February 6, 2012
Volume XXXVIII, Issue 4
Facebook IPO to Dwarf Recent Groupon, Zynga, LinkedIn Stock Market Debuts
Excerpted from eWeek Report by Clint Boulton
Facebook filed for its initial public offering (IPO) as expected February 1st, ending a week of hype, buzz, and punditry that had financial and Internet analysts predicting the social network giant's IPO would be the biggest in the history of the Internet.
The company will trade under the ticker symbol "FB," but has not revealed whether it will trade on the NASDAQ or NYSE. While Facebook will go on touting its Like buttons for web publishers and hawking its Timeline user interface for consumers and applications alike, the company's financial statements will be poked, prodded and pored over by hundreds of experts looking to divine just how big an Internet player Facebook is now and can become 5, 10, 15 years down the road.
Facebook may be the biggest IPO to date, but it isn't the only game in town. In this slide show, eWeek takes a look at some of the top Internet company IPOs of the past couple of years, along with some obvious earlier blockbuster debuts. Plus, we make our logical guess for whom we think the next IPO will be.
The Rise of Cloud Computing on Wall Street
Excerpted from Wall Street & Technology Report by Ivy Schmerken
As Wall Street continues to struggle with volatile markets, uncertain global economic conditions and vanishing profits, many firms are looking to reduce their capital expenditures. Targeting the costs of building data centers and maintaining server farms, more and more Wall Street organizations are looking to outsource pieces of their infrastructures to the cloud.
While all of the largest financial firms already are experimenting with cloud technology in non-production areas such as server provisioning and storage networks, most remain cautious about security and refuse to let client data leave the relative safety of their own facilities. "We want to manage our own destiny," says Darren Tedesco, managing principal, innovation and strategy, at Commonwealth Financial, an independent broker-dealer that built an enterprise private cloud to host the firm's wealth management platform.
After facing sluggish profits and lower trading volumes last year, however, Wall Street firms are looking to convert large, up-front "cap-ex," or capital expenditures, into more variable "op-ex," or operational expenditures. As financial firms react to tighter IT budgets and the pressure to allocate resources to developing new products and entering new markets, the adoption of third-party cloud-based applications and services is expected to gain momentum in 2012.
Increasingly, large financial firms are open to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach, says Joe Stensland, SVP and Managing Director of Wealth Management Services at Scivantage, which runs its retail online-trading portal and professional trading and tax reporting applications in a private cloud. "We deliver the application with a private cloud and allocate the resources needed for each client deployment so they don't have to bring in resources and infrastructure," Stensland says. While the interest in cloud services is moving up the list of priorities at large firms that have become cost-conscious, according to Stensland, "Midrange firms have become even more interested in the cloud's pay-for-what-you-eat philosophy."
One of the major advantages of the cloud is its ability to help with capacity planning, Stensland notes. In the past, financial firms added capacity to be prepared for sudden bursts, but now they don't want to incur the additional costs unless they need it, he explains. With the cloud, firms can have "burst-ready" capacity, which is even more critical today than in the past due to the current volatility in the markets, Stensland says.
Amid the intense focus on the bottom line, some buy- and sell-side firms are migrating to applications managed in private clouds outside their own data centers, confirms Bob Guilbert, Managing Director of Eze Castle Integration, a private cloud provider of infrastructure, applications and services to hedge funds. Guilbert says cloud services now can offer high availability and robust security, without requiring firms to increase IT head count to manage software, storage and networks. "We still see the business trending heavily toward the cloud, based on the benefits that people get -- lower cost on the infrastructure and maintenance, and they don't have to do a technology refresh," he relates.
But clients that already have their own established infrastructures might take a first step toward cloud computing with an order management system or Eze Castle's disaster recovery services, Guilbert adds. "As they move toward a technology refresh, that is the point at which they would look at application outsourcing," he says.
Please click here for the full report.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 We're very pleased to share with DCINFO readers, in advance of our public announcement, the agenda and speakers for the inaugural CLOUD COMPUTING CONFERENCE at the 2012 NAB Show coming on April 16th.
Don't miss this full-day conference that will demonstrate how software developers are addressing two major concerns with respect to cloud-based solutions for video delivery - reliability and security.
Experts will provide a senior management overview of how cloud-based solutions positively impact each stage of the content distribution chain. From collaboration and post-production to storage, delivery, and analytics, decision makers responsible for accomplishing their content-related missions will find this a must-attend event.
Our opening keynote will feature Bill Kallman, CEO, Scayl, who will introduce "The Latest Trends in Cloud Computing Solutions for the Audio/Video (A/V) Ecosystem." How are innovative cloud-based technology developers impacting A/V content creation and distribution with a host of new strategies, products, and services?
The first panel will continue this top-line overview of "Advanced Capabilities, New Features, Cost Advantages of Cloud Computing Solutions." What are the very latest ways that cloud computing is being applied throughout the creation and distribution chain for television and radio programming, motion pictures, corporate A/V production, and user-generated content (UGC)?
Panelists will include Mike Alexenko, Senior Director of Market Development, Cloud & Mobility, G-Technology; Scott Campbell, Principal, Media, Entertainment, and Telecoms, SAP; David Frerichs, Strategic Consultant, Pioneer Corporation; David Hassoun, Founder, RealEyes Media; AJ McGowan, CTO, Unicorn Media; Samir Mittal, CTO, Rimage; Michelle Munson, CEO, President, and Co-founder, Aspera; and Robert Stevenson, EVP, Business Development & Strategic Partnerships, Gaikai.
Jim Burger, Member, Dow Lohnes, will step back from the exuberance of such trends in our next keynote to examine "The Key Pitfalls Associated with Cloud Computing in High-Value Content Implementations." How are safety and predictability considerations as well as related liability factors affecting cloud adoption for A/V by content creators, rights-holders, and distributors?
The follow-on panel will further explore "Privacy Issues, Reliability Questions, Security Concerns in the Cloud Computing." What are the different but inter-related hurdles to overcome for consumers, content companies, software providers, broadband network operators, and related cloud services vendors in migrating to the cloud, and what steps is the distributed computing industry taking to address these problems?
Panelists will include David Cook, SVP, RES Sales and Content Licensing, Rovi Corporation; Dave Asprey, VP, Cloud Security, Trend Micro; Tom Mulally, Consultant, Numagic Consulting; Graham Oakes, Chairman, Digital Watermarking Alliance (DWA); Dan Schnapp, Partner & Chairman of New Media, Entertainment & Technology, Hughes, Hubbard & Reed; Yangbin Wang, CEO, Vobile; Marvin Wheeler, Chairman, Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA); and Vic Winkler, Author, "Securing the Cloud."
Our next keynote by Jonathan King, SVP, Joyent, will outline "Various Ways that Cloud Computing Is Being Applied to the Content Creation Process - from Pre- to Post-Production." How are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and even Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions strategically being brought to bear to improve key aspects of file-based workflow for A/V content?
The subsequent panel will delve further into "Audio/Video Pre-Production, Production, Post-Production Clouds." What are leading examples and key case studies of ways that cloud-computing solutions are accelerating processes, improving quality, and/or reducing costs of such functions as collaboration, editing, animation, applying metadata, formatting, and transcoding?
Panelists will include Jim Cady, President & CEO, Slacker; Tony Cahill, Chief Engineer, CET Universe; Guillermo Chialvo, Gerente de Tecnologia, Radio Mitre; Kirk Punches, VP, Business Development, Sorenson Media; Chris Kantrowitz, CEO, Gobbler; Ajay Malhotra, EVP, North America, Prime Focus Technologies; Jason Roks, Digital Alchemist, TV Asia USA; and Jostein Svendsen, CEO, WeVideo.
Shahi Ghanem, SVP, Strategy & Marketing, BitTorrent, will present our next keynote on "Alternative Approaches for Implementing Cloud Storage of Content Catalogs and Libraries and Leveraging Cloud-Based Distribution." How is this most publicized area in the implementation of cloud computing for A/V - storage and delivery - progressing? What are the technology policy/rights considerations and economics behind such concepts as "cloud media lockers" and the newest peer-assisted hybrid solutions in "quantum computing?"
Exploring this more deeply will be the "The Cloud Media Storage & Delivery" panel. What are leading examples and key case studies of ways that cloud-computing solutions are accelerating processes, improving quality, and/or reducing costs of such functions as managing fungible inventories of high-value A/V content, including at the edge of the Internet, and delivering it to listeners and viewers?
Panelists will include Kris Alexander, Chief Strategist, Connected Devices & Gaming, Akamai; Saul Berman, Lead Partner, IBM Global Business Services; Bang Chang, VP, Server and Storage, SeaChange International; Stephen Condon, VP, Global Marketing Communications, Limelight Networks; Stephen Ehrlich, Dir. Media & Ent., Verizon Digital Services; Gianluca Ferremi, VP Sales & Marketing, Motive Television; Kshitij Kumar, SVP, Mobile Video, Concurrent; and Monica Ricci, Dir. of Product Marketing, CSG Systems.
Our following keynote, "New Levels of Media Performance Data Enabled by Cloud Computing - and Impact on Other Sectors," will be presented by Scott Brown, GM & SVP Strategic Partnerships, Octoshape. How will marketers, sponsors, and advertisers respond to the ability to access "dashboards" that provide anonymized listener and viewer behavior in an unprecedented level of detail in real-time? How will this affect programming, scheduling, and sell-through services, as well as related industries?
The panel that succeeds Scott, "Cloud Measurement, Analytics, Implications," will cover this topic in greater depth. What are leading examples and key case studies of ways that cloud-computing solutions are accelerating processes, improving quality, and/or reducing costs of such functions as aggregating demographic and psychographic data, audience flow trends, and additional behavior information? What are the implications of cloud computing deployments in the A/V ecosystem on the consumer electronics (CE) and telecommunications industries?
Panelists will include Thomas Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates; Dick Csaplar, Senior Research Analyst, Virtualization and Storage, Aberdeen Group; Steve Hawley, Principal Analyst & Consultant, TVStrategies; Jonathan Hurd, Director, Altman Vilandrie & Co.; Jeff Kim, COO, US & EMEA, CDNetworks; John Schiela, President, Phoenix Marketing International (PMI); Nick Strauss, Director of Sales, Verizon Digital Media Services; and Mike West, CTO, GenosTV.
Our final keynote, presented by Ashish Gupta, Strategist, Cloud Infrastructure, Huawei, will provide an overview of the ways that the "Disruptive Effects of Cloud Computing Will Continue." How will cloud computing technology continue to disrupt the A/V ecosystem, and where and when will we see the most profound changes to current business models and operations?
And the closing panel. "Years Ahead for Cloud Computing," will more thoroughly examine this provocative topic. What do the most credible forecasts and projections indicate about the ways that cloud-computing solutions will continue to impact the A/V ecosystem over the long term, and what will this mean for the underlying businesses that are based on content production and distribution?
Panelists will include Ian Donahue, President, RedThorne Media; Chris Haddad, VP, Technology Evangelism, WSO2; Wayne Josel, Counsel, Media & Entertainment, Hughes, Hubbard & Reed; Steve Mannel, Senior Director, Media & Communications, Salesforce.com; James Mitchell, CEO & Founder, Strategic Blue; Michael Smith, Professor of IT and Marketing, Carnegie Mellon University; David Sterling, Partner, i3m3 Solutions; and Chuck Stormon, CEO, Attend.
Please register early for the 2012 NAB Show and the CLOUD COMPUTING CONFERENCE to take advantage of discounts. This promises to be our most valuable and stimulating conference to date. Share wisely, and take care.
Verizon Relies on Cloud Services for Future Growth
Excerpted from CRN Report by Andrew Hickey
Verizon's record fourth quarter revenue was due, in part, to its full-on immersion in the cloud market, an area Verizon plans to hammer as it integrates a pair of high-profile cloud acquisitions and further sharpens its cloud talons.
In Verizon's fourth quarter earnings call, Francis Shammo, the communication giant's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, said Verizon's cloud investments, which included the $1.4 billion acquisition of cloud provider Terremark and Verizon's subsequent purchase of cloud application player CloudSwitch, are prepping Verizon for massive future growth.
Verizon has said that in 2011 it invested more than $2 billion in cloud services. Verizon is leading the telecom charge to the cloud, which has also seen other major carriers and service providers plunk down mountainous sums of cash to build out a cloud ecosystem.
"In 2011, we also made some smart investments for the future growth and improved profitability. While very disciplined in our approach to capital spending, we continue to invest in networks and new technologies, which will be the platform for accelerated growth," Shammo said during the earnings call, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha.
"On the strategic front, we made some moves that will significantly improve our competitive position. These include the acquisitions of Terremark and CloudSwitch in the cloud computing space, several agreements to purchase additional spectrum, joint efforts around innovation with a number of partners including the cable companies and, of course, our continued leadership in the rapid development of the 4G LTE ecosystem."
Further fueling Verizon into 2012, Shammo said, is its recently formed Global Enterprise solutions organization which will integrate offerings across various lines of business, including wireless, Strategic Services, FiOS, the cloud, and more.
It was Strategic Services, Shammo said, that drove big year-over-year improvement in Global enterprise Revenue. In the fourth quarter, he said, services like cloud computing, IP communications, call center, and managed network totaled $2 billion in revenue, up 14.7 percent year-over-year, and representing more than half of the Global Enterprise revenue. And Terremark's growth, specifically, was "outstanding," Shammo said, with revenues up about 10 percent sequentially in the fourth quarter and roughly 18 percent year-over-year.
"And in the enterprise space, we are clearly gaining traction as the leading global provider in the information technology solution space," Shammo said. "The integration of Terremark and the addition of CloudSwitch have significantly improved our competitive position, giving us a unique set of capabilities to combine solutions around the network, data center, security and cloud infrastructure."
Verizon expects the Terremark and CloudSwitch acquisitions to further grow its bottom line.
"We believe that with the acquisitions of Terremark and CloudSwitch, we continue to grow that top line. As I said, Terremark had an outstanding quarter, sequentially up 10 percent. That came out of a September all-time high booking. That will continue into 2012 because, obviously, those bookings don't book all in the same quarter that you sell. In this business, it takes six to 12 months to record that revenue. So I think we're continuing to expand on our cloud services bases, which also helps top line revenue for Wireline," Shammo said.
The cloud push will also be integral into bringing Verizon into more international markets. Prior to buying Terremark, Verizon had little presence in Latin America, and Verizon's cloud momentum will be key in its attack on new geographies.
"So I think, one, absolutely around the cloud, but also the convergence of cloud and what that brings to - from an overall enterprise mobility standpoint and the integration of that cloud and that mobility solution when you look at machine-to-machine and cloud and what that can bring to an enterprise customer in a vertical solution set," Shammo said. "You're going to see more and more around cloud. And as we expand internationally, I think you'll see more international growth out of us, especially around the cloud services."
Octoshape and Craftwork Team Up to Disrupt the OTT IPTV Market
Octoshape, an industry leader in cloud-based global streaming technologies, today announced a strategic partnership with leading software development company Craftwork, which specializes in solutions for the Digital TV industry.
Over-the-top (OTT) consumer offerings are rapidly evolving in the industry, bringing with them a host of challenges. Video quality, network capacity, profitable business models, and time to market concerns are each issues the industry faces every day. Producing TV-quality living room experiences on high-resolution devices is a clear milestone to reach in the industry.
"The projected consumption of content over-the-top in the next five years is simply staggering," said Michael Koehn Milland, CEO of Octoshape. "Applying disruptive technologies like Infinite HD with the superior consumer implementations that Craftwork offers will not only facilitate happy consumers and profitable business models but also allow the last mile to scale on existing infrastructure without huge capital deployments."
The partnership between Craftwork and Octoshape makes these goals attainable. The Octoshape Infinite HD platform brings the highest-quality video in the space into the living room. Different than traditional OTT adaptive bit rate technologies, Infinite HD is able to sustain quality without the need to shift in and out of HD resolution. This replicates the experience the consumer is accustomed to in the living room. Infinite HD also brings an innovative suite of Multicast technologies offering efficiency models to the last mile enabling the telco / operator to roll out these services without upgrading their infrastructure.
Craftwork brings a wealth of experience in integrating linear and VoD Digital TV services for large operators and content providers. Craftwork is providing pre-integrated ARM Cortex A9 STBs to rapidly deploy these cost-effective OTT solutions for providers. The pre-packaged and custom UI development options have already resulted in several key client integrations around the world.
"We are delighted to forge this strategic partnership with Octoshape," said Greg Pannell, Craftwork's Sales & Marketing Director. "Delivery of OTT video content is becoming a critical element to many operators in the digital TV industry; with Octoshape's unique streaming technology and Craftwork's proven experience in integrating leading-edge technology the partnership between our two companies was an obvious choice."
Working closely together, Octoshape and Craftwork have demonstrated the potential for coupling key technology with cost-effective set-top boxes to deliver compelling OTT solutions.
Pixar Animates Cloud Computing
Excerpted from IT Business Edge Report by Mike Vizard
One of the more interesting attributes of cloud computing is the ability to invoke compute-intensive resources as a service. Rather than having to acquire and deploy IT infrastructure to handle peak loads or processing requirements, IT organizations can "rightsize" their IT investments to handle their average workload requirements. Any time their computing requirements exceed those average workload limits, they can invoke additional compute capacity in the cloud using a process known as "cloudbursting."
It's still early days in terms of the mainstream adoption of "cloudbursting," but the concept is already leading to the creation of some new business models. For example, Pixar has announced that it is partnering with GreenButton and Microsoft to deliver a new rendering service in the cloud that will be managed by GreenButton using its namesake cloud management software running on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform.
The basic idea, says GreenButton CEO Scott Houston, is to make it a lot more affordable for film studios, advertising agencies, or anybody else using Pixar's RenderMan software to access the compute resources needed to create animated films in 3D. According to Houston, the new Pixar service should significantly lower the cost of making these films, which, in turn, should make the technology more accessible.
Obviously, the Pixar offering is only one instance of a cloudbursting application. The cloudbursting concept could easily be applied across any number of vertical industries, which should result in a number of new and interesting business models in 2012 that could never have been enabled without the cloud.
BitTorrent Live Attracts Steady Stream of Interest
Excerpted from CNET News Report by Seth Rosenblatt
What if you took the decentralized, distributed theory that powers torrent technology and applied it to live streaming?
That question, or one similar to it, is what BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen must've asked himself a few years ago. The answer is BitTorrent Live, and it's currently working its way through a series of weekly real-world tests at the BitTorrent headquarters in San Francisco.
BitTorrent Live is a live-streaming technology that leverages the bandwidth of everybody watching the stream to lighten the stream's network load. It could be applied to everything from family weddings to corporate conference calls to multiday music festivals, says Cohen.
"Live streaming is a big challenge that people have been trying to solve," he said. "We're hoping that this is a fundamental technology that will change how people use the Internet."
Basically, BitTorrent Live is torrent theory applied to a live stream, but powered by completely different code. Even in its current buggy beta form, it's attracted early interest from little-known local electronic music makers to movers and shakers like Hank Shocklee, founder of Public Enemy, current music producer, and President of Shocklee Entertainment.
"The concept is incredible," Shocklee said when checking out BitTorrent Live during an impromptu visit to the BitTorrent offices last Friday night. "I come from marketing and promotion. If you can make the technology connect with people, that's a wrap."
The way you use it is extremely simple and accessible. You download a small executable file for Windows, Mac, or Linux, run it, and then point your browser to a site that's powering its stream with BitTorrent Live. Neither your computer nor your browser will have to be rebooted. But how does it do it?
BitTorrent Live has to solve four problems simultaneously: low latency, high reliability, high offload, and congestion control. Basically, Cohen explained, the data blasts out in pieces from the source using a "screamer" protocol that always uses the lowest latency path. The data gets blasted out to a subset of the peers, which get the benefits of high reliability and low latency, but at the very last hop it uses a nonscreamer protocol so that it gains back congestion control and efficiency. High offload is the fraction of data coming from peers instead of the source.
Cohen said that this is what creates a low-latency, high-reliability stream, and it only requires an upload capacity of five times the original bit rate on the original uploading machine. BT Live does its network congestion control based on delays, not packet loss, similar to uTorrent Protocol (uTP).
Cohen also noted that BT Live scales very well, with projected modeling showing a 4- to 4.5-second delay for up to 1 million peers. BT Live uses the H.264 codec, in large part because of its broad support base. Google's WebM alternative to H.264, he said, just doesn't have the the kind of support that BT Live requires.
There's a few features left to include, Cohen said, most notably fixing stream glitches, adding encryption, and what he called "graceful failure," so that it has higher tolerance for when the stream misbehaves.
One of the biggest recent tests of BT Live has been from the Dean Guitar's NAMM Jam, and Cohen reported that there were no major hiccups there. However, BitTorrent continues to put the protocol through a latency and scalability gantlet with its weekly tests. If you want to check those out, they're available at live.bittorrent.com Fridays from 8 to 10 PM Pacific. If you're interested in using the streaming technology, BitTorrent has provided an e-mail for queries: live-studio@bittorrent.com.
The company plans to release BitTorrent Live to the public later this year, with an SDK and a Web site sometime in the second quarter. It's likely, though unconfirmed, that it will go with a freemium model not unlike with its mainline BitTorrent and uTorrent software.
Vancouver Turns Up Cloud Computing Horsepower for Hollywood
Excerpted from Hollywood Reporter Report by Etan Vlessing
The Canadian city has unveiled RenderCloud, a local server farm for data-hungry animation and special effects projects by studios that could otherwise go to London or New Zealand.
Vancouver is revving up its computing horsepower to allow Hollywood studios to more speedily render data-intensive animation and special effects in the clouds.
A consortium of Vancouver-based production, technology, and media companies on Friday unveiled RenderCloud, a local server farm that will allow studios to ramp up their production lines on processor-hungry projects.
Vancouver is also hoping its ultrafast RenderCloud server will allow the west-coast city, already enjoying the advantages of close proximity to Los Angeles, compete with emerging global production centers in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
British Columbia's digital tax credits have allowed Vancouver to attract 3D movie, animation, special effects and gaming production from Los Angeles, but it's feeling the heat of competition from abroad.
"The opening of RenderCloud makes us competitive with such cities as London and New Zealand, and puts Vancouver into consideration for the next generation of 'Harry Potter' or 'Lord of the Rings' productions," Catherine Winder, President and Executive Producer of Rainmaker Entertainment, said Friday.
Making Sense of the Connected TV Craze
Excerpted from MediaBeat Report by Bismarck Lepe
Connected TV was front and center at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month: Panasonic, LG, and Sharp all shone spotlights on Internet-enabled televisions, along with just about every other TV manufacturer. MySpace even decided to resurrect itself at CES as a social-TV experience. With all of the articles, press events, parties, celebrity sightings and sheer volume of tech TV news, the full picture of "connected TV" could be easy to miss.
But now, after the dust of CES has settled and the hangovers have worn off, it is clear that connected TV, while not a new phenomenon, is poised to make major headway as 2012 progresses. Here are five pieces of the puzzle that are worth keeping an eye on this year.
Do I know you?
Personalization is the future of "smart" media. It's not just about hooking up TVs to the Internet. It's about delivering the right content to the right screen at the right time. Expect to see content that understands who we are and where we are. If the "where" is a bus stop or a train headed to work, our devices will know that we don't want to watch "The Godfather." Based on our past viewing history, we'll get served up sports highlights or a goofy YouTube clip to pass the commute time nicely. Dijit, for example, has started working on social content recommendations and integrating the viewing experience with personal social graphs. Expect smart video to learn who you are, what your routine is, and what you should be watching.
Size matters.
We're not talking about the size of the screen in your family room, either. Truly personalized video requires "big data" architecture and real-time analytics. Networks, broadcast channels, studios, and cable providers will need tools that can mine through massive amounts of data and translate that into actionable insights. Personalization is a growing trend across a number of sectors (even in law enforcement). Video publishers will gain accurate business intelligence from comprehensive analytics that go beyond market samples, charts and graphs to help maximize revenue and guide strategic ad placement.
The paradox of choice.
All of the news from CES lends credibility to the obvious: We're about to see a lot more content in many more places. And while unlimited choice across a myriad of devices sounds great in theory, it can overwhelm viewers to the point of paralysis. Personalized media knows what you like to watch and lets you know what you should be watching. Hulu handing viewers the power to choose which ads they want to watch is an early step in that direction. But the need for manual input is still very crude, not to mention extremely expensive for advertisers.
Let's get our story straight.
We'll need to agree on some common terminology. Television over Internet Protocol has been referred to as "connected TV," "smart TV," even "cloud TV." It shows a young, somewhat fragmented industry that has some maturing to do. And while developing a standard lexicon isn't top priority, it is important that we figure out what connected TV really is - the enablement of great, TV-quality experience delivered over IP.
Connected TV is primed for prime time.
Study after study shows that connected TV is no longer an early-adopter phenomenon. According to the 2011 Consumer Usage Report published by Nielsen, nearly a quarter of people indicated plans to purchase a connected TV, while 17 percent already own one. In fact, the term "online video" is headed toward extinction. Most can agree that in the future, most, if not all video content will be consumed over IP.
But that doesn't mean they are willing to "rough it" online. Not surprisingly, our VideoMind Video Index Report found that people are viewing more long-form content on big screens. As more viewers access their favorite shows and movies online, expect more content to follow the eyeballs. With new offerings from established firms like Google and start-ups like Simple.TV, expect an online television landscape that looks a lot like TV as we know it today, only with a far greater emphasis on viewer choice, interactivity and social engagement.
Connected TV is not new, but the influx of investment - time, money, publicity and products - is pushing video toward a critical evolutionary stage. Most TVs sold today offer some means of connectivity. According to our Video Index Report, video played on connected TV devices and game consoles grew more than 200 percent in Q3 2011 alone. Advanced Television writes that 80 percent of all television units shipped in 2015 will be connected. Add BluRay players and gaming consoles to the mix and it's clear that we've reached an inflection point that will see the real winners in the market decided over the next 12-24 months.
Five Low Profile Start-Ups That Could Change the Face of Big Data
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Derrick Harris
Big data is hot, but infrastructure-level platforms such as Hadoop, which focus on storage and processing, still need help to take them into the mainstream. They need a killer app or two that will let companies analyze, visualize and act on all that data without hiring a team of Stanford PhDs, or that will let developers write big-data apps without having to reinvent the wheel.
Here are five start-ups (in alphabetical order) either in stealth mode or just out of it that could help take Hadoop and its ilk to the promised land.
The stealth-mode BloomReach is taking a very targeted, very hands-free approach to big data for its customers. It's offering a SaaS-based product that job listings say is for "helping leading online businesses uncover the highest quality, most relevant content sought by their consumers, when and where they want it." Founded by a team with roots at Google, Cisco, Facebook, and Yahoo, among other companies, BloomReach has, according to one estimate, about 160 customers - all of them among the top 10,000 websites, and most of them in the retail space. Among its core technologies and methods are Hadoop, Lucene, Monte Carlo simulations and large-scale image processing.
Continuuity, the just-launched stealth-mode start-up by former Yahoo VP and Chief Cloud Architect Todd Papaioannou, wants to make it easier to build applications that can leverage both cloud computing and big data technologies. As Papaioannou told me recently, most developers shouldn't have to go through what Yahoo, Facebook, and others did in order to write large-scale, data-driven applications. He also said "the data fabric is the next middleware" and noted that the company name is a play on "continuum." You figure out what it's up to.
Odiago is the brainchild of Hadoop and analytics experts Christophe Bisciglia and Aaron Kimball, and aims to improve the state of web analytics. Its first product, Wibidata, which is in private beta, lets websites better analyze their user data to build more-targeted features. It's built atop Hadoop and HBase, but also plugs into companies' existing data-management and BI tools. Current customers include Wikipedia, RichRelevance, FoneDoktor and Atlassian (with whom it shares office space).
Platfora, which launched in September with $5.7 million in funding, wants to make big data analytics accessible to the masses. Founder and CEO Ben Werther, formerly of Greenplum and NoSQL startup DataStax, told me when Platfora launched that its intuitive, visually stunning interface will make Hadoop-based analytics so easy even a history major could use it. Platfora's product isn't available yet, but the company is currently hiring, with an emphasis on frontend and user-experience skills.
Skytree is probably the stealthiest of the group, but it's also is one of the more ambitious - because it's trying to bring high-performance machine learning to mainstream companies. Machine learning is an impressive technique in which the system itself gets smarter as it digests more data, but it usually doesn't find its way out of research environments or cutting-edge analytics teams. Skytree is putting together an impressive team, including co-founder Alexander Gray, who also teaches machine learning at Georgia Tech and spent six years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The company will officially launch later this quarter.
We'll be addressing many of the issues these companies are trying to resolve at our Structure: Data event that takes place March 21st-22nd in New York City. Founders from Continuuity, Odiago and Skytree will be speaking at the event, as will dozens of other data visionaries from companies such as IBM, Google, @WalmartLabs and Hortonworks.
Amazon's Expanding Ventures in Cloud Computing
Excerpted from InvestorPlace Report by Brandy Betz
Goldman Sachs assigned a "neutral" rating to Amazon this week after previewing the fourth-quarter report released on January 31. Analyst concerns include European sales potential and the investments that Amazon will need to make into its services, notably including cloud storage. Amazon has released two new cloud storage products in as many weeks that expand the data backup and recovery options available to businesses.
Cloud storage - which has been prominent in the news lately as the industry assesses potential fallout from the shutdown of storage site Megaupload, whose operators have been accused of digital piracy - provides users with a third-party-facilitated online storage network that charges customers only for the space they use. This setup is designed to take potentially costly backup and storage responsibilities out of the hands of business owners, allowing them to focus more on data production than its upkeep.
Amazon has long been a leader in the cloud game, though many consumers weren't aware of the service until Amazon presented them with an offer unlimited, free storage upon purchase of a Kindle Fire tablet or a Kindle Touch eReader. Businesses, meanwhile, haven't shown huge enthusiasm for the potential benefits of cloud storage. According to an Information Week survey, 55% of businesses have no desire to use cloud storage while 29% would consider it after doing more research.
Amazon hopes to attract hesitant businesses with the aptly named AWS Storage Gateway. The service, which launched this week as part of the Web Services division, provides an introduction to cloud storage using software installed on the business customer's own computers. Business administrators are guided through the process of securely transferring corporate data to Amazon's data centers. The security standards are designed to be strict enough to allow for the transfer of electronic medical records or other sensitive materials. Clients utilizing AWS are able to keep track of data uploaded to the cloud and can easily restore materials when needed.
The release of AWS came a week after the launch of DynamoDB, a structured cloud database service built on preexisting technology that has run portions of Amazon's own website. It's a more advanced model than AWS, allowing customers access to advanced analytics and a greater range of customization options, but it still offers a relatively simple interface. A business can, for example, easily adjust, or "dial," the amount of space it needs to use. This can lower costs and allow storage capacity to be matched to the customer's needs as sales and inventory sizes fluctuate. Customers also can customize the performance of the service, which charges lower fees for, say, slower processing speeds.
These cloud storage products are expansions of the Amazon brand rather than newly forged ideas. Confidence in the company has been fairly high, and investors didn't noticeably react to the service releases. At this point, most of the attention is focused on the forthcoming earnings report. Amazon shares on Friday were trading up a little more than 2% over the Goldman Sachs price target of $190. The earnings report may impact shares temporarily, but with its robust offerings and the continued expansion of brand recognition, Amazon has little chance of bottoming out.
Cloud Computing Fuels the Economy and Creates Jobs
Excerpted from Randstad Report by Lee Thrace
Cloud computing may not only be a useful way for businesses to make sure that they are keeping files and other items safe from the fear of corruption or damage, but may also be an effective way in which they can boost their takings and create jobs.
The London School of Economics (LSE) looked into how cloud computing and the rise of it can help to facilitate change in the aerospace and mobile technology industries. Its study discovered that, as companies move away from keeping files on hard drives and other storage media and move increasingly towards cloud computing, there will be an increase in the number of jobs requiring skills related to the technology.
In the US alone, the LSE estimates that the smart-phone industry will have created 54,500 jobs from cloud computing, while the UK will see an increase of 4,040, said Forbes.
Cloud computing is widely accepted to be the next big thing in IT, taking away the need for companies to store files on site, and reducing the risk of them being lost or corrupted.
Quantum Physics May Lead to Secure Cloud Computing
Excerpted from Physics Today Report
With the rising popularity of "cloud computing"-the sharing of resources, software, and information over the Internet-security is a growing concern.
To preserve privacy while users interact with remote computing centers, researchers in Austria have combined quantum computing with quantum cryptography in a process called blind quantum computation.
According to Stefanie Barz and colleagues, whose paper was published online in "Science" on January 20th, users prepare qubits in a state known only to themselves. They send the qubits to a quantum computer, which entangles and then manipulates them to execute a particular computation, whose results are sent back to the users.
The users' input, output, and algorithms are never disclosed to the company doing the computations, and no eavesdropper can read the qubits without knowing their initial state. The researchers emphasize, however, that their experiment is only one step toward unconditionally secure quantum computing.
Parallel Computing Takes a Step Forward
Excerpted from ZDNet Report by manek
What's going on in networking, operating systems, servers, storage, and data centers?
Is there a shift towards parallelism going on? You could fairly argue that, obviously, with multi-core CPUs and GPUs now standard fare on desktops and in servers, the answer is yes.
But another sign of these changing times is the advent of Google-style multi-node computing and storage on Isilon's latest rev of its OS, OneFS 6.5, which it is targeting at the business analytics market.
The company, which was acquired by EMC last year, has just announced what it calls "scale-out NAS with Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), combined with EMC Greenplum HD" aimed at delivering "powerful data analytics on a flexible, highly-scalable and efficient storage platform". It seems to be the first mainstream storage OS that incorporates Hadoop, the file system designed to handle big, unstructured data. It works by dividing up the data across hundreds or even thousands of commodity servers, each of which does a piece of the analysis and reports back.
HDFS is loosely based on Google's file system GFS. Java-based, it is designed to comb through large lumps of data housed on multiple computers, each of which has no need to be fully resilient because each piece of data is stored on multiple nodes. In other words, it's designed to accommodate failures which means you can use cheaper hardware.
Its Achilles heel is that the name node stores the directory and, if it fails, the whole system is down. Isilon reckons it's added resilience to the system by distributing the directory across all nodes, making it much more resilient. According to Senior Marketing Director Brian Cox: "with our name node protection you don't need three copies of all the data so we make it more efficient."
What makes this interesting, apart from making HDFS and general distributed computing more mainstream, is that, according to Herb Sutter, this is where computing is heading in the longer term (if we can ever meaningfully use that phrase in this business). Sutter is a Microsoft developer and author, and has been the lead designer of C++/CLI, C++/CX, C++ AMP, and other technologies.
In a fascinating blog entry, Sutter argues that, as we the advances of Moore's Law start to diminish (as we are now seeing), parallelism takes up the slack, enabling scalable cloud-based computing using a combination of general-purpose and specialized cores.
For him, this is where software developers need to be concentrating their efforts - something I remember being called for back in the days of HeliOS, a Unix-like operating system for parallel computers, mainly the Inmos Transputer, developed by Perihelion Software. That was 1986 - and parallelism was distinctly niche, and very hard to do.
Sutter concludes that: "Mainstream hardware is becoming permanently parallel, heterogeneous, and distributed. These changes are permanent, and so will permanently affect the way we have to write performance-intensive code on mainstream architectures."
Isilon's latest release arguably marks another step along that path. I'd be intrigued to hear if parallel programming is any easier today.
Coming Events of Interest
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.
|
