch of Google’s first smartwatch at the event after it acquired Fitbit.

Also, there has been news that Samsung is also planning to launch the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 using Google’s operating system. So there may be an announcement of the same at the event. Other than that, since Google has already tweeted about the new Pixel Buds, it may also announce the launch of the same at Google I/O.

Though Google was likely to announce the new Pixel 5a at the event, since there has been an ongoing shortage of chips globally, maybe the company will skip launching the smartphone. There may be a similar case with the new mobile processor named Whitechapel (which the company have been working on for a while), as Google might not be able to launch the processor at the event. But we can at least expect the announcement of the same.

How to Watch the Live Stream?

Google’s I/O event will be a three days event, and the company will host its keynote through a live stream. Google has given all the details about the live stream on the Google I/O’ official website. The live stream of the opening keynote will be on YouTube, but to access the workshops, AMAs, live Q&A, and the other Google I/O event-related services, one needs to register to Google I/O through its website.

Insight Enterprises : The Largest B2B IT Service Providers, Committed to Complete Customer Satisfaction

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Small steps take people to bigger changes, and Insight Enterprises is one such example. Insight Enterprises is an Arizona-based technology company, which started as a computer storage sellers and turned into one of the largest business-to-business IT service providers in the world. The company specializes in B2B commercial and public sector IT solutions and have been offering its services to its global customer base for the past 33 years. The company is best known for its direct marketing strategy of selling brand-name microcomputers, peripherals, and software through the catalogue, phone, and Internet.

About the Company

Since Insight Enterprises is a B2B service provider, its services include helping organizations manage their resources and be future-ready. The company provides its hardware and software solution to big enterprises and expertise in spanning cloud, IoT, managed services, etc. Insight Enterprises have helped many industry leaders and has established its offices in 19 different countries across the globe.

Insight Enterprises currently is serving in various industrial sectors, including construction, enterprise business, finance, retail and manufacturing, etc. The major field of work of the company includes data centre, devices, servers, software, licensing, Power, Storage, IT Services, etc.  As per the 2019 records, Insight Enterprises earned annual revenue of $7.73 billion and around 11000 people working at its global offices.

The Back History of Insight Enterprises

Two brothers and then college students, Eric Crown and Tim Crown founded Hard Drives International in 1986 with a cash advance of $2000 from a credit card in a rented 100 square feet of office space. The company started as a computer storage selling business, where the customer could place their orders through mails. The two were successful at selling hard drives at a lower price and eventually, made a $20,000 profit in the first year of their company.

In 1988, they renamed the company Drives International to Insight Direct and chose magazine ads and toll-free telephone lines to sell mass storage products. The founders changed the name of the company to Insight Enterprises in 1991 and started to sell computers and their accessories, by investing around $1.5 million each month on ads in print media. By 1993, the company had started to focus on corporate customers and launched its one-day shipping service with the name, Air Insight. During the same time, the company also started to manufacture its own products, including computers and peripheral devices, and just in 7 years of its inception, in 1995, the company had its first IPO on NASDAQ.

The International Expansion

By the year 1997, Insight Enterprises started to expand its operations overseas and acquired the Montreal based TC Computers. The next year, the company went on to acquire Choice Peripherals Ltd., Plusnet Technologies Ltd., and Force 9 in 1998, helping the company enter Europe.

The 2000s have been the years of expansion for the company, as it took over the operations of Action Computer Supplies Holdings PLC (2001) of the U.K., Comark (2002), Software Spectrum (2006), Calence LLC (2008) and Minx Ltd. (2008).

In 2015, Insight Enterprises opted to be more focused on customer relations and interaction. The company acquired Boston based company BlueMetal in the same year to expand its operations in the design and technology architectural field, and the next year, it acquired Australian-based business technology consulting company Ignia.

Insight also acquired the Minnesota-based Datalink for $11.25 per share in 2016 and purchased the Dutch cloud service provider Caase.com in 2017. In the following years, the company made major acquisitions like Cardinal Solutions (2018) and PCM, Inc. (2019).

The CEO at Insight Enterprises

Ken Lamneck is the current CEO and the president of Insight Enterprises. He completed a bachelor’s degree in Science from the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Texas at El Paso. Lamneck has got more than 25 years of experience in corporate.

Lamneck started his career with the U.S. Army and has been one of the contributors in the development of the software used in the army known as the Patriot Missile System. After serving the arming for five years, he joined IBM as an engineer. Later, he worked at various ranks in Arrow Electronics and was promoted to be the president of the Industrial Computer Products business of the company in 1997. In 2004, switching his job from Arrow Electronics to Tech Data Corp., Lamneck then joined Insight Enterprises in 2010 as the CEO and the President of the company.

Intel

Intel Unveils the New 11th Gen Tiger Lake-H Processors for Gamers and Content Creators

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After the successful launch of the 11th Gen Intel Core H35 series, Intel has just launched its new series of Mobile Processors for the gaming geeks, business professionals and content creators. The company launched the 11th Generation Intel Core H-series, also known as the “Tiger Lake-H”, on Tuesday, claiming that the chip delivers the highest performance in laptops.

The 11th Gen H-series mobile processors include Core i9-11980HK, Core i9-11980H, Core i7-11800H, Core i5-11400H, Core i5-11260H. The processors are based on the Xe architecture, but the company is not in favour of branding them as Xe.

What’s New?

Intel’s new upgraded 11th Gen core Tiger Lake-H is a 10nm processor based on SuperFin process technology, specifically built to support high-end gaming and professional laptops. According to the company, the new processors are built on three eight-core chips and two six-core chips. The newly launched processors can access the high-speed GDDR6 memory directly and hence render a higher frame rate with lower latency. These are also capable of loading large textures faster. Compared to Intel’s 10th Gen H-series processors, the 11th Gen offers 2.5 times the total PCIe bandwidth to the CPU.

“These new H-series processors are an exciting extension of our 11th Gen mobile family with double-digit single-core and multi-core performance improvements, leading game play, direct-attached storage and 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes for true enthusiast-level platform bandwidth,” said Chris Walker, the corporate VP and GM of the Mobile Client Platforms Group at Intel.

Along with the 11th Gen processors, the company also unveiled new Intel vPro H-series processors, the eight-core and 16-thread Intel Core i9-11950H, and the Intel Xeon W-11000 series mobile processors.

The Comparison

Intel revealed that the Core i9-11980HK processor is the most powerful among all Intel processors and is best suited for gamers and boasts a 5GHz speed. Intel claimed that the processor is a better version of its Comet Lake processor and took AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX for comparison and claimed that core Tiger Lake-H provides 15 per cent higher performance than the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX.

During the keynote, Intel displayed a chart of games, including Hitman 3, War Thunder, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Far Cry New Dawn, etc., to compare the performances of the Tiger Lake-H and the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX. The company also compared how better the former handles the heavy apps like Adobe Video Creation Workflow than the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX. And it turned out to be 18 per cent better at app handling and 24 per cent better in photo processing than the AMD processor.

Laptops to Get the H-series processors

Along with the launch of the new processor, Intel also revealed that in the coming months, more than 80 devices are going to include the newly launched Intel H-series processor. Since the processor has been developed to fulfil the needs of gamers, business professionals and content creators, many laptop companies, including Asus, Dell and Lenovo, have already announced new laptops built on this processor.

Asus is all set to bring the Zephyrus series laptops, and according to the company, these laptops will boast Intel’s 11th gen Intel Core H-series chips. In the same league, Lenovo has also revealed that the Legion 7i and 5i Pro laptops from the company will also include the new Intel 11th Generation Intel Core H-series. These laptops are gaming laptops and will hit the market in the coming June and July months.

The mobile workstations, ZBook Fury G8, the ZBook Power G8, and the ZBook Studio G8 from HP are also to be powered by the newly launched chip. These are the gaming laptops and support Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU. Other than these companies, Dell is also going to update its upcoming series of laptops, i.e., Alienware M15, Dell G15, Alienware X-Series, XPS 15 and XPS 17 laptops, with the H-series processors by Intel.