January 9, 2012
Volume XXXVII, Issue 12
BitTorrent Releases Cloud Storage System
Excerpted from ZDNet News Report by Charlie Osborne
BitTorrent has unveiled a personal cloud storage system to rival sharing services like Dropbox, Insync, and Google Docs.
The new application is simply called Share, and allows users access to cloud storage in order to save and exchange personal files.
Powered by BitTorrent, Share is a free service that makes it possible to send video, images, and other file types to other users without size limits. The application aims to make the process of sharing large files easier - without requiring users to learn how to use BitTorrent software.
It is likely to appeal to those who wish to share files within select groups rather than making them available to anyone with a BitTorrent client, and also do not have the time to create .torrent files and release them.
Share will eventually be integrated into BitTorrent's client uTorrent, adding more features to the software. However, the trade-off requires increasing the weight of the popular lightweight client.
With the tagline, "no more storage limits, no more fees," the service joins the storage wars with a unique sales proposition. Instead of relying on a witty slogan, BitTorrent chooses to prod at the sore spot many users complain of - additional storage fees.
The torrent service is promoting the application by emphasizing that account holders can transfer 'oversized' files without incurring any fees. These could include high-resolution photo collections and HD movies. Files are stored in the cloud, so users aren't required to synchronize themselves and are able to complete transfers without full Internet access for the duration of the exchange.
Users can have an unlimited number of contacts with whom to share files, and "group share" features allow users to maintain control over who has access to what files in their accounts. Contacts are able to comment on files in the same way that torrent websites implement user-generated validity checks files shared online to determine whether or not they're real.
BitTorrent Strategist Shahi Ghanem, who will be keynoting on Wednesday at the CONTENT IN THE CLOUD Conference at CES, said that the storage service is powered by Amazon's EC2 and S3 cloud-based storage servers, so bandwidth shouldn't be a concern.
The torrent service also has future plans to build its own P2P-powered personal cloud storage system. Although the service isn't yet functional, the system in development works on the premise that users will be able to share hard drive space in return for free storage facilities.
For those of us who grew up with file-sharing services, the idea of a free, limitless cloud storage service is enticing.
Apache Announces Hadoop 1.0
Excerpted from The Inquirer Report by Chris Martin
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced Hadoop 1.0 - a milestone in cloud computing.
The Hadoop open source software project accomplished its first full release after six years of development. Hadoop is a software framework for reliable, scalable, distributed computing under a free license.
The release 1.0 number is significant because it means that Apache has declared Hadoop ready for the enterprise. Apache describes it as "a foundation of cloud computing".
"This release is the culmination of a lot of hard work and cooperation from a vibrant Apache community group of dedicated software developers and committers that has brought new levels of stability and production expertise to the Hadoop project," said Arun Murthy, VP of Apache Hadoop.
"Hadoop is becoming the de facto data platform that enables organizations to store, process, and query vast torrents of data, and the new release represents an important step forward in performance, stability, and security," he added.
Apache Hadoop allows for the distributed processing of large data sets - often petabytes - across clusters of computers using a simple Java-based programming model. It connects thousands of servers together to achieve super-computing power allowing businesses to manage, store, and crunch though data in an efficient and economical way.
The Hadoop framework is used by some big name organizations including Amazon, Apple, eBay, Facebook , IBM, and Yahoo. These firms, as well as others, have helped test and develop the software to get it stable enough for version 1.0.
Yahoo has significantly contributed to the project and hosts the largest Hadoop production environment with more than 42,000 nodes.
Version 1.0 includes a long list of bug fixes from previous versions along with performance enhancements, security and support for writing to the Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS), which previously was read-only.
Jay Rossiter, SVP of the cloud platform group at Yahoo said, "Apache Hadoop will continue to be an important area of investment for Yahoo. Today Hadoop powers every click at Yahoo, helping to deliver personalized content and experiences to more than 700 million consumers worldwide."
Cloud Computing Skills Demand Skyrocketing
Excerpted from CRN Report by Andrew Hickey
The demand for cloud computing skills has exploded, with hiring for cloud computing expertise growing sixty-one percent year-over-year, according to a recent report from Wanted Analytics, a talent research firm.
According to the report, over the past 90 days employers and staffing firms have placed more than 10,000 job ads that included cloud computing skills and experience as requirements. Those ads came from more than 2,400 companies in that 90-day period, which ultimately pushed cloud hiring demand up 61% year-over-year.
The need for cloud computing skills has been pushing the market for months. Solution providers are seeking cloud-ready employees to bring their businesses to the next level. Additionally, a host of major IT companies, including HP and others, have launched cloud-specific certifications to arm the market with cloud skills and competence. And solution providers like Bluewolf have begun offering training programs, which in some cases are free, to deepen the cloud computing talent pool.
The cloud computing market is evolving at such a pace that while the number of job postings is skyrocketing, the talent isn't there to fill the positions.
"There are not enough skilled resources out there," Corinne Sklar, Bluewolf Vice President of Marketing, said. "There's just not enough in the market."
Eric Berridge, Bluewolf Co-Founder and Principal, added: "The talent gap this revolution is creating is wide and dangerous. For the most part these IT pros don't exist, and if we don't train them, America is going to fall seriously behind."
Among the most common positions that require cloud computing experience are computer specialists and programmers, but the recent cloud boom has also created a major need for cloud expertise in software and cloud applications.
San Francisco represented the metropolitan area with the highest volume of job postings and ads seeking cloud computing skills during the past 90 days. According to Wanted Analytics, San Francisco-area recruiters placed more than 1,000 unique job listings, representing growth of 95% year-over-year. San Francisco was followed by Seattle, San Jose, Washington, DC and New York.
The cloud job push also extends beyond IT jobs. Positions including marketing managers, sales managers, customer service representatives, and cargo and freight agents are also requiring cloud computing skills.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The second annual CONTENT IN THE CLOUD Conference will take place at the 2012 CES this Wednesday January 11th in the Las Vegas Convention Center.
This show will take you on an insider's tour of the many ways cloud computing is revolutionizing entertainment delivery, and enable you to come away with a deeper understanding of the impact of this technology on all parties involved in content distribution.
The event is co-sponsored by Phoenix Marketing International, which will unveil new research on the subject at this conference. Attendees will also receive a copy of the DCIA's 2011 Annual Report.
Our opening keynote will be "A Vision for Content in the Cloud" by Mike West, Founder & CTO, GenosTV. This presentation will set the stage for the entire conference program that follows, which will delve into the many ways that cloud computing is transforming content delivery.
Our first panel will explore "The Impact on Consumers of Implementing Cloud Computing for Media Storage." What does cloud storage mean to users in terms of accessing entertainment content and owning copies of movies, music, TV shows, and games? Panelists will include Sean Barger, CEO, Equilibrium; Jim Cady, CEO, Slacker; Ian Donahue, Co-Founder, RedThorne Media; Ed Haslam, SVP, Marketing, YuMe; Gigi Johnson, Executive Director, Maremel Institute; Jostein Svendsen, CEO, WeVideo; and Dave Toole, CEO, MEDIAmobz.
Our second keynote will be "Consumer Benefits of Cloud-Delivered Content: Ubiquity, Cost, Portability Improvements" by Shahi Ghanem, EVP, Strategy, BitTorrent. Cloud-based solutions are being applied to popular entertainment properties. What are the advantages to users versus older methods of online distribution?
Our third keynote will be "Consumer Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content: Privacy, Reliability, Security Issues" by Jim Burger, Member, Dow Lohnes. Cloud security is raising serious questions: What experiences have other industries had with inadvertent leaks or intentional hacking of confidential data? What can users do to mitigate not having access to their applications or accidentally losing their data when they go offline? What happens if a cloud provider goes out of business?
Our next panel will discuss "The Impact on Telecommunications Industries of Cloud Computing." How will cloud computing affect the way broadband network providers manage their intellectual property, utilize network resources, and provision new services? Tom Mulally, Principal Analyst, Numagic Consulting, will moderate panelists Sean Jennings, VP, Solutions Architecture, Virtustream; Wayne Josel, Counsel, Media & Entertainment, Hughes Hubbard & Reed; Bill Kallman, President & CEO, Scayl; Monica Ricci, Director of Product Marketing, CSG Systems; Nick Strauss, Director of Sales, Verizon Digital Media Services, Mark Taylor, VP, Media and IP Services, Level 3; and Richard Yang, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Yale University.
Our fourth keynote will be "Telecommunications Industry Benefits and Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content: New Opportunities vs. Infrastructure Challenges" by Joe Porus, VP, Merged Technology & Media, Phoenix Marketing International. What advantages do cloud-based solutions applied to popular entertainment properties bring to broadband network operators? How does the on-demand, always-accessible nature of cloud-based entertainment delivery challenge conventional distribution systems? Will older distribution methods disappear?
Our next panel will explore "The Impact on Entertainment Industries of Cloud Computing." How will cloud storage and distribution affect the ways in which content rights-holders manage their intellectual property (IP), realize new cost savings, and implement new business models? Panelists will include Kris Alexander, Chief Strategist, Connected Devices & Gaming, Akamai; Saul Berman, Partner & VP, IBM Global Business Services; Peter Csathy, CEO, Sorenson Media; Mark Friedlander, National Director, New Media, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) ; Jonathan King, SVP, Business Development, Joyent; Ty Roberts, SVP & CTO, Gracenote; Ajay Malhotra, EVP, North America, Prime Focus Technologies; and Robert Stevenson, EVP, Business Development & Strategic Partnerships, Gaikai.
Our fifth keynote will be "Entertainment Industry Benefits and Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content: Innovation and Flexibility vs. Disruption and Accountability Issues Keynote" by Scott Brown, US GM & VP Strategy Partnerships, Octoshape. What improvements does cloud computing offer the content distribution chain? What issues do rights-holders face in adapting their internal content management processes to cloud-based media storage?
Our final keynote will be "Consumer Electronics (CE) Manufacturer Benefits and Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content: Expanded Opportunities for Products with New Features at a Range of Costs; New Challenges Related to Interoperability and Data Security" by Lucia Gradinariu, Chief Market Strategist, Huawei. What unforeseen impacts, both positive and negative, do cloud-based solutions applied to popular entertainment properties bring to CE manufacturers?
Our closing panel will address "The Impact on CE Manufacturers of Cloud Computing Deployment." Remotely accessing applications and data affects everything that must be integrated into networked end-user devices. The same holds true for servers and other edge storage hardware products. What new hurdles must be overcome with these technological solutions? Robert Scoble, Startup Liaison Officer, Rackspace, will moderate panelists Stefan Bewley, Director, Altman Vilandrie & Company; Shane Dyer, President, Arrayent; David Frerichs, Strategic Consultant, Pioneer Corporation; Kshitij Kumar, SVP, Mobile Video, Concurrent; AJ McGowan, CTO, Unicorn Media; Michael Papish, Solutions Architecture Director, Rovi Corporation; Jordan Rohan, Managing Director, Stifel Nicolaus; and Chuck Stormon, CEO, Attend.
Please click here to register now for the 2012 International CES and then add CONTENT IN THE CLOUD. We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas, NV on Wednesday. Share wisely, and take care.
2012 CES: The Big Themes to Look for this Week
Excerpted from ZDNet News Report by Rachel King
Summary: CES 2012 is upon us, and it's time to get ready for a whole new year in gadgetry and other tech goodness.
The world's largest tech trade show is just about to get underway, and even though there will be thousands upon thousands of products on display, many of them can be narrowed down and traced by a few major themes.
Yes, I'm talking about the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV. The scale of the show gets bigger each year, and there is just so much going on that it can becoming daunting (if not impossible) to stay focused and sift through everything.
Last year, many of the world's biggest companies tended to focus on trends such as the Internet-connected living room (meaning, an ecosystem of home entertainment within a single brand), the dawn of 4G-enabled smart-phones, and just about anything to do with 3D.
We'll likely see continuations of these themes next week, but here are some of the bigger themes to watch out more for this year:
TABLETS: We saw a bunch of these last year, but really none of the tablets that debuted at CES last year really made a dent in the market. The iPad 2 and the Kindle Fire, neither of which had even been announced prior or around CES 2011, were the real money-makers last year.
So why should we even care about tablets at CES 2012? Well, the technology for tablets (and smart-phones, for that matter) has improved significantly, and one can only hope that manufacturers have learned a few lessons in the last year. Furthermore, with the debut of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) later in 2011, there's definitely room for more potential.
ULTRABOOKS: Poised to replace netbooks and compete heavily with tablets and other laptops in the same size range, 2012 could be the year of the Ultrabook. Intel has already boasted a bunch that there are 60 Ultrabook designs with OEM partners set to roll out this year. Thus, you can expect everyone at CES to be promoting their own Ultrabook. It remains to be seen which ones will come out ahead - if any at all if these new laptops can overcome some hurdles.
WINDOWS 8: Supposedly, some Ultrabooks are to be running on this operating system, so we should see more about its launch soon. That could be as soon as next week as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is lined up (once again) to give the main keynote address. Besides Windows Phone 8, Windows 8 itself is one of the only other big-ticket items that most consumers will likely be concerned with in 2012. If not, expect him to talk about Kinect for another hour.
GREEN: Even though it seems like old news at this point, the eco-friendly trend is never going to go away and will likely always have a growing presence at CES and similar trade shows. In a way, that's a good thing. While the upfront costs are still rather expensive for most products that tout this facet, green technology has the potential to save a lot of money in the long run, and the more that developers keep this in mind, those upfront costs will eventually drop.
What not to look for? Apple or Google. These two prefer to host their own events - Apple doesn't even exhibit at Macworld anymore, and there is Google I/O later in springtime.
And if you're a Microsoft fan, enjoy them at the show while you can as they'll be gone by 2013.
Polkast Advances Personal Cloud Computing
Polkast, a revolutionary new service that lets users securely connect to their PCs directly from their mobile devices, announced today it is transforming personal cloud computing with its new PC-to-PC Access feature. Polkast is filling an important gap in the market with this pioneering file virtualization system. Users can now easily connect multiple computers directly, providing complete access to all of their files, no matter where the files are stored. The PC-to-PC Access feature is part of the upcoming Pro Version, which is geared toward business users who want to connect multiple computers and create their own secure personal cloud.
The new PC-to-PC feature transcends typical cloud services and negates the need for online cloud sync and storage. It addresses any security concerns associated with storing data on a third party server, i.e., cloud storage provider. It also resolves any speed, compatibility, or reliability issues commonly associated with cloud computing. It is the ideal solution for anyone who wants anytime access to their digital content while keeping their files within their own environment and control.
"We all have content spread across many devices, and it's particularly challenging to juggle it all between home, work and travel," said Hong Bui, Founder and CEO of Polkast. "We wanted to make it easier for people to switch between multiple computers, without having to worry about where they last saved a file, mixing their personal and work information, or compromising their privacy."
Polkast takes a new approach to the cloud. Instead of uploading your content to an online storage service for remote access, it lets you access your computer files directly anywhere, at any time from your other computer, tablet, or smart-phone. There is no intermingling of personal and work files, no additional storage costs, and no time wasted uploading and downloading to cloud storage as an intermediate step. Polkast lets you easily build your own personal cloud on the devices you already own. It's a great alternative for people who are not comfortable with the cost and loss of control with public cloud storage solutions.
Polkast is available on the iPad, iPhone, Android phones, and tablets, and computers with Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Mac OSX.
Comcast, Disney Strike "Unprecedented" Deal For TV Everywhere
Excerpted from Media Daily News Report by Wayne Friedman
Walt Disney and Comcast have struck a new, broad-ranging 10-year TV-video distribution deal that focuses on digital "TV Everywhere" efforts and includes Comcast's Xfinity platform.
Comcast, the largest US cable TV operator, says that for the first time its consumers will be able to watch ESPN, ABC, or Disney shows live or on demand and across multiple screens. Both companies say they will also create new, innovative viewing experiences for Xfinity TV customers.
The companies say this is in keeping with their TV Everywhere efforts. Comcast is one of the originators of TV Everywhere. It allows Comcast viewers in their areas of service to get content on digital devices: smart-phones, gaming consoles, tablets, and computers.
Neil Smit, President, CEO of Comcast Cable, called the agreement "unprecedented" and said it "embraces the future of entertainment."
The companies say the deal expands their previous traditional TV carriage agreements, enhancing "the multichannel business mode" while supporting both companies' goal to deliver "the best video content to customers across multiple platforms using the latest technology and cloud innovation."
Comcast says Xfinity TV customers will receive access to existing authenticated services, like WatchESPN, as well as new efforts: WatchDisneyChannel, WatchDisneyXD, and WatchDisneyJunior. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Get Ready to Gingle
Excerpted from Canada East News Report by Victoria Handysides
Forget peer-to-peer (P2P). This is peer-to-world (P2W), a Moncton, Canada application developer's first step in an attempt to change the way technology users share.
It's called Gingle, a free iPhone and iPad app developed and recently launched by Moncton-based marketing firm iCommunications, that will allow users to instantly stream video from anywhere in the world.
"We're calling it 'social transparency,'" app developer and iCommunications President Erik Gingles said, touting the new application he says has the potential to become a valuable journalistic tool.
In a media industry plagued with perpetual budget cuts and shrinking staffs, Gingle can help fill the gaps, Gingles said.
"Things are evolving and this is a way to evolve with it," he said, adding that up-to-the minute video shot by users right on the scene can augment breaking news stories reported by professional reporters. With Gingle, anyone can stream anything from anywhere as long as they're connected to a mobile network.
The company recently reached out to over 300 journalism schools for feedback on the app. Though it's free for individual use, the target market will eventually be large media companies like newspapers and broadcasters, which can purchase re-broadcast rights from developers.
Research indicates that for the next four years, smart-phone use will increase 34 per cent each year and that tablet use will increase 88 per cent each year.
"The growth of video has been exponential. In the next five years - with mobile video in particular - it looks like an inverted pyramid. It's just going to grow like mad."
Gingle can stream videos instantly on the mobile 3G network, while most other streaming video apps require the phone to be tethered to a Wi-Fi connection.
As you're streaming, Gingle uploads the video to its servers, where the video is stored for repeat playback.
When searching for a video, users can choose general categories (including entertainment, lifestyle, news, politics, and sports), then search for videos in those categories pinpointed on a world map. The application is location-based, using built-in GPS applications on smartphones. If a user doesn't allow the app to use their location, the app won't work.
So far the app, launched in Moncton, has attracted users from places as far as Colombia and Japan.
Future Distribution Deals May Embrace TV Everywhere
Excerpted from Media Daily News Report by Wayne Friedman
TV Everywhere deals for TV networks might be part of TV distribution deals in the future with cable, satellite and telco TV program package providers, says a Discovery Communications executive.
Brad Singer, Senior Executive Vice President/CFO of Discovery Communications, commenting on a recent big TV media company/cable operator deal, says TV Everywhere components "appear to be going in an overall package." Speaking at the CitiCorp Media Conference, he cautions that each network and multichannel TV operator will have their own priorities.
Earlier this week, Walt Disney struck an all-encompassing TV/video distribution deal with Comcast - for traditional TV and new digital video platforms. This included "TV Everywhere" components, digital offerings of TV content on tablets, laptops, computers and gaming consoles.
"There is a lot of complexity," says Singer. "It may take longer than people expect. We haven't had any major carriage renewals, which is good impetus to do something."
When asked whether the slowness of measurement of video usage on digital platforms could curtail these deals, he said "that's one part of the value equation." Singer said "they can measure in the home, but they can't do tablets and other mobile digital devices from my understanding," He added: "Ultimately, it will get measured."
Singer was asked about new digital/Internet multichannel retailers and whether Discovery would do a deal with them. He likened it to a year ago, when satellite and telco providers looked to compete with existing cable operators. He did say, regarding any future deals with new digital TV retailers, "We don't want to disadvantage our existing client base."
Ten Cloud Start-Ups to Watch in 2012
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Derrick Harris
The past few years have been nothing if not a boon for entrepreneurs looking to cash in on venture capitalists' lust for all things cloud. All the activity has been great, and we've seen some exciting new companies emerge and prosper - companies such as Heroku, RightScale and New Relic - but it also means there's precious little room on the playing field for newcomers. Start-ups that want to get noticed, get funded, and ultimately have a winning exit must either find their own unique niche or stake out ground on a different field altogether.
Here are 10 cloud computing startups that launched in 2011 and that have a chance to make it big in 2012.
AppFog is one of a handful of platform-as-a-service (PaaS) start-ups to launch in 2011, but AppFog is unique because it leverages the open-source Cloud Foundry code as its core. The switch to a Cloud Foundry foundation over the summer resulted in a name change from PHP Fog, as the company was immediately able to support numerous new programming languages. Going forward, AppFog can ride Cloud Foundry's development wave, while focusing its own efforts on building the best user experience.
Little is known about Bromium other than that is plans to use virtualization technology as a tool for securing the myriad endpoints (e.g., desktops, mobile phones and tablets) that connect to enterprise networks. While securing cloud servers, as other start-ups such as CloudPassage attempt to do, is important, the advent of consumerization means endpoints need security. Among Bromium's founders is Simon Crosby, who co-founded XenSource and served as virtualization CTO at Citrix Systems.
Cloudability provides a simple service with a lot of value: it monitors customers' spending on cloud computing resources. It might uncover something as commonplace as cloud-server sprawl because so many employees are spinning up instances, or it might find something nefarious such as hackers using a company's instances serve boatloads of network traffic. As use of cloud services proliferates, companies will need an easy tool to help them keep track of what they're spending and where.
The infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space is a tough racket to enter because it means competing with the likes of Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, but CloudSigma has a plan. The company is all about giving customers high performance and lots of control. CloudSigma sits in the impressive SuperNAP data center and offers 10 GbE interconnects as well as solid-state drives, and developers can buy and manage resources with the granular control normally found in co-location.
Kaggle, a crowdsourcing platform for solving big data challenges, is about the hottest thing going in big data right now. The idea behind the service is simple: although not everyone has data scientists in-house, there are plenty of them floating around the world perfectly happy to put their skills to work on a problem for cash prizes and a little bit of credit. It takes a lot of computing power to host hundreds of teams on any given competition, as well as the data sets, which is why Kaggle utilizes the cloud. It used to use AWS, but has since switched to Microsoft Windows Azure.
Nebula isn't the only company pushing a commercial version of the open-source OpenStack cloud computing software - it isn't even the only one founded by a former NASA employee - but it does have a unique approach and an impeccable pedigree. Nebula ties OpenStack to an optimized hardware platform designed to make building public clouds a plug-and-play experience. Among its founders are former NASA CTO Chris Kemp, and investors include Andy Bechtolsheim, David Cheriton and Ram Shriram.
Parse is trying to become a PaaS specialist for mobile apps, a laudable ambition given how many people now rely on their mobile devices just about everything. It will be difficult to distinguish itself from competitors such as Stackmob, as well as from web-app PaaS offerings such as Heroku and AppFog, but Parse seems to have the right ideas in mind. It has a backend focused on the needs of mobile apps, and a frontend designed for mobile developers that might not have extensive programming chops.
What ScaleXtreme lacks in sexiness it makes up for in functionality. Everyone needs server-management software, but not everyone needs the big, expensive software offered from traditional software vendors, or even wants to manage software at all. ScaleXtreme gives users a cloud-based service to manage both physical and cloud-based servers, and, it says, has also garnered a lot of interest from cloud providers thinking it might be a good value-added service to their users who want more control.
SolidFire wants nothing less than to revolutionize cloud computing by making it palatable to large enterprises wanting to run mission-critical applications. The company targets cloud providers with SSD-based storage systems that make it possible to store virtual machine images in the cloud and still deliver high performance. Cloud providers utilizing SolidFire gear could find themselves hosting far more relational databases and other applications that presently remain in house.
Zillabyte, still operating in private beta mode, wants to provide users with both data sets and the algorithms needed to process them. Data sets aren't uncommon on the web, but they usually don't come with algorithms and a processing backend. The service will initially focus on web data and text-based algorithms, but there's plenty of room for growth into new types of data and algorithms as the service matures. Zillabyte was co-founded by two former Google software engineers and a former Intel engineer.
Why Amazon Is the Cloud-Computing King
Excerpted from Motley Fool Report by Evan Niu
I'm not referring to the meaning of life, mind you. I'm talking about the annual list of the Top 500 Supercomputers in the world. When you look at that list, Amazon's virtual supercomputer built using its Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, ranks No. 42, according to a recent Wired report.
The reason that's such a feat is that Amazon's virtual powerhouse is in the clouds and its raw processing power is decentralized and spread throughout its global network of data centers. This contrasts with the old-school approach of calling up Cray or Penguin Computing and ordering a multimillion-dollar machine, similar to what the feds just ordered sporting Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices chips or this one using only ARM Holdings based Nvidia chips.
Cycle Computing is a small company that helps researchers and businesses tap into EC2's supercomputing power, and CEO Jason Stowe is naturally a big proponent of cloud-based processing. Stowe believes that while there is still a place to having one's own dedicated supercomputer, those days are numbered as cloud-based supercomputing is able to increasingly satisfy what the market needs.
Amazon provides an option that is more affordable and can handle most things thrown at it. For example, Cycle helped set up a virtual supercomputer running 30,000 cores on EC2 for about $1,279 per hour. That may sound like a lot to the average user, but it's chump change when compared with the alternative a researcher or business would face, which Stowe details:
If you created a 30,000-core cluster in a data center, that would cost you 5-to-10 million dollars, and you'd have to pick a vendor, buy all the hardware, wait for it to come, rack it, stack it, cable it, and actually get it working. You'd have to wait six-to-twelve months before you got it running.
The takeaway is that even though Amazon's solution doesn't top the nosebleed horsepower of the No. 1 supercomputer, Japan's K Computer, which is almost 44 times as fast, it offers what will satisfy what many entities need and does so at a fraction of the monetary and time expenditures.
EC2 sees competition from Microsoft's Azure and Rackspace Hosting, but you also don't see those names within the first 100 spots of the supercomputer list.
It's no wonder Amazon is the cloud-computing king.
The mobile revolution and cloud computing are fundamentally linked, and the mobile revolution is set to become The Next Trillion-Dollar Revolution. There are lots of companies that are set to cash in on it, but one in particular has excellent prospects.
The company is one of few players that will help power the mobile devices of the future, and it also has exposure to the explosive growth in China. I'm so bullish on the stock that I've given it an "outperform" CAPScall.
Forecast for 2012: A Cloudy Kind of Year
Excerpted from Barron's Report by Tiernan Ray
The technology question of 2012 will be, "What cloud should I choose?"
A cloud, in case you've been living in one of them, isn't just a collection of vapors but the term for a group of server computers working together to supply vast computing power accessible via the Internet.
Turns out clouds are a good place to store your digital junk. With tens of millions of tablet computers now in use, along with hundreds of millions of smart-phones, more and more people need to keep their stuff - files, pictures, movies and the like - on server computers, because there just isn't enough space on the devices themselves, as there is on big desktop and laptop hard drives.
In the form of Apple's iTunes and Amazon's store, the two best-known clouds, users can avail themselves of a two-way digital "locker," which both downloads movies, music, and other media and uploads personal files, keeping them synchronized among computers.
This year will see a substantial investment by Apple, Amazon and others to build out the cloud, requiring new types of server computers and the components that make them possible. This could spell opportunity for investors in a wide range of companies, including some smaller names whose prominence could rise in 2012.
One such company is Fusion-IO, which went public June 9th at $19 per share. At a recent $24.20, it is one of the rare IPOs to end the year on an up note.
Fusion-IO sells a kind of electronic circuit board loaded with flash memory, the type of stuff inside an iPod that holds the songs. The board, once plugged into a server computer, helps to accelerate dramatically the server's ability to communicate with vast arrays of data. This is a way to design a more efficient cluster of computers and storage for a more efficient cloud.
I can't recommend the stock at 93 times projected profit of 26 cents a share for the year ending in June, or at 62 times fiscal 2013 estimated earnings. But it would be foolish to dispense with such a bright young star in haste. Any sign business is picking up could raise estimates in short order and lift the shares further in 2012.
Another young-ish firm worthy of note is 10-year-old OCZ Technology, which went public in April of last year. It is giving Stec, the market leader, a run for its money selling storage drives made of flash-memory chips. It's another instance, as with Fusion-IO, of how those little memory chips are taking over the world. Corporate-computing facilities, and especially cloud-computing facilities, increasingly are looking to flash drives to speed up performance.
Unlike Fusion-IO, OCZ, at a recent price of $6.61, fetches a more reasonable multiple of 11.8 times the projected 56 cents a share in profit it might produce in the fiscal year ending in February 2013.
With Stec's stock down some 50% in the past 12 months, the shares reflect increased competition in this corner of cloud computing. But don't count out Stec, which still has boatloads of technology to offer, either on its own or as part of a possible acquirer's operations.
The most interesting battle for the cloud will take place as Intel defends its turf. More than personal-computer chips, it will be counting on increasing sales of ultrafast server microprocessors.
Google and other companies are buying processors directly from Intel to construct their own servers for their cloud-computing facilities, as I have noted here before (see Intel's Winning Strategy: Just Say No to Tablets). But the new year will see the rise of credible competition from Intel's arch-nemesis, ARM Holdings.
ARM has been the arms dealer (sorry!) to Intel's chip competitors in the past few years, supplying companies such as Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Texas Instruments with technology that they have used to sell chips for tablets and smart-phones, thereby shutting Intel out of those markets almost completely.
Now ARM is providing technology to handle the much more demanding workload inside a server. It is a fascinating proposition, ARM trying to help makers of chips for phones beat Intel at supplying powerful processors for machines that don't move.
The rationale is that the cloud is an energy hog. All those server computers increasingly suck up fantastic amounts of energy. The ARM camp is betting it can bring some of the same power savings developed for mobile devices to making a greener cloud.
Up until last year, Applied Micro Circuits (AMCC) labored in relative obscurity designing chips to run data-networking equipment. But the 24-year-old company is in the midst of a fascinating next act. It is one of the first companies to license the more powerful ARM technology to make server chips.
At a recent price of $6.72, AMCC shares are no bargain, given they sell for 23 times projected fiscal 2013 earnings of 30 cents a share. Then again, if AMCC can give Intel some competition, it would put the company's business, and its stock, in a whole other class.
Intel isn't standing still. The first proof of its resolve not to be shunted aside will come in the form of a chip called Centerton, due out some time in 2012. It's a microprocessor designed to use dramatically less energy in what Intel terms micro servers.
Then Intel will strike back at ARM with Medfield, a revamped chip for mobile devices that it hopes will give Qualcomm and Nvidia and TI real competition.
Some analysts say Intel has finally found a way to use its expertise as the world's greatest chip manufacturer to come up with processors that are as energy-efficient as those of the ARM camp, but much more powerful along the lines of what Intel is known for on the desktop.
Think of it: the next great phone running on Intel chips, connecting to a cloud powered by Applied Micro or Nvidia or Qualcomm chips. Neither of those reversals might come to pass, but 2012 could provide great sport watching all these folks knock their heads together.
Should Amazon, Google, and Wikipedia "Nuke" the Web to Stop SOPA?
Excerpted from ZDNet News Report by Steven Vaughan-Nichols
Should the Internet powers nuke the web to stop SOPA?
With the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Congress, at the request of big media, is still considering trying to censor the global Internet in the name of preventing media piracy. The major Internet companies, who don't like the idea of being forced to monitor customers' traffic and block websites suspected or accused of copyright infringement. They don't want any part of being in the Big Brother business. So it is that Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia appear to all be considering the "nuclear" option.
According to multiple sources, the nuclear option would mean many major sites would simply and simultaneously go dark. Were you to go to any of them, you'd either find a 404 error page not available message or a page explaining why the site's currently unavailable. The most popular Internet sites would simply go dark.
This is pretty drastic, but then so is SOPA. SOPA, while a proposed American law, attempts to censor sites throughout the world. In effect, as it's currently written, SOPA would try to impose global censorship almost as bad as the Chinese firewall.
But, would simply shutting down major sites that hundreds of millions of users rely on every day actually get the message across? Or, would it simply tick off 99% of the web using population who couldn't even spell SOPA much less know what it's about? Even today, I find otherwise intelligent Internet professionals who think that SOPA is a good idea. They simply can't see that stopping Internet music and video infringement with SOPA is like burning down a house to get rid of mice.
So, I have a suggestion for the NetCoalition, the lobbying group representing leading global Internet and technology companies, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Bloomberg, and Wikipedia, and which is also a major organizer of the Internet powers' SOPA opposition. Instead of blacking out the Internet, educate it.
Pick a day, a week, when all participating sites will show their visitors a page about what SOPA is, why they're against it, and then list by name the Congressmen and women who are supporting this law and urging everyone to vote against them in the 2012 election. After that, let the visitors go about searching for the latest football scores, a cheap copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," whatever.
Even that will annoy most users, but it will get the message across to everyone. What's more important though is that it will deliver the message that we will not stand for SOPA to the people who need to hear the most: the law-makers who've been bought and paid for by big media. If Internet registry GoDaddy can change its spots when it comes to supporting SOPA after it became clear that its customers wouldn't stand for it, I know Congressmen faced with losing their comfy jobs will listen.
We Need a Political Litmus Test for Tech and SOPA Isn't It
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Stacey Higginbotham
Imagine if your son or daughter created a brilliant mash-up for their English class that you thought was a perfect display of his or her personality, so you decided to share the mash-up on your family blog. Unfortunately, little Susie or Johnny included a brief movie clip or perhaps a fraction of a song in their class project, and suddenly your blog is gone thanks to a complaint from a rights-holder and the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). If you want your blog back you can take the offending material down, and if you don't want to do that, then you could sue arguing fair use. Regardless, it's up to you to figure out what's wrong and fight to have your blog re-instated.
A growing problem as the web and technology becomes more central to how we share, communicate and work is that an average person doesn't know how abstract laws can affect their lives and the media doesn't expose how well (or poorly) politicians understand technology. As a result, certain companies with lobbyists are getting away moulding our laws and policies in their favor and in the process they are going to hinder how Internet works and thrives.
Horror stories about SOPA abound, but what about your cell phone? Can a police officer search the contents of your phone during a traffic stop? Can a customs agent rifle through your laptop files as you return from a trip abroad? What about the history of your Google searches or check-ins on Foursquare, can those be used against you in a court of law? These are not idle issues and instead of focusing on who is a socialist or paying attention solely to where someone stands on social issues such as abortion or gay marriage, the broader media, politicians and citizenry need to start paying attention to and thinking about tech policy.
So while debates over SOPA will continue to rage as we head into an election year in the US, France, the UK and other places, we should ask elected officials about how they view the Internet and how connectivity can change the world.
Thomas Friedman danced around the issue in his New York Times' column Tuesday, when he suggested politicians need to be asked about how we can bring to bear the budding infrastructure we're building to connect people and things to solve some of our problems. Sure the web is disruptive, and disruptive is scary, especially for politicians, but as technology becomes more engrained in our lives it also becomes a target for politicians. So we need politicians that understand it and view it as a tool, yes, one that can be abused, but also one that can be harnessed for society's benefits, such as improving rural access to healthcare.
Rather than letting the web turn into a partisan issue kind of like spectrum policy has become, or letting industry interests try to cut the web off at the knees as the content industry seems to be doing with SOPA, it's time to shape some questions that can help voters understand how politicians stand on various issues such as privacy, censorship and the real issues where the government's views on technology will impact citizens' lives. I'm not suggesting every Congressman must have a detailed understanding of what a DNS server is, but it's time they stopped equating the Internet with nerds, and look ahead to how the web can improve government, lower costs and maybe solve some pressing problems.
Here are a few questions I'd like to see at the upcoming debates, but feel free to offer more. Honestly, as citizens we also need to be thinking about how we would answer these questions (or want our politicians to answer them) as well.
As the Internet is changing the skill sets demanded by employers, what does the federal/state/local government need to do to ensure our educational system keeps up? Are there subjects we need to add? Procedures we need to change? Skills our administrators and teachers need? Infrastructure that should be as important as a chalkboard is in classrooms?
As people store more information online, what do you see as the biggest risks for consumers, corporations, and governments? What laws need to change?
Can you name an area of government where you see adding connectivity or developing a program that uses connectivity could improve service and/or save taxpayers money?
Our digital footprints are forever and we're now leaving digital records of every casual search, photograph, thought and place we visit. When much of this information was in a physical form, to get at this data required the government to justify the need to invade someone's privacy. Our current laws don't always protect digital information in this same way. Should it?
Do you consider our current wireline broadband market competitive? How do we keep improving it? Is fiber to the home to as many places as possible a good goal for the government to pursue, recognizing it could cost taxpayers billions?
Coming Events of Interest
2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) - January 10th-13th in Las Vegas, NV. With more than four decades of success, the International CES reaches across global markets, connects the industry and enables CE innovations to grow and thrive. This is the world's largest consumer technology tradeshow.
CONTENT IN THE CLOUD at CES - January 11th in Las Vegas, NV. Gain a deeper understanding of the impact of cloud-delivered content on specific segments and industries, including consumers, telecom, media, and CE manufacturers.
State of the Net Conference - January 17th-18th in Washington, DC. Unparalleled opportunities to network and engage on key policy issues at the largest information technology (IT) policy conference in the US and the only tech policy conference routinely recognized for its balanced blend of academics, consumer groups, industry, and government.
Social Media Insider Summit - January 22nd-25th in Key Largo, FL. Attendees will hear case studies from leading brands who have been able to turn social media campaigns into results.
Cloud Connect - February 13th-16th in Santa Clara, CA. The premier technology event for cloud computing, features the latest technologies, platforms, strategies, and innovations within cloud computing.
Cloud Computing Imperative 2012 - March 12th-13th in Dubai, UAE. Strategies to implement IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and XaaS. Plan the shift of IT responsibilities, get fresh perspective on managing project budgets, build a strong ROI for cloud computing, understand the shift from managed services to the cloud, master the cloud infrastructure and see cloud security from a hacker's perspective.
2012 NAB Show - April 14th-19th in Las Vegas, NV. From Broadcasting to Broader-casting, the NAB Show has evolved over the last eight decades to continually lead this ever-changing industry. From creation to consumption, the NAB Show has proudly served as the incubator for excellence - helping to breathe life into content everywhere.
CLOUD COMPUTING CONFERENCE at NAB - April 16th in Las Vegas, NV. Don't miss this full-day conference focusing on the impact of cloud computing solutions on all aspects of production, storage, and delivery of television programming and video.
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