October 1 , 2012
Volume XLI, Issue 2
Aspera Sponsors CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2012
The DCIA and CCA proudly announce that Aspera has signed-on as a sponsor of the CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2012 (CCW:2012) business leadership summit taking place November 8th-9th in Santa Monica, CA.
Aspera's unwavering mission is to create the next-generation software technologies that move the world's large data at maximum speed, regardless of file size, transfer distance and network conditions.
With the unstoppable explosion of Big Data in a world where IT and networking infrastructures are more diverse and flexible than ever, Aspera focuses on supplying innovative data transfer solutions that help organizations operate and collaborate more effectively on a global scale.
At the root of Aspera's success lies our innovative, patented, highly efficient bulk data transport technology: "fasp" (fast, adaptive, secure protocol). This technology is unique and core to all Aspera high-performance file transfer software.
Consistently ranked first in every WAN transfer throughput benchmark it was ever evaluated in, fasp outperforms software and hardware WAN acceleration solutions alike.
With more than 1,700 customers and over 16,000 active software licenses being used worldwide, Aspera serves all industries that need to move large volumes of data over wide area networks in practical timeframes, such as enterprise IT, games and software development, government, legal and eDiscovery, life sciences, media and entertainment and oil and gas.
A pioneer in the enablement of high-speed, data-intensive workflows throughout the enterprise, Aspera has unlocked the cloud for big data with high-performance digital transport, now available on demand.
CCW:2012 will feature three co-located conferences focusing on the impact of cloud-based solutions in the industry's fastest-moving and most strategically important areas: entertainment, broadband, and venture financing.
CCW:2012 registration enables delegates to participate in any session of the three conferences being presented at CCW:2012 — ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT DELIVERY, NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE, and INVESTING IN THE CLOUD.
At the end of the first full-day of co-located conferences, attendees will be transported from the conference hotel in Santa Monica to Marina del Rey Harbor where they will board a yacht for a sunset cruise and networking reception.
So register today to attend CCW:2012 and don't forget to add the Sunset Cruise to your conference registration. Registration to attend CCW:2012 includes access to all sessions, central exhibit hall with networking functions, luncheon, refreshment breaks, and conference materials.
Cloud Adoption Is Speeding Up
Adopted from Baseline Report by Samuel Greengard
It's easy to dismiss cloud computing as the trend du jour. However, a September study conducted by the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) — which includes heavyweights such as Lockheed Martin, BMW, Deutsche Bank, China Unicom and Terremark — offers a glimpse at how rapidly companies are adopting the cloud. The organization polled 63 member firms and found that organizations are embracing the cloud at a 15 percent faster rate than previously forecast.
In fact, over half of the survey respondents expect to operate 40 percent or more of their IT operations in private clouds by 2015, and a quarter report that they will run more than 40 percent of their operations in a public cloud. A mere 3 percent indicated that they are not implementing clouds in any way.
According to Executive Director Marvin Wheeler, organizations "continue to adopt clouds as part of their strategic plans," and ODCA members are doing so at a "much more rapid rate than the general market."
Several areas are garnering attention in the public cloud space. Enterprise resource planning, human resources, finance, and sales and marketing are among the areas driving the broadest cloud adoption. More than half of the respondents (53 percent) indicated an interest in public clouds for sales and marketing, while 47 percent view productivity as a leading opportunity for software as a service (SaaS) applications delivered through a public cloud.
Wheeler believes that the rapid adoption rate — particularly in marketing and sales — is at least partly due to a greater understanding of the technology and the strategic elements of using clouds. The organization's efforts to educate members and provide best practices are also factors, he believes. However, "adoption is ultimately determined by the business value of moving to a public cloud model against the maturity and requirements of capabilities of public cloud offerings."
The report provided other insights: Three-quarters of ODCA members are planning hybrid application deployments across public and private cloud environments, and about 84 percent of organizations plan to have up to 60 percent of their operations running on private clouds within the next year. By 2015, the figure is forecast to rise to above 95 percent.
The leading reasons for moving to the cloud include on-demand self service (65 percent); measured services (56 percent); resource pooling (47 percent); rapid elasticity (61 percent); and ubiquitous network access (26 percent).
"Each organization is going to have a different model depending on business and regulatory requirements," Wheeler explains. "As organizations become more adept at adoption of cloud services, we expect each organization to outline a strategy on data management."
Nevertheless, a number of barriers remain. An overwhelming 80 percent of respondents cited data security as a key concern for public clouds; 48 percent say that regulatory issues limit adoption; 44 percent have concerns about service reliability; and 39 percent have concerns about getting locked into a single vendor and the overall lack of open solutions.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Our strategic summit for business leaders, CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2012 (CCW:2012), is coming together well with a terrific line-up of speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors.
Please join us in Santa Monica, CA on Thursday and Friday November 8th & 9th for this seminal event co-produced with the CCA.
CCW:2012 features three co-located conferences: ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT DELIVERY, NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE, and INVESTING IN THE CLOUD — and includes a Thursday evening cocktail reception aboard a Marina del Rey yacht.
Please also plan now to attend INTELLIGENCE IN THE CLOUD, a full-day workshop presented by the NAB and DCIA for military and government agencies, in Washington, DC on Tuesday December 4th.
With an educational focus, this event will highlight case studies involving multimedia cloud deployments in the commercial sector that have specific applicability to federal entities.
And finally, please note that the DCIA will present CONTENT IN THE CLOUD as a Conference within CES in Las Vegas, NV on Wednesday January 9th.
Join us for six insightful keynotes and four lively panel discussions highlighting the latest advancements in cloud-based solutions.
How should cloud computing be defined? What are the key economic considerations and prospects for sustainability of the cloud-enabled delivery phenomenon?
Insiders will share how changes and progress in the cloud are revolutionizing digital content storage and delivery.
The effects are being felt across the consumer electronics (CE) industry, and it's only just begun!
We pay special attention to the impact of cloud-delivered, high-value entertainment on consumers, telecom industries, the media, and CE manufacturers.
CES - CONTENT IN THE CLOUD will provide a strategic update on progress in the adoption of cloud solutions for content distribution; and take an in-depth look at the impact on consumers of implementing cloud computing for media storage and delivery; benefits of cloud-delivered content for end-users: ubiquity, cost, portability improvements; drawbacks of cloud-delivered content for consumers: privacy, reliability, security issues.
How do cloud-based streaming and storage affect users' ability to access entertainment content and to own copies of movies, music, TV shows, games, etc.?
What advantages do cloud-based solutions applied to popular entertainment bring to users? How do they compare to older methods of online distribution? What is the role of social networking in this arena?
What has been the experience to date concerning confidential data being inadvertently leaked or intentionally hacked? What can users do to mitigate not having access to their applications or accidentally losing their data when they go offline? What happens if a cloud provider goes out of business?
It will also examine the impact of cloud computing on the telecommunications industries; benefits of cloud-delivered content to broadband network operators: efficiency, control, flexibility improvements; and drawbacks for telecoms: infrastructure, disruption, accountability issues.
What does cloud computing mean to broadband network operators in terms of managing their intellectual property (IP), allocating network resources, and developing and provisioning new services?
What advantages do broadband network operators gain with cloud-based solutions applied to popular entertainment? How does the on-demand, always-accessible nature of cloud-based entertainment delivery challenge conventional distribution systems?
In addition, it will consider the impact of cloud computing on the entertainment industries; benefits of cloud-delivered content to rights holders: workflow improvements, cost savings, new business models; and drawbacks for media companies: security, privacy, control issues.
What do cloud storage and distribution mean to content rights-holders in terms of managing their intellectual property (IP), realizing cost savings, reaching new audiences, analyzing usage, and implementing new business models?
What improvements does cloud computing offer the content distribution chain? What issues do rights-holders face in adopting their internal content management processes to cloud-based media storage?
And finally, it will explore the impact of cloud computing on CE manufacturers; benefits of cloud-delivered content to CEs: expanded opportunities, new features, added revenue sources; and drawbacks for manufacturers: system complexity, interoperability, reliability issues.
What unforeseen impact, both positive and negative, do cloud-based solutions applied to popular entertainment properties bring to CE manufacturers?
Remotely accessing applications and data has implications for elements that must be integrated into networked end-user devices. What about servers and other edge storage hardware products? What new hurdles must be overcome with these technological solutions?
If you would like to speak at this major industry event, please contact me ASAP. We are finalizing the conference agenda and speakers list to be included in the promotional materials and conference program now.
Call or e-mail at your earliest convenience — THIS WEEK — for more information. Share wisely, and take care.
Public Cloud Services Market Growing Faster than Expected
Excerpted from eWeek Report by Chris Preimesberger
IT researcher Gartner reported September 19th that the global appetite for public cloud services is ramping up faster than it and other analysts expected.
The subscription web services market is now forecast to grow 19.6 percent in 2012 to total $109 billion worldwide, Gartner said in a report. Business process services (also known as business-process-as-a-service, or BPaaS) represent the largest segment, accounting for about 77 percent of the total market.
Past studies showed that cloud services were projected to grow 12 percent to 15 percent in 2012, with expected increases in 2013 through 2015.
As has been reported here in eWeek previously, infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is the fastest-growing segment of the public cloud services market; that sector is expected to grow a whopping 45.4 percent in 2012.
"The cloud services market is clearly a high-growth sector within the overall IT marketplace," said Ed Anderson, Research Director at Gartner. "The key to taking advantage of this growth will be understanding the nuances of the opportunity within service segments and geographic regions, and then prioritizing investments in line with the opportunities."
BPaaS is the largest segment primarily because of the inclusion of cloud advertising as a subsegment, Gartner said. BPaaS is forecast to grow to $84.2 billion in 2012, up from $72 billion in 2011. In 2011, cloud advertising represented about 47 percent of the total public cloud services market, making it the biggest identifiable subsegment in the forecast, Gartner said.
Through 2016, cloud advertising will continue to account for about 47 percent of total public cloud services spending, Gartner said.
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is the next-largest segment and is forecast to grow to $14.4 billion in 2012, while IaaS is forecast to grow from $4.3 billion in 2011 to $6.2 billion in 2012. In 2010, the IaaS market was less than one-third the size of the SaaS market. By 2016, the IaaS market will grow to almost equal the size of the SaaS market.
EU to Seek Wider Use of Cloud Computing
Excerpted from Wall Street Journal Report by Frances Robinson
The European Union's executive arm will say this week that wider use of new technology to store data on off-site locations could create millions of new jobs in Europe and add nearly $1.29 trillion cumulatively to the bloc's gross domestic product by 2020.
The European Commission's technology chief, Neelie Kroes, on Thursday will present a strategy for what is known as cloud computing and recommend the 27-nation bloc cut across the "jungle of standards" currently in place.
In the strategy document, the commission says wider take-up of cloud services — from large-scale operations such as those provided by Amazon to consumer-focused products such as Apple's iCloud and Google's e-mail service — would provide a powerful economic boost.
Wider use of the cloud could drive an additional 45 billion euros of direct spending on cloud computing in the EU in 2020. This could boost GDP by a cumulative 957 billion euros and add 3.8 million jobs across the economy by the same date, it says.
It is also important that the companies' various cloud-computing services are interoperable, the commission will say.
"Currently, individual vendors have an incentive to fight for dominance by locking in their customers, inhibiting standardized, industry-wide approaches," according to the document. "Despite numerous standardization efforts, mostly led by suppliers, clouds may develop in a way that lacks interoperability, data portability and reversibility."
The plan's emphasis is on growth in the private sector, rather than spending public money on a competing cloud service. The commission will be "vigilant" on issues including "taxation, public procurement, financial regulation or law enforcement," where national differences can hamper the development of an inherently cross-border technology.
It also aims to make using the cloud appeal to a wider market. Currently consumers happily use online email services and social networks, but large companies are hesitant to let their data be stored elsewhere because of security concerns, and smaller companies can find it difficult to get a service tailored to their needs.
"It's good that the commission is pushing that, but it's what the market will deliver because that's what customers are asking for," said Mark Lange, cloud-policy expert at Microsoft, which has been consulted on the strategy.
For small firms, model contract terms, based on an optional contract-law instrument may be appropriate, according to the document, while the commission will also set up a European Cloud Partnership, or ECP, to encourage member states to store more public data in the cloud.
"The ECP will bring together industry expertise and public sector users to work on common procurement requirements for cloud computing in an open and fully transparent way," the document said, adding "The ECP does not aim at creating a physical cloud computing infrastructure."
Telefonica Integrates AR into Media Platform
Excerpted from ComputerWeekly Report by Caroline Baldwin
Telefonica Digital has partnered with augmented reality (AR) technology company, Aurasma, to broaden its range of AR media services.
The plan is to roll-out across 25 countries, starting with O2 in the UK.
AR provides the ability to liven up traditional media by transforming static advertisements into interactive content, which can be accessed through mobiles and tablets. Media such as billboards, adverts in print, products, and locations can all trigger additional 3D content.
After launching in June 2011, Aurasma has partnered with 8,000 brands. The company's technology is capable of recognizing images, symbols and objects — also known as triggers — which contain hidden, additional content.
The technology then delivers this content immediately, via a smart device, allowing consumers to view videos, listen to audio or be directed to web pages.
"Previously with AR, a developer or IT manager would have to build their own bespoke app. It would cost a lot of money and time," said Matt Mills, head of global partnerships at Aurasma.
Aurasma provides the technology to create augmented reality auras using a web-based content management system (CMS), which allows any individual to load 3D elements on top of chosen triggers.
Online clothing retailer, ASOS, launched an AR edition of its magazine with 180 auras, produced by its editorial team rather than the IT department.
Heat magazine also created an issue with AR content which saw 180,000 interactions in the first couple of days. The content included links to the Heat website, to iTunes to buy a particular album or other stores, and it saw a 42% click-through rate.
The Cloud and the Mobile App Revolution
Excerpted from CIO Insight Report by Don Reisinger
Providers of application development (AD) solutions are in a global race to aid CIOs and other IT leaders who are looking to create enterprise-friendly apps accessible on a host of devices, including smart-phones, and tablets.
A recent Gartner study, Market Trends: Application Development Software Worldwide, 2012-2016, indicates that companies will be spending more than ever on AD software that enables their teams to quickly and easily develop new apps in a rapidly changing environment.
Gartner predicts that mobile AD projects targeting smart-phones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4:1 by 2015. Cloud is also a big influencer. According to a statement from Gartner, "Cloud is changing the way applications are designed, tested and deployed, resulting in a significant shift in AD priorities. Cost is a major driver, but also agility, flexibility and speed to deploy new applications."
Gartner goes on to predict that, by 2015, 90 percent of large, mainstream enterprises and government agencies will use some aspect of cloud computing. Click here for eight good reasons why CIOs should pay attention to global application development trends.
IBM Targets Amazon in the Cloud
Excerpted from Wall St. Journal Report by Spencer Ante
International Business Machines (IBM) is taking aim at a market where the technology goliath is more like the new kid on the block.
In a shift for a company that typically deals with the world's largest corporations and governments, IBM will ramp up its efforts to sell so-called cloud computing services to midsize businesses. The Armonk, NY based company has lined up partners to resell its services and is helping software companies adapt their products to IBM's machines.
The move, to be disclosed on Wednesday, puts it in more direct competition with Amazon and Salesforce.com. Both have been successful in the mid-market and are expanding their offerings to the larger corporations that make up IBM's customer base.
IBM hopes its industry knowledge and broad technology offerings will help it win a big share of the market and that a bunch of little deals could add up to new and sizable revenue. But IBM isn't even on the radar for many midsize companies, which IBM defines as those with fewer than 1,000 employees, and it will be a challenge for its vaunted sales force to push these much smaller deals.
Spencer Rascoff, chief executive of Internet-based real estate company Zillow is a typical client for companies that rent computer power or provide software over the Internet, both cloud services. The midsize public company with nearly 500 employees and $66 million in 2011 sales said it has rented computing power from Amazon to run massive calculations from time to time.
When asked if he would purchase such service from IBM, Mr. Rascoff said, "I didn't even know they were in that business."
Technology research firm Gartner estimates sales of cloud computing services will reach about $58 billion this year, up from about $50 billion in 2011.
The phrase "cloud computing" is a catchall term that describes a host of technologies, including renting computer power and providing business software online to help companies manage their customers.
IBM identifies cloud computing as one of four major revenue-growth areas, including emerging markets, data-crunching analytics software, and urban technology systems. But the company lags some of its rivals.
Amazon is considered the leader in the market for renting compute power, while Salesforce.com is the top seller of customer management software over the Internet, say analysts. But both companies have been using those power bases to expand into new cloud markets that serve larger customers.
"We haven't seen IBM deliver on their vision," Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said. Mr. Benioff said at the company's recent conference he got questions about cloud computing efforts from Amazon.com, Google, and smaller companies but not one question about IBM's efforts. "IBM doesn't own the technology like they did in the last wave," he said. Amazon declined to comment.
Andy Monshaw, IBM's general manager in charge of small and medium sized businesses, said the cheaper cost of cloud computing will let the company reach a bigger base of smaller customers.
The company is working through partners to extend its reach. Charles Phillips, a former top Oracle executive, is now CEO of business software maker Infor Global Solutions, which is working with IBM on the effort. He said the company has been providing financing and marketing support.
Web application developer and IBM partner Highland Solutions said about 10% of its several hundred clients run their software on IBM cloud technology. Jon Berbaum, Director of Client Engagement at the company, said: "We see it as a really viable alternative."
Separately on Tuesday, IBM's Board of Directors named current CEO Virginia M. Rometty Chairman of the Board, effective October 1st. Ms. Rometty succeeds IBM's previous CEO and current Chairman Samuel Palmisano, who will become Senior Adviser to the company until he retires on December 1st.
The Coming of Third Generation Cloud Computing
Excerpted from IT Business Edge Report by Michael Vizard
While cloud computing has much to offer in terms of simplifying information technology (IT) administration, there is still a long way to go before reaching any kind of nirvana. While a virtual server can be provisioned in a matter of minutes, it can still take an IT organization several weeks to provision the storage and networking resources needed to support that server.
The good news is that progress is being made on both fronts. Nixu Software, for example, this week released Nixu Cloud IP Suite, a turnkey cloud IP commissioning system that automates the provisioning of IP addresses, server names, and other release parameters.
According to Juha Holkkola, Managing Director of Nixu Software, once we see the provisioning of network, and ultimately, storage resources, we should begin to see the emergence of third-generation cloud computing in the enterprise. A big part of making that happen will be the ability to manage storage systems at a higher level of abstraction.
Towards that end, storage vendors such as Tintri are working towards building what in effect are software-defined storage systems. According to Tintri CEO Kiernan Harty, the ability to manage at that level of abstraction is what will ultimately take most organizations to the point where 90 percent or more of their IT infrastructure is routinely virtualized.
Once all these capabilities are in place, we should see the emergence of truly programmable data centers where every piece of infrastructure can be tuned to meet the needs of a specific application workload. Until then, building your own private cloud is going to remain difficult, if for no other reason than an increasing number of data-intensive workloads running on virtual machines want to share a limited number of physical resources — many of which still have to be manually tuned.
There's no doubt that cloud computing has the potential to greatly simplify the management of the data center; it's just that on a practical level, a lot of those benefits are still on the ephemeral side of being cloudy.
Here's Oracle's New Cloud Computing Strategy
Excerpted from Wall St. Cheat Sheet Report by Meghan Foley
Even though the business software maker Oracle reported a decline in revenue in its quarterly report released Thursday, its shares rose more than two percent by the stock market's close.
While the company's report showed earnings of 53 cents per share for the fiscal first quarter, which matched Wall Street's projections and sent stock prices up, Oracles' $8.2 billion quarterly revenue missed analysts' expectations by $200 million. The discrepancy was prompted by the Oracle's continuing transition from computer hardware manufacturing to cloud-computing services.
Oracle's recent acquisitions of the software firm Taleo and the customer support company RightNow illustrate its evolution. Oracle has long been manufacturer of software that runs internally on a company's computer hardware, but hardware sales are down by more than 20 percent.
Declining hardware sales, however, were not unexpected. Intel faces a similar problem, as does Hewlett-Packard (HP). The software company's $7.3 billion acquisition of hardware manufacturer Sun Microsystems in 2010 has compounded the struggle for profitability and Chief Executive Officer of the company, Larry Ellison, has said in the past that the company will let the lower-performing portions of the hard business fade away.
Originally, cloud computing posed a threat to Oracle's traditional form of licensing software to be installed on individual machines, but the company has now entered the business of cloud software, which runs in remote data centers and is usually sold on a subscription basis. Cloud computing has been redefined as "software-as-a-service (SaaS)." Of its first quarter revenue, Oracle gained $222 million from cloud-subscriptions, growing 5 percent over last year.
In a statement following the release of the company's quarterly report, Ellison said that more cloud announcements are expected at Oracle's annual OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, CA next month.
Huawei Showcases Latest Cloud Computing Solutions
Excerpted from China Daily Report
Huawei, China's leading global information and communications technology solutions provider, showcased its latest Cloud Computing and Business Support Systems solutions Wednesday in Jakarta, in a bid to further enhance its commitment to the growing number of Indonesian customers.
"As cloud computing continues to make dramatic impacts on business and everyday life in general, Huawei is increasingly committed to developing our solutions to further enhance business and quality of life value to our end-users." said Vincent Li, CEO of Huawei Indonesia.
The showcase, concentrating on Cloud Computing Solutions, Business Support Systems, and Value Growth Solutions, consisted of exhibitions and technical workshops that demonstrated the latest innovations and initiatives by Huawei.
According to the CEO, these solutions address various critical business issues on how to successfully enhance business agility, increase cost efficiency, reduce the risk of major IT/BSS transformation, deliver an integrated customer experience, as well as improve monetization and business expansion.
"The showcase is a testament to Huawei's ongoing commitment to support Indonesia's IT industry growth. With our latest cloud computing technology, operators in Indonesia can now select the right solutions that can best support their businesses," said Li.
Serving 45 of the world's top 50 telecommunications operators including nine out of the 10 leading operators in Indonesia, Huawei's end-to-end solutions and services across the carrier networks as well as enterprise and consumer markets have been deployed and used by customers in over 140 countries across the world.
Can Cloud-Based Gaming Topple Consoles?
Excerpted from PC Magazine Report by Stephanie Mlot
AT&T, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable are exploring web-based gaming options that would eliminate the need for traditional gaming consoles, according to a report from Bloomberg.
The providers will launch cloud-gaming trials this year before a wider release in 2013, Bloomberg said. Other providers are aiming for a 2014 deployment.
If these web-based games take off, console makers like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo could be in trouble. According to NPD Group numbers from last month, those companies alone built a 2011 market worth $24.1 billion in the US.
Already, consumers are ditching their consoles and instead playing games on smart-phones and tablets, causing a 39 percent decline in video game hardware sales last month.
Verizon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and an AT&T spokeswoman pointed PCMag to a statement in the Bloomberg story, which said the company is "exploring unique ways to offer cloud gaming services to our TV and broadband customers." A Time Warner spokesman declined PCMag's request for confirmation.
Comcast and Cox Communications are reportedly also in talks to provide direct-to-TV video games. To actually put the system in place, developers need to license virtualization technology to allow remote and simultaneous streaming to multiple devices, and also replace console chips with graphics processors, Bloomberg said.
Start-up OnLive didn't have much luck connecting all of the pieces of the cloud-gaming puzzle. Last month, it restructured the company and laid off much of its staff.
Samsung has already announced integration of cloud-based video games into its HDTVs via Gaikai, which Sony purchased in July for $380 million.
Octoshape, NetRange Collaborate on Broadband TV Offering
Excerpted from Fierce Online Video Report by Jim Barthold
With sales of WiFi-enabled mobile phones and tablet computers booming, high-speed Internet providers are building WiFi access points in public areas to recruit and retain subscribers.
The result should appeal to broadcasters and media companies who gain greater reach on smart TVs as well as network operators and ISPs whose networks will be made more efficient to deliver larger volumes of content, the two companies said.
"The partnership with NetRange is an explosive catalyst in the ecosystem," Octoshape CEO Michael Milland said. "The combination of the consumer-friendly NetRange Smart TV portal with the quality, scale, and economic aspects of the Infinite HD-M platform will create an unbeatable consumer video experience on the broadband connected television."
NetRange said it counts more than 400 customers and has developed applications and services for other current leading Smart TV portals from Samsung, LG, and Philips.
The integration of Octoshape's platform into that portal "enables large volumes of broadband TV consumption to be delivered efficiently over last mile networks without requiring the vast infrastructure upgrades necessary with traditional video delivery platforms," the companies said.
"Octoshape's Infinite HD-M technology will become a major component in our over-the-top (OTT) strategy," Wendt said. "Their focus and reputation for providing for large scale broadband TV audiences coupled with its unique technology enabling global video quality will provide a new platform for content owners and device manufacturers with unparalleled consumer video experiences."
HP Offers "Test the Cloud" Packages
Excerpted from Information Week Report by Charles Babcock
Hewlett-Packard (HP) is using a new way to entice more customers onto the HP cloud: it offers a helping hand at the outset and lets them stay experimenting with their workloads for up to 16 weeks. But this isn't another "five GB of storage free" kind of offer.
HP will assign a customer service engineer to help a cloud newcomer set up an initial workload. HP can provide a newcomer with established services, including web servers and a database service, but it will work with whatever the customer brings, including his own database system.
Its "compartment" test bed is a virtualized slice of HP's virtual private cloud at a data center at an unspecified location in Oklahoma. The customer's workload runs in a virtual machine on a server shared with other customers. That is, it's a multi-tenant environment, which some customers fear might compromise the isolation and integrity of their data.
HP's proof-of-concept compartments are set-up to counter those fears. A customer enjoys access to his workload over a restricted VLAN,; he uses two-factor authentication and an encrypted password to get a workload admin logged in. Each customer is assigned a virtual network segment that only his or her company can access. In other words, if the customer is worried about security, HP can describe a secured, online environment as a starter environment.
"The client service engineer (assigned to each proof-of-concept customer) acts as a subject-matter expert with that customer," said Patricia Wilkey, Global Director, Cloud Services, a unit of HP Enterprise Services. If the customer wants to run a website in the cloud, he'll get a service representative knowledgeable in that area. Once set up and running, the service engineer steps into the background and customer gets his own experience running the workload. But if any questions arise, the same service engineer is called on to answer them, "a personal voice to work with," she explained.
HP's cloud proof-of-concept service starts out with a $2,000 to $3,000 initiation fee the first week, with $1,000 to $2,000 weekly charges afterward. The proof-of-concept service is sold in four-week increments and can run for up to 16 weeks.
Both the fees and limited number of compartments that HP makes available in its cloud data center indicate that it hopes to make the service available to those customers it believes are likely to convert to longer term infrastructure as a service contracts.
HP limits the number of customers who can tap into its cloud data center in Oklahoma at the proof of concept rate to six. It's a sign of how committed it is to finding and converting the right prospects into regular customers of its cloud services.
It hopes the service will convince customers to convert to longer term infrastructure-as-a-service contracts. HP is looking to expand its services business at a time when PC sales and other revenue are declining.
An HP proof of concept "compartment" come in two sizes: 1) a "small" compartment is a virtual machine environment capable of running six VMs with four GBs of RAM per VM. Each VM runs on two CPU core; or 2) a "medium" compartment includes the six VMs described above, along with resources for four more VMs using eight GBs of RAM each, with each VM running on two cores.
While customer service engineers will help a customer get set up, the HP public cloud and virtual private cloud services in the long run require the customer to access resources through a self-service portal, and one purpose of the proof of concept approach is to make sure customers get acquainted with how to use it.
Wilkey said HP has been offering the newcomer service since the end of August. It is geared to work with VMware ESX Server-based virtual macfhines and Wilkey noted that so far, that is the only type of workload that customers have ventured to bring to the cloud workload incubation process.
HP is finding customers often have quite different needs, once they're functioning in the cloud. "Some find they have high security or high compliance needs," she noted. They may decide they don't belong in the cloud at all and revert to constructing private cloud capabilities on premises. Or they may find the environment more secure than anticipated in the cloud and move into HP's virtual private cloud or even its multi-tenant public infrastructure as a service.
HP's virtual private cloud includes the choice of shared or dedicated physical servers. A customer who has come to the cloud via VLAN is assigned a virtual private network that becomes the only way to access the customer's applications. What HP calls "logical unit security" isolates a customer's data in storage from other customers.' Vulnerability scanning and intrusion detection are in place at all times, Wilkey added.
BitTorrent Boasts 124 Million Authorized Downloads In 2012
Excerpted from Ultimate-Guitar Report
Torrent technology might have been a catalyst for music copyright infringement, but its inventors are keen to highlight its legal potential.
According to BitTorrent, which invented the peer-to-peer (P2P) technology that seeds files from one home-user to others, its platform has been used to deliver 124 million authorized downloads in the first half of 2012.
The company conducted a study of 405 million music downloads over BitTorrent in 2012. BitTorrent can move a lot of lawful data if you want it to.
"What this statistic shows very clearly is there's a lot of good, legitimate content in the BitTorrent ecosystem that is adding value to the careers of the artists and publishers who decided to release their work using the protocol," BitTorrent's Matt Mason said.
The company could only track authorized torrents through its own system, which suggest that lawful torrent use is much higher elsewhere. "Whatever that number is, one thing is certain; to say BitTorrent is just for unauthorized file sharing is flat-out wrong," added Mason.
A recent report discovered that US music fans download more unlicensed music than any country in the world, with 405 million music releases downloaded worldwide.
Today's news suggests that it's not all infringing, but infringement remains a problem for the industry and appears set to continue.
5 Ways Cloud Computing Is Disrupting Everyone's Job
Excerpted from Forbes Report by Joe McKendrick
A few months back, IDC released a study, underwritten by Microsoft, that predicted cloud computing would eventually add about 14 million jobs to the global economy. Of course, those are direct jobs cited in the study, such as developers.
Of even greater significance are the jobs indirectly affected by cloud. Essentially, we could be talking about every job in every organization that will either be enhanced or diminished with the arrival of cloud. But no matter how you look at it, cloud will be part of many job descriptions to be written over the next few years.
Ironically, as cloud sweeps through with new ways of running businesses, we'll be calling it "cloud" less and less. It will simply be the way information is delivered and processed, without the need to think whether it comes from an outside service or from internal systems. Here are five key ways cloud computing is reshaping the way business is conducted:
1. Information technology is becoming a shared responsibility for everyone, not confined to a single, specialized department. Executives, managers and professionals increasingly have access to computing resources that can be procured, as needed, with a credit card.
At the same time, there is an evolution underway, in which technology professionals are more likely to be embedded within lines of business, versus IT departments. Plus, surveys have shown that already, more than one-third of IT budgets are going to cloud computing.
It's not uncommon for line-of-business executives to have larger IT budgets than IT department executives. IT executives are not becoming marginalized, however. Rather, they are increasingly seen as advisers to the business, providing both strategic and tactical guidance identifying and selecting the right resources — be they from internal IT assets or from outside providers.
2. More and more rapid innovation is being made possible on the job, and "failure" is becoming an option. Cloud computing provides resources for tests and simulations that once took months to conduct.
Already, cloud lowers the barriers to entry for startups to quickly amass compute resources. Likewise, members of larger organizations looking to launch new business lines will have ready access to resources that aren't as dependent on corporate budget cycles. With new ideas testing or launched with minimal infrastructure investment, it's okay to experiment more and risk more failures.
3. End-users are designing their own applications. It started with the "mashup" scenarios — in which non-tech users could quickly and easily construct interfaces using platforms such as Google Maps to plot data points. Now, "self-service" business intelligence is a capability every enterprise wants.
One of the main complaints about IT departments is that it often would take weeks and months for these overworked departments to deliver requested interfaces or applications to solve urgent business problems. For example, a sales manager needing a portal to access regional sales data from a newly acquired subsidiary. When these resources are available in internal or public clouds, it's that much easier for end-users to design their own front-end applications.
4. It's a "DIY" economy in which "outsourcing" is becoming irrelevant. Why is outsourcing becoming irrelevant? Because it's everywhere. Organizations rely on an ever-shifting blend of services and capabilities, delivered in-house and from outside providers.
Service brokerages will be playing a greater role — these may be companies that don't actually "own" specific methods of production or service delivery, but through the cloud, are able to assemble and offer services tailored to their specific markets and customers. And will "offshoring" even matter? A call center in Mumbai may be using a cloud-based unified communications solution hosted in Palo Alto to service customers in Europe.
5. Everyone will be part of a technology company, regardless of what core business they are in. It doesn't matter if your company produces cattle feed, assembles automobiles, or sells fast food. Technology is a strategic advantage for many organizations, and this may include delivering information and technology-based solutions to customers. Some companies will even become cloud providers themselves — extending their virtualized services to customers and partners.
Cloud may mean many new opportunities for IT managers and professionals — and perhaps some level of nervousness as well. But cloud computing also will be a key element in many job descriptions outside of the IT department — in sales departments, marketing departments, engineering shops, and executive suites.
Coming Events of Interest
ITU Telecom World 2012 - October 14th-18th in Dubai, UAE. ITUTW is the most influential ICT platform for networking, knowledge exchange, and action. It features a corporate-neutral agenda where the challenges and opportunities of connecting the transformed world are up for debate; where industry experts, political influencers and thought leaders gather in one place.
CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2012 - November 8th-9th in Santa Monica. CA. CCW:2012 will zero in on the latest advances in applying cloud-based solutions to all aspects of high-value entertainment content production, storage, and delivery; the impact of cloud services on broadband network management and economics; and evaluating and investing in cloud computing services providers.
INTELLIGENCE IN THE CLOUD - December 4th in Washington, DC. This workshop continues the NAB's series of programs developed for military and government professionals to demonstrate how advances in the commercial industries can benefit the military and government sectors. The atmosphere for the workshop is interactive with attendee participation welcome.
Third International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery Using Cloud and Distributed Computing Platforms - December 10th in Brussels, Belgium. Researchers, developers, and practitioners from academia, government, and industry will discuss emerging trends in cloud computing technologies, programming models, data mining, knowledge discovery, and software services.
2013 International CES - January 8th-11th in Las Vegas, NV. With more than four decades of success, the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) reaches across global markets, connects the industry and enables CE innovations to grow and thrive. The International CES is owned and produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $195 billion US consumer electronics industry.
CONTENT IN THE CLOUD at CES - January 9th in Las Vegas, NV. Gain a deeper understanding of the impact of cloud-delivered content on specific segments and industries, including consumers, telecom, media, and CE manufacturers.
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