March 5, 2012
Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8
Cloud Computing Concerns & Solutions Webinar
Please join us on Tuesday March 20th at 1:00 PM ET (10:00 AM PT) for an insightful look at "Legal Concerns & Practical Solutions for Media and Entertainment in the Cloud," a webinar produced by DataDirect Networks in association with the DCIA and Dow Lohnes Attorneys At Law.
This webinar will discuss the latest contractual, copyright, and fourth amendment consequences of using cloud based services.
It will also cover possible private media cloud solutions that may help expedite the adoption of cloud storage and collaboration by media and entertainment companies.
Please click here for more information and to register for this free webinar.
DataDirect Networks Signs Agreement with Penguin Computing
DataDirect Networks (DDN), the world's largest privately held information storage company, this week announced that Penguin Computing, an expert in high performance computing (HPC) solutions, has signed an agreement to offer DDN's award-winning suite of HPC and big data storage solutions to its global customer base.
DDN is the leading provider of data storage and processing solutions and services that enable content-rich and high growth IT environments to achieve the highest levels of systems scalability, efficiency, and simplicity.
"Penguin Computing's deep expertise in HPC is well recognized in the marketplace, and we look forward to helping Penguin deliver greater value to its customers than ever before," said Bill Cox, DDN Vice President of Worldwide Channel Sales. "This agreement will help both organizations fulfill the rapidly escalating worldwide demand for best-of-breed solutions in big data, cloud-computing, and HPC."
"Since 1998, DDN has been synonymous with award-winning storage solutions for data-intensive computing. Its groundbreaking parallel file storage solutions keep DDN on the cutting edge of the 'Big Data Era' and support mission-critical computation around the world 24/7," said Dean Koester, Vice President of Worldwide Sales, Penguin Computing. "We are pleased to provide the full range of DDN's proven, powerful storage solutions that provide best-in-class storage efficiency, scalability, flexibility, and performance to our data-intensive customer base."
DDN delivers more bandwidth to the TOP500 fastest computers than all other vendors combined. Penguin currently has an installed base of more than 18,000 systems in over 40 countries, making the company the world's largest HPC-focused solutions provider.
Effective immediately, customers will be able to source DDN products from Penguin Computing, including the award winning SFA storage platforms, the GridScaler and ExaScaler parallel file storage systems; NAS Scaler, DDN's enterprise scale-out NAS platform, and WOS, DDN's hyperscale object storage system.
DDN enables enterprises to extract value and deliver results from their information. Its customers include the world's leading online content and social networking providers, high performance cloud and grid computing, life sciences, media production organizations, and security & intelligence organizations.
Deployed in thousands of mission critical environments worldwide, DDN's solutions have been designed, engineered, and proven in the world's most scalable data centers to ensure competitive business advantage for today's information powered enterprise.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The DCIA is excited to announce new speakers and an expanded schedule for our inaugural CLOUD COMPUTING CONFERENCE, a full-day event-track within the 2012 NAB Show in Las Vegas, NV, taking place on Monday April 16th at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
We're also pleased to offer DCINFO readers a special opportunity to attend the NAB Show at no cost: 1) Go to www.nabshow.com. 2) Click on "Register now." 3) Enter PASS CODE: 2012.
These passes provide access to all Exhibits, NAB Show Opening, General Sessions, Info Sessions, and Content Theater. Conferences registrations are additional. The expiration date is March 30th to take advantage of this valuable offer.
The NAB - CLOUD COMPUTING CONFERENCE will demonstrate new ways that cloud-based solutions are providing increased reliability and security for content distribution.
From collaboration during production, to post-production and formatting, to interim storage, delivery and playback on fixed and mobile devices, to viewership measurement and analytics, cloud computing is having an enormous impact on video delivery.
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 Dave Asprey, VP, Cloud Security, Trend Micro; Chris Kantrowitz, CEO, Gobbler; 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; Gerald Hensley, VP, Worldwide Entertainment Sales, Rovi Corporation; Ajay Malhotra, EVP, North America, Prime Focus Technologies; Todd Martin, SVP, Strategic Solutions Group. Chyron; Kirk Punches, VP, Business Development, Sorenson Media; 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; 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; Michael King, Director of Marketing, DataDirect Networks; Kshitij Kumar, SVP, Mobile Video, Concurrent; and Mark Taylor, VP, Media and IP Services, Level 3.
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 Sean Barger, CEO, Equilibrium; Thomas Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates; Steve Hawley, Principal Analyst & Consultant, TVStrategies; Jonathan Hurd, Director, Altman Vilandrie & Co.; Jeff Kim, COO, US & EMEA, CDNetworks; Monica Ricci, Dir. of Product Marketing, CSG Systems; John Schiela, President, Phoenix Marketing International (PMI); Nick Strauss, Director of Sales, Verizon Digital Media Services; and Mike West, CTO, GenosTV.
Jean-Luc Chatelain, EVP, Strategy & Technology, DataDirect Networks, will present out next keynote on "Navigating the Current Cloud Environment and Planning for What's Next." What are the proven opportunities for broadcasters and A/V distributors to adapt cloud computing technology now and what changes and new service offerings are imminent?
The final panel, "Years Ahead for Cloud Computing," will ask 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 Saul Berman, Lead Partner, IBM Global Business Services; 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; David Sterling, Partner, i3m3 Solutions; and Chuck Stormon, CEO, Attend.
Our closing keynote, presented by Ashish Gupta, Strategist, Cloud Infrastructure, Huawei, will summarize 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?
A few outstanding sponsorship opportunities at the CLOUD COMPUTING CONFERENCE and a small number of exhibiting opportunities at the new CLOUD COMPUTING PAVILION on the show floor are still available.
If IPTV or online delivery is in your current or future operating plans, you won't want to miss these discussions focused on cloud-delivered content and its impact on consumers, television manufacturers, telecom industries, and the media. For information on sponsorship opportunities, please contact advertising@nab.org.
If you are a cloud services provider to digital media, NAB Show's new CLOUD COMPUTING PAVILION offers an affordable and professionally-produced turnkey package to showcase your cloud solutions. Become an exhibitor and position your innovative technology and ideas squarely in the center of this multi-billion dollar marketplace. Contact exhibits@nab.org for more information.
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.
Cloud Computing: Hot, Hot Hot!
Excerpted from CNBC Report by Bob Pisani
Another cloud computing IPO today, and it, too, blew the doors out.
Bazaarvoice provides an online customer review platform to brands and retailers, priced at $12, way above the $8-$10 price talk, and is trading over $16 in mid-afternoon.
Two other cloud computing related IPOs have held onto big gains: Brightcove priced last week at $11, now at $15; and Greenway priced three weeks ago at $10, trading near $15.
Coming next Thursday night: local business review website YELP looking to price 7.15 million shares at $12-$14. With a market cap of $778 million, they're only floating 12 percent of the company.
A small float may be the smart thing to do, says David Menlo at IPOfinancial.com, if only for the company. "If you have a hot commodity, it primes the pump for higher premiums," he notes. Besides, they can always float more later.
Revenues are tiny: $83 million in 2011, with a loss of $16.9 million. Really. That's it. What's the valuation model? Well, you can use a multiple of revenues (about 10 times), but hey, didn't they do that in the dot-com era?
Cloud Computing Comes to Assist Hollywood Effects
Excerpted from CenterBeam Report
A digital effects company in Hollywood is looking to utilize cloud computing to improve its operations, according to Data Knowledge Center. Digital Domain started using a cloud computing solution to help "harness distributed computing nodes in a cloud rendering system," according to the news source.
"We couldn't do this without the cloud computing solution in the picture," said Mike Thompson, Sr. Systems Engineer of Digital Domain, according to the news source. "The WAN latency would have killed the applications' IOPS to the filers. We simply wouldn't have been able to render frames remotely. In order to grow, we would have been forced to increase our data center footprint in cities with much higher costs for space and power."
The company, which has done effects for "Titanic," "Transformers," and other movies, uses cloud computing to reduce latency, according to Data Knowledge Center. This can occur by accessing data across a large distance, which the company helps cut down with this cloud solution.
In Vancouver, Canada, a group of companies put together a localized cloud computing server called RenderCloud, which will allow studios to ramp up production in the area. Movie production may see more instances of cloud computing in the coming years to go along with these advancements.
The Week the Cloud Won
Excerpted from NY Times Report by Quentin Hardy
This was a milestone week for enterprise computing: The cloud won.
On Tuesday, Dell reported lower earnings, and said sales in the current quarter would fall 7 percent. On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard (HP), that other stalwart of enterprise hardware, also reported lower earnings, and also projected a lower outlook for both the quarter and the year.
Meg Whitman, HP's chief executive, said a full transformation of HP might take as long as five years.
Then on Thursday, Salesforce.com, which rents business software through a cloud-computing based system, said its fourth-quarter revenue was up 38 percent. Salesforce also raised its revenue projections for 2012, to a rise of 30 percent year on year.
If these reports hold up elsewhere, it would seem that businesses are moving to cloud computing faster than almost anyone would have thought a year ago. Salesforce and others are rushing to offer more applications to businesses via the cloud, and old-line software giants like SAP and Oracle are spending billions to buy and build their way into the cloud.
This doesn't just change the software business, but it does radically affect the hardware business. The cloud is a collection of thousands of computer servers, bought by companies that are buying in volume, and care less about brand. Laptops and desktops don't get as much wear and tear when a business is connected to the cloud. Those stalwarts also face competition from tablets and smart-phones, as employees find they can do more tasks on mobile devices.
If the changes are happening as rapidly as this week's earnings suggest, all the traditional manufacturers, resellers, consultants and other camp followers of the current client/server computing world, who thought they had a few more years to adjust to the new realities, are having a really bad day.
"We're at a tipping point, where mission-critical applications are moving into the cloud," says Rick Sherlund, an analyst with Nomura Securities. "The hardware is different, the infrastructure is different; it affects a lot of things."
To be sure, comparisons among the three companies are far from perfect: aside from the individual woes and triumphs at each company, Dell and HP are still much bigger companies than Salesforce. HP's revenue on the quarter is more than 10 times as big as Salesforce's for the year, though HP also has much lower profit margins. After accounting for things like stock-based compensation and amortization of intangibles, Salesforce lost 3 cents a share in the last quarter, and 9 cents on the year. Critics would say this is an apples and oranges comparison.
But apples and oranges are both fruit. You can similarly abstract the differences among these companies, and make some decent comparisons. They all have the same customers, for example, and most of those buyers are looking for a cheaper alternative. They are all publicly traded companies too, and for the most part have the same type of investors. The day after their respective earnings came out, Dell shares fell about 6 percent, and HP shares fell 7 percent. Salesforce gained 8.6 percent.
As much as a stock price is a bet on the future, Salesforce appeared to have a better outlook.
Huawei Unveils Connected Home Solution
Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, on Thursday launched the most extensive 'Connected Home Solution' in the industry at the Mobile World Congress 2012.
The Connected Home Solution is a comprehensive cloud which incorporates home entertainment, small office/home office (SOHO), home cloud content sharing and home security solutions.
The Connected Home Solution aims to advance digital life at home and bring a richer and more automated home entertainment and office experience to people worldwide.
"Mobile alerts when someone breaks into your home, Internet on your TV, working in a SOHO, life-like sports games without a professional video game device. These are no longer limited to visions of the future," said Jerry Zhi, Director of Home Device, Huawei Device.
"The Connected Home Solution will bring benefits to people across all aspects of their lives. Huawei Device is taking the lead in integrating products and solutions combining digital media, the digital distribution business, network terminals and storage."
Huawei's Connected Home Solution has been developed specifically for families, small to middle-sized enterprises, and end-consumers across the broadcasting and telecommunications industry.
The solution can be implemented without additional network investment, which is particularly beneficial and cost-effective for commercial organizations. Users are provided with applications including dynamic games and controls, Internet applications (web browsing, audio/visual) on TV, IPTV entertainment, SOHO Office, home security, home digital device content sharing, multi-screen switching and cloud access.
Telefonica to Launch Split Personality Device in the Cloud
Excerpted from Mobile News Report by Paul Withers
Telefonica Digital is to launch cloud service Dual Persona, enabling companies to manage all corporate smart-phone applications while allowing those using device to have their own profiles.
The service, which uses Telefonica's cloud platform, will launch in the second quarter of 2012.
Using Dual Persona, a company's IT manager can administer employees' work profiles and professional smart-phones on their Android devices whether they are personal or corporate devices.
A number of items can be managed, from the provisioning of new employees and the updating of applications and security programs, to the removal of corporate information on the mobile device.
The IT manager will also have secure access readily available from the management console wherever it is located. Updating of professional profiles on the handset is done remotely.
Using mobile virtualization technology supplied by VMware, each person's professional profile operates alongside their personal one.
Employees are free to install applications and copy or download information on their personal profile.
However the professional profile is controlled by the company which decides which applications the user can access and which security programs apply to that profile.
This profile is also protected by encryption and can be blocked or erased by the IT manager.
Users can switch from one profile to another with one click, and can configure it so they can receive notifications from the applications in one profile whilst using the other.
Initially the service will only be available on Android devices, although the solution is likely to be made available to other operating systems in the near future.
The Samsung Galaxy S II will be the first handset available to use the Dual Persona service. Samsung is also working with Telefonica and VMWare to increase availability to other devices.
Telefonica Digital Director of Strategy and Cloud Services Moises Navarro said, "The Dual Persona service brings benefits to both users and companies. The user can use just one device, for both personal and work use whilst still maintaining privacy.
"The company has greater control and security over corporate information, increased efficiency and cost savings on mobiles, shorter provisioning and incident management time and, logically, employees will be more satisfied."
Samsung UK and Ireland Telecommunications and Networks Division Managing Director Simon Stanford said, "We are confident that the enterprise decision-makers will embrace Samsung mobile devices leading the Dual Persona service which flexibly enables both the personal and corporate uses."
uTorrent Android App in the Works
Excerpted from WebProNews Report by Josh Wolford
Android users may very well be seeding and leeching right from their mobile devices pretty soon. TorrentFreak is reporting that the uTorrent development team is currently working on a uTorrent app for Android.
uTorrent owner BitTorrent had little to say about the upcoming app - only that it's in the works and they don't have any more to say on a possible release date: "Like any software company, we know a mobile experience is really important to our users," they said. "At this point, we don't yet have an ETA."
Apparently, the app would be a full-fledged version of uTorrent - the most popular BitTorrent client in the world. According to the report, it would have all of the same functionality as the desktop version.
This would be a full-functioning native app - the first of its kind as far as BitTorrent clients go. The app would be different than the uTorrent Remote, which is currently available for download in the Android Market.
That app allows you to connect to your desktop uTorrent client and control your torrents from your mobile device.
You can use the app to search for torrents as well, but they will be added to your desktop uTorrent. You can even shift your completed downloads back to your device for playback. But all the work is being done on your desktop.
The new uTorrent app would make this all possible on your Android phone or tablet.
Joyent to Provide Public Cloud Services in Japan & Southeast Asia
Joyent, a global provider of cloud computing software and services, this week announced its plans to extend its real-time public cloud offering to Asia in the second quarter of 2012, starting with a public cloud in Tokyo and following with a Singapore-based operation catering to the greater Southeast Asia region.
The plan is in response to existing customers who plan to expand their businesses into the two regions, and from partners like Telefonica who are encountering heightening demands for bullet-proof, real-time infrastructure that can handle the increasing need for machine-to-machine and real-time mobile communications.
"Japanese consumers and businesses have high standards when it comes to real-time apps, and we want to ensure that these customers - some of the most innovative and pioneering companies in the world - are provided with the best cloud experience across the globe," stated Steve Tuck, General Manager of Joyent Cloud, Joyent's public cloud line of business.
"Similarly, consumers and businesses in Southeast Asia are demanding a better cloud services experience and we will provide that through our unique technology stack."
"Joyent service and support is key to Voxer's highly demanding global service. Japanese and other users in Asia are embracing Voxer and as these markets expand we will continue to depend on Joyent to provide the required data center presence," said Matt Ranney, CTO of Voxer, provider of the popular Walkie Talkie application for mobile devices. "We look forward to working with Joyent in Japan and Southeast Asia to continue providing true real-time functionality and service for our sophisticated customers."
Joyent's SmartDataCenter, the cloud infrastructure platform that has powered the Joyent Cloud business in the US for seven years, is a living showcase that sets Joyent apart from other cloud software providers that do not run public clouds.
Accompanying SmartDataCenter is SmartOS, the operating system developed and optimized by Joyent and includes highly efficient use of hardware through operating system virtualization, native security, and Node.js, the rapidly emerging server-side Javascript language and runtime that is making machine-to-machine and big data computing more efficient than ever before.
Throughout 2012 Joyent will roll out a collection of seamlessly connected high performance public clouds that serve global corporations with consistent computing services on every continent.
A global ecosystem of leading technology partners assists Joyent in enabling customers to leverage the performance, scalability, reliability and security inherent in the company's cloud solutions.
Google Leads Service Providers in Cloud
Excerpted from Channelnomics Report by Larry Walsh
Once was a time where a service provider was easily defined. These were companies that provided services - usually transport or hosting - to end-user organizations. Today, in the cloud computing era, the service provider segment is a hodgepodge of telecom carriers, hosting companies, application and processing services, and even application resellers.
When it comes to partnership in this confusing and evolving segment, channel partners say Google leads the pack with its ability to host applications, provide cloud-based services and partnership in applications.
Google topped the list of service providers in the Cloud & Technology Transformation Alliance's 2012 State of Cloud Channel survey. Of the 229 surveyed solution providers, telephony agents and managed service providers, 26 percent choose Google as the best carrier/hosting company to partner with in the channel.
Google is a curious leader for this segment, as it doesn't exactly provide transport or hosting services. What it does provide is platform services, applications, and the ability for third-party developers to create and market their wares to cloud consumers.
The hosting market is often seen as a race between giant Amazon and its Web Services offerings and hosting pioneer Rackspace. In the CTTA survey, Rackspace comes in second in the field with 23 percent of channel partners' endorsements, while Amazon trails behind CenturyLink and AT&T with 17 percent.
CenturyLink, third in the rankings, is a growing hosting and transport powerhouse. In 2011, it bought Qwest for telephony and bandwidth services, and Savvis, a major IT hosting company. The two acquisitions vaulted CenturyLink's standing in the channel and marketplace.
AT&T has a respectable showing with 18.4 percent share of the channel's endorsement of its services. Ma Bell is already offering a full portfolio of cloud applications, hosting, and data transport services. It's making plans to push deeper into the channel to expand its cloud footprint.
Interestingly, Verizon is deep in the pack at sixth place with 15 percent. While Verizon proper isn't known for its cloud services, Teremark Worldwide, the company it acquired in 2010, is a major competitor in hosting and cloud services. The middling showing in the survey likely reflects Verizon's need to better promote its cloud services and capacities.
Other companies receiving notable mentions by partners include Microsoft, which is pushing its cloud infrastructure, platform and application services; InContaact, a collaboration provider; CBeyond, a carrier service provider; and Paetec, a regional carrier that was recently acquired by Windstream.
The full results of the CTTA 2012 State of the Cloud Channel will be released at the CTTA Spring Summit in Las Vegas, NV on March 28th. The event is co-located with the Channel Partners Conference and Expo.
Facebook Acquires Staff Behind File-Transfer Start-Up
Excerpted from ComputerWorld Report by John Ribeiro
Facebook has acquired the team behind file-transfer start-up Caffeinated Mind, which offered an on-demand peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing system.
The staff from Caffeinated Mind will work on tools that will help Facebook employees share files internally, and will not be working on a file-sharing service for consumers, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Facebook is only acquiring the people, and not the company and the technology.
Starting with Sendoid, the file transfer system, Caffeinated Mind in California started to tackle big data transfer problems for enterprises with a tool called Expresso.
"We can't think of a better place to continue this journey than Facebook, where we'll be developing internal tools to improve the inner workings of the company and product, applying our technical and product expertise to their rapidly growing service," Caffeinated Mind said.
Over the next two weeks, Caffeinated Mind said it will be winding down Sendoid and closing the corporate pilot for Expresso. It reassured users that it has purged all transfer history logs on its servers, and does not retain their personal data.
On the Sendoid site, Caffeinated Mind said Sendoid's web interface will be disabled on March 7th, though users of the Sendoid desktop application will have services through March 14th.
Kontiki Accelerates Pace in Rapidly Growing Enterprise Video Market
Kontiki, the leading provider of cloud-based enterprise video solutions and superior content delivery, continues to build momentum on increased demand for enhancing employee communications. Today, Kontiki is announcing new customers, new partners, and the closing of an initial $5.1M round of Series C financing.
Kontiki, whose solutions are deployed at many of the world's largest companies in the financial services, retail, technology, telecommunications and manufacturing market sectors, extended its blue chip customer list in 2011 to include American Airlines, Nestle, HJ Heinz, Pillar Hotels, NiSource and Plante Moran. These organizations are using Kontiki's technology to deliver high-quality videos on-demand and live events on a global basis.
Along with new customers, Kontiki also added new strategic partners that include TalkPoint, the leader in global communications technology, specializing in browser-based audio and video webcasting and NewsGator, an enterprise social computing company delivering a wide range of social capabilities to Microsoft SharePoint users through its tight integration with the entire Microsoft stack.
The Kontiki Enterprise Video Platform (EVP) easily integrates with TalkPoint's video webcasts, a best-of-breed webcasting solution. TalkPoint's comprehensive solution offers the additional social engagement for live events that businesses demand and is the perfect complement to Kontiki's unsurpassed delivery technology.
The Kontiki EVP also integrates directly with NewsGator's social computing suite, Social Sites 2010, enhancing productivity and business performance by significantly streamlining employee information access. NewsGator's Video Stream solution package for Social Sites 2010 makes it easy for organizations focused on employee engagement to integrate a user-friendly social experience into Microsoft SharePoint, establishing the collaboration platform as the single, central go-to resource for enterprise content.
Pairing NewsGator's focus with Kontiki's cloud-based delivery technology ensures not only the engaging social experience users expect, but also the high quality video viewing experience they demand, without impact to the corporate network.
As a testament to the promising future of the company, existing Kontiki investors MK Capital, New World Ventures, Cross Creek Capital, Hatteras Funds and Kontiki Chairman of the Board, Todd Johnson, renewed their commitment to the company with an initial Series C financing investment of $5.1M., which will be used to accelerate Kontiki's growth and exploit market momentum. Kontiki is focused on continuing to deliver high quality video that furthers employee engagement and helps support enterprise goals.
"We are pleased to announce these important new customers and partners and the completion of this initial round of funding for Kontiki from our existing investors. Kontiki's Enterprise Video Platform (EVP) allows every business to easily and efficiently accelerate their use of video across the enterprise in support of engagement initiatives. Our cloud-based solution runs over your existing infrastructure, requiring no additional hardware or bandwidth upgrades. The Kontiki solution provides optimal enterprise video delivery that is secure, scalable, cost-effective and network-friendly," said Dan Vetras, President and CEO, Kontiki.
"As the usage of video continues to accelerate in the enterprise, companies will increasingly seek out solutions that can provide quality video delivery, without disrupting the network. These companies need to find a solution that can reach and engage all their employees, everywhere and on any device," said Mark Koulogeorge, Managing General Partner, MK Capital. "We continue to believe in Kontiki's robust technology and the efficiency and scalability it provides compared to traditional hardware-based solutions."
The Return of Peer-To-Peer
Excerpted from OWNI.eu Report by Fabien Soyez
The dramatic shuttering of Megaupload exposed the weaknesses in a streaming system that stored information in one place. After the panic, users have begun to return to an old favorite, peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing, and its robust, decentralized structure.
Back in 2009, Arbor Networks, a company specializing in network management, announced that the P2P model of file sharing, wherein each client acts as a server, was in decline. Users were turning more and more towards streaming.
On January 19th of this year the FBI ordered the shuttering of Megaupload, the Internet's largest direct download platform. The Internet, in turn, panicked. Cogent and Carpathia Hosting, hosting companies which handled some of the site's traffic, lost 30% of their business.
Fearing the great purge, sites like VideoBB and Fileserve raced to empty their servers. Rapidshare and MediaFire in turn decided to police themselves, taking action against their own customers.
Jeffrey Talada of the Washington Pirate Party, a branch of the US Pirate Party, observed of the chaos, "These sites are like a hydra - you get rid of one, and twenty more are born to replace it. If Megaupload is found guilty, they will go outside of the United States. But the same weakness will persist, the centralization."
Talada, a fierce opponent of the ACTA treaty and the recently shelved SOPA, believes Megaupload proved that a centralized system is weak. "Every day millions of Internet users went to one site. All it took was to shut it down and everything disappeared," he continues. "That would never have happened with P2P."
He advocates a return to basics: Have people ever really left P2P? If the government closes something, people will go somewhere else. They might already have their own preference.
According to Ipoque's online observatory, which measures such things, the level of P2P traffic around the world spiked suddenly in Europe after January 20th. The resurrection of P2P.
In the week following the closure of Megaupload, graphics posted by Ipoque showed peaks reaching 15% of total European bandwidth traffic. Those curves have now stabilized somewhat. BitTorrent and eDonkey are the two most widely used exchange protocols. According to the site Peerates.net, which publishes statistics on the use of eMule servers, the number of searches on eDonkey increased from 110,000 in early January to 200,000 after the shuttering of Megaupload.
Maxime Rouquet, Co-President of the French Pirate Party, notes a "stagnation" in the number of users streaming and carrying out direct downloads. For him, salvation will come in the shape of P2P. "With the collapse of Cogent shares, you realize that on a technical level centralization is a very bad thing," he says.
Benjamin Bayart, President of French independent service provider French Data Network (FDN) goes further. "Technically, direct downloading involves an over-centralized point which distributes content en masse. A state has decided to shut it down, in the blink of an eye. An ultra-centralized system is very weak. P2P is a system of individual networks. To compare the two systems is like comparing the Internet and the Minitel: for the latter, if you shut down the central system, you shut down everything. For the net it's a bit more complicated, it's hard to shut down. P2P, just like the Internet, cannot be broken."
Economically, Bayart believes, P2P would also represent a "good solution" for overloaded ISPs. "When millions of people are carrying out direct downloads en masse, it creates an enormous output, with instabilities that are very difficult to control," he explains. "Streaming, meanwhile, lets you download the same thing several times. Both systems have dramatic effects for network management."
The president of FDN adds: "P2P is a system of individual streams that move in small packets, never in large blocs. It doesn't clog the network, because the traffic is distributed. ISPs and operators who fought it five years ago have realized that was maybe a mistake. All serious technicians know that P2P is the simplest and most robust system. In order for a file to disappear, it would have to have disappeared from every computer sharing it."
On January 21st, shortly after the closure of Megaupload, BitTorrent announced that it had reached 150 million users. The founder of the Swedish Pirate Party (Piratepartiet), Rick Falkvinge, sees the future as being P2P: Some companies are already distributing games and updates using peer-to-peer technology, because it reduces their bandwidth consumption, and their costs thereafter. People like to share, they want to share, and they will always find new ways to do so. You can't stop them.
Some crafty folks are already fully exploiting the decentralized aspect of the P2P system. Tribler, a fully decentralized BitTorrent solution, was created ten years ago. Used by only a few thousand people, Tribler is becoming a key tool for decentralized P2P use.
As Dr. Pouwelse, who heads the project, explained to TorrentFreak, "With Tribler we have achieved zero-seconds downtime over the past six years, all because we don't rely on shaky foundations such as DNS, web servers, or search portals." Search results appear directly from other users, instead of from some central database. According to Dr. Pouwelse, "the only way to break Tribler would be to break the Internet itself."
Another much anticipated development in the world of P2P is P2P caching, something which will be "extremely beneficial for the network," according to Jeffrey Talada.
ISPs retain exchanged data in caches in order to speed-up exchanges. When a user requests information, rather than download it from the other end of the world, it is already cached, because someone else has already downloaded it. These caches allow for higher speeds and avoid saturating the network. But mechanisms that target intermediaries, such as ACTA, are an obstacle to the development of such systems.
Many users are already using systems for encrypting connections in order to cover their tracks. Rick Falkvinge believes the P2P system of tomorrow will head further and further "underground", eventually becoming anonymous. "Users will return to eDonkey and BitTorrent protocols, but they will use new ways to counter being tracked," he predicts.
To prevent users from being identified, P2P already incorporates several anonymization systems, such as magnet links. "In the beginning with BitTorrent, you could retrieve file torrents which contained hashcodes, or digital signatures, on a central server or tracker, like The Pirate Bay or OpenBitTorrent. These days, we share information between multiple peers that connect to the network. Torrents are decentralized, so we can eliminate trackers," says Maxime Rouquet.
The magnet links protect users, as they only contain the digital signature of the shared files, and do not back them up. Since January, The Pirate Bay has focused on magnet links to avoid becoming the next Megaupload.
Maxime Rouquet thinks that users may go even further. "With nonsense such as Hadopi, we risk forcing everyone onto P2P, but behind a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN is a system that allows users to encrypt their connection, mostly used by activists in countries where there is heavy censorship.
By encrypting the connection, the user is sure to be protected against Hadopi and can use any download software risk-free. The user can also connect to sites such as Hulu that are restricted outside the United States for copyright reasons.
Rick Falkvinge would rather talk about Tor, a project conceived and implemented by hacktivists ten years ago. The principle is simple: the user installs software on his computer, turns it on and then can surf the web anonymously. "Basically, Tor allows one to bypass national restriction systems, and thus censorship: information flows through a network of relay servers that prevent authorities tracing it back to you," says Falkvinge. The principle is known as "onion routing".
For some, like Maxime Rouquet or La Quadrature du Net, the fight against piracy will push users towards securing their connection more and more, something which can have disastrous effects on the network.
"And of course, nothing will be donated to the artists," adds Benjamin Bayart. "With P2P, everyone wins. Nobody earns or loses money. In general, people are looking for something that they have simply not found elsewhere, or can't afford. Those people who have money and are not spending it are a minority."
He concludes, "If you try to block P2P, what will people do? They wouldn't be able to find that latest episode of Dexter that they were looking for. Result: people will stop watching the series. It's exactly the same not broadcasting a song over the radio: you're losing out on an audience. The only way to ensure that people don't download any more, would be to suppress their interest in culture."
One more innovation that merits following closely comes from Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent. For three years, the computer scientist has been working on a new protocol, BitTorrent Live. It's a sort of P2P streaming, that would allow broadcasting of live content in a decentralized manner.
Contacted by OWNI, he explains, "Streaming today is expensive, and it faces many technical challenges. I knew that a decentralized P2P architecture could solve many of these challenges. The purpose of BitTorrent Live is to have very low latency, and 99% of offload, i.e., 99% of data from peers. Which means no server infrastructure or hosting provider will be required. Every Friday night, at 8 PM, people can access the beta version.
No details have emerged yet as to the possibility of merging this new protocol and the classic download set-up. But according to Bram Cohen, BitTorrent Live will "reduce packet loss" and "limit network congestion, an advantage for ISPs."
More and more companies and services are becoming interested in P2P technology. It's a very effective way to move data. For example, Facebook, Twitter and Etsy use the BitTorrent protocol for their internal network. The video game publisher Blizzard uses BitTorrent to distribute updates to millions of players worldwide.
With BitTorrent Live, Bram Cohen is combining what made streaming a success - instant access to videos and the decentralized, user-friendly aspect of good old P2P. "Many videos are still not findable on the Internet," Cohen explained on February 13th at the MusicTech Summit in San Francisco,CA. Football matches, concerts, TV shows, movies, the list of possibilities is endless.
At MusicTech, the inventor of BitTorrent let slip, half-jokingly: "My goal is to kill television." BitTorrent Live is still in its infancy, but Bram Cohen may well kill two birds with one stone, finally burying Megaupload and its friends.
Coming Events of Interest
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.
Cloud Computing World Forum - May 8th in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Cloud Computing World Forum Africa is the only place to discuss the latest topics in cloud, including security, mobile, applications, communications, virtualization, CRM and much, much more.
Cloud Expo - June 11th-14th in New York, NY. Two unstoppable enterprise IT trends, Cloud Computing and Big Data, will converge in New York at the tenth annual Cloud Expo being held at the Javits Convention Center. A vast selection of technical and strategic General Sessions, Industry Keynotes, Power Panels, Breakout Sessions, and a bustling Expo Floor.
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