October 22, 2012
Volume XLI, Issue 5
CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2012 Is Coming Soon
CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2012 (CCW:2012) will take place from Thursday morning November 8th through mid-day Friday November 9th at the Doubletree Suites by Hilton Hotel in Santa Monica, CA.
As the first joint activity of the Cloud Computing Association (CCA) and the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), 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.
The DCIA is especially grateful to CCW:2012 Gold Sponsors Aspera, DataDirect Networks, Extreme Reach, Oracle, and SAP; and Silver Sponsors CSC Leasing Company, i3m3 Solutions, Kaltura, Scayl, Sequencia, and Unicorn Media for making it possible to extend an extremely attractive offer to DCIA Member Companies for this inaugural event.
In lieu of the normal delegate registration fee for CCW:2012, with the sunset cruise reception an add-on option; these sponsors have made financial contributions enabling DCIA Members to attend the entire summit (including general sessions and luncheon, its three co-located conferences and breaks, as well as all exhibits and roundtables) and the cruise at a very affordable cost.
This offer will probably sell-out the event, and will certainly take-up the remaining spaces on the cruise — so if you'd like to attend CCW:2012, please don't wait: register now.
CCW:2012 registration enables delegates to participate in any session of the three conferences being presented at CCW:2012 — ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT DELIVERY, BROADBAND NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE, and INVESTING IN THE CLOUD.
The CCA is an independent membership organization, founded in 2012, dedicated to building a community of end-users and service providers of cloud-based solutions and products through individual professional memberships and industry conferences. The CCA has quickly amassed a contact list of three-hundred thousand industry participants.
The DCIA is an international trade organization, established in 2003, with more than one-hundred industry-leading member companies, including software developers, broadband network operators, and content providers. The DCIA conducts working groups, oversees advocacy initiatives, and publishes the weekly online newsletter DCINFO.
Cloud Adoption to Reach 500 Million Users in 2012
Excerpted from eWeek Report by Michelle Maisto
Consumer adoption of cloud storage services is exceeding expectations, according to an October 15th report from IHS iSuppli. By the end of June, the research firm found personal subscriptions to such services to have exceeded 375 million users — a figure that put the market already 75 percent of the way toward IHS' full-year estimate of 500 million users.
Because of the relative newness of cloud technologies, no adoption figures exist for 2011, according to IHS, though best guesses are around 150 million. IHS expects subscriptions to climb to 625 million by 2013 and then to double over the next four years, reaching 1.3 billion subscribers by 2017.
"The cloud is a game-changer in an age of near-ubiquitous mobile broadband, offering benefits to consumers and cloud service providers alike," Jagdish Rebello, Director for Consumer and Communications at IHS, said.
"For consumers, cloud services are intended to manage and store user-generated data or purchased content, such as music, e-books, pictures or videos," Rebello continued. "The content can then be seamlessly accessed and synced across devices like smart-phones, media tablets, and PCs. Meanwhile, technology companies are looking at the cloud as a way to generate revenue."
Indeed, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others are heavily investing in cloud infrastructure and services, which they offer to consumers, IHS notes, at the same cost or lower costs than those of pure-play providers such as Dropbox, Mozy, Carbonite, and SugarSync. To compete, the latter have developed "freemium" models in which they give away a few gigabytes of free storage, pulling in users who likely go on to pay for more.
Dropbox partnered with smart-phone maker HTC, for example, offering in some cases up to 23GB of storage for two years with the purchase of a phone. Not all carriers supported this, though, likely preferring that customers use their clouds instead.
"In addition to generating revenue opportunities, cloud services can create stickiness and reduce churn among the customers of mobile operators," said the IHS report. "Users with large amounts of data stored on an operator's cloud service are likely to be reluctant to migrate their content to another operator's cloud service at the end of a contract period because of the hassle involved, so the cloud can be effectively leveraged as a tool to retain customer loyalty."
Despite the perks and conveniences of cloud storage, not everyone is keen on it.
Greenpeace has been active in calling attention to an industry that markets its product as ethereal and earth-friendly, while the reality can be acres of energy-burning servers. In an April report, it called data centers — clouds — the factories of the modern age.
In September, The New York Times reported on a Microsoft data center in Washington that used diesel generators, which are known to emit toxic particulates. While the generators were secured as a back-up power source, during one year Microsoft operated them for more than 6,000 hours, according to The Times.
That said, public scrutiny of such practices, along with cost-saving measures, 451 Research said in a September report, are pushing data centers toward not only genuinely green practices but toward becoming "engines of innovation in efficiencies."
The firm surveyed more 1,000 data center decision makers, who all said they were pursuing energy efficiencies. While 17 percent cited regulations as a driver, 82 percent said they were motivated by "financial savings."
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) and the Cloud Computing Association (CCA) this week announced the first wave of speakers to participate in CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2012 (CCW:2012)), our inaugural strategic business summit taking place November 8th-9th in Santa Monica, CA.
We're thrilled that our opening plenary session speakers include keynoter Geng Lin, CTO of the Networking Business at Dell; along with panelists Michelle Munson, CEO, President, and Co-Founder of Aspera; Steve Riley, Technical Director in the CTO Office at Riverbed Technology; and Robert Stevenson, Chief Business Officer and EVP of Strategy at Gaikai.
Lin will address: How are cloud-based solutions in the entertainment sector evolving? How do these and related developments impact broadband network infrastructure? And how should investments in this space be evaluated? Munson, Riley, and Stevenson will extend this discussion in greater detail.
We're also extremely pleased to have as ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT DELIVERY keynote speakers Eric Quanstrom of Sorenson Media, Jim Burger of Dow Lohnes, Mark Davis of Scenios, Dave Toole of MEDIAMobz, Stephen White of Gracenote, John Schiela of Phoenix Marketing International, Matt Johnson of Unicorn Media, Brian Campanotti of Front Porch Digital, Graham Oakes of Media Science International, Scott Campbell of SAP America, and Joey Jablonski of DataDirect Networks.
BROADBAND NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE keynote speakers include David Sterling of i3m3 Solutions, Bill Sewell of Wiredrive, Bill Kallman of Scayl, Prabhat Kumar of i3m3 Solutions, Julian Lovelock of HID Global Identity Assurance, Doug Natal of Oracle, Jean-Luc Chatelain of DataDirect Networks, Linda Senigaglia of Navigation Solutions, Ryan Walters of Philotek, Tim Cavanaugh of Cavanaugh Consulting, and Daniel Kenyon of Equilibrium.
And keynote speakers at INVESTING IN THE CLOUD feature Ketan Patel of New Venture Partners, Peter Siwinski of Cumulus Venture Partners, Chris Haddad of WSO2, Ajay Malhotra of Prime Focus Technologies, Sean Jennings of Virtustream, Ann Greenberg of Sceneplay, Gigi Johnson of Maremel Institute, Mark Theissen of Cirro, Bruce Cleveland of InterWest Partners, Kevin Lynch of Deloitte Consulting, and Scott Ryan of EMC.
At our Conference Luncheon, author Bill Williams will discuss and sign copies of his book that has become required-reading for industry participants: The Economics of Cloud Computing.
In addition, we're excited that our ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT DELIVERY panelists include Extreme Reach's Dan Brackett, Slacker's Jim Cady, Kaltura's Russell Zack, TransLattice's Robert Geiger, Meteor Entertainment's Sarah Novotny, GenosTV's Mike West, Radio Mitre's Guillermo Chialvo, American Standard Television's Francesco Fabbrocino, Verizon FiOS's Jason Henderson, Chyron's Todd Martin, DigiRamp's Peter Rafelson, and Peer Media's Rajan Samtani.
Panelists at BROADBAND NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE include Altman Vilandrie's Stefan Bewley, Hurricane Electric's Owen DeLong, Integrated Media Technologies' Bruce Lyon, Trend Micro's Bill McGee, CSG Systems' Monica Ricci, PricewaterhouseCooper's Jeff Sage, Attend's Chuck Stormon, Yale University's Richard Yang, and Huawei's Ning Zong."
And INVESTING IN THE CLOUD panelists include CSC Leasing's Matt Thompson, Cisco Systems' Bill Williams, MD Capital Advisors' Derek Cahill, Edwards Wildman Palmer's Lawrence Freedman, Dynamic Synergy's Mark Landay, and Moses & Singer's Dov Scherzer.
Delegates will also receive copies of the newly published book Cloud Standards — Agreements That Hold Together Clouds by Marvin Waschke.
And finally, we're delighted to have Shahi Ghanem, EVP of Strategy at BitTorrent, and Jeff Wheeler, Distinguished Engineer and Technical Leader of Cloud Management at Huawei, as day-one closing plenary session speakers.
CCA Executive Director Don Buford noted, "Along with an outstanding speaking faculty for our first joint effort with the DCIA, we are also very pleased with the level of participation among exhibitors and sponsors for CCW:2012. This promises to be an enormously valuable and stimulating experience for attendees."
More information is available here and delegates can register to attend here. Share wisely, and take care.
Dell to Make Cloud Computing More Efficient & Flexible
Excerpted from VentureBeat Report by Dean Takahashi
Dell revealed a big component of its enterprise strategy this week, saying it will offer an "active systems infrastructure" that could make enterprise computing more efficient, flexible, and affordable.
The strategy addresses a significant problem of the Internet era: big companies have to deploy new web services and data centers faster than ever. They must build racks and racks of computer server systems, going from zero to 60 miles per hour in a short time. This is a major issue for companies.
Enterprises have to be more agile, rock solid, and streamlined than ever before, said Marius Haas, President of Dell Enterprise Systems. And they need a computing infrastructure that enables them to do that.
Dell's Active Systems Infrastructure is a cookie-cutter platform for enterprises to adopt and get new data center servers up and running in a short time, Haas said.
In an attempt to make servers more efficient, Dell also revealed a new tiered architecture for storing data in memory in servers. The advance will deliver five times to ten times better memory performance in servers.
Dell has invested in multiple acquisitions and spent billions of dollars to get to this point, said Dario Zamarian, a Vice President and General Manager at Dell.
A key part of the infrastructure is new server hardware, including the Active System 800, a server rack that Dell says takes 75 percent fewer steps from "power on to production."
Dell also has a new input-output system aggregator to make sure data feeds into the servers at a higher speed, allowing 2.3 times more computers per rack. The system uses the latest Intel-based hardware that allows for 45 percent better system performance per watt.
The Active Infrastructure family of products and services enables virtual desktop infrastructure, private clouds, and enterprise applications. That means that enterprises will be able to let employees access secure enterprise apps however they want, and the data will be backed up to a private cloud-based data center that protects it from accidental loss.
The challenge is to make a modern data center "scale," or grow with the ebb and flow of demand from users.
Haas said the active system infrastructure initiative is a critical part of the company's expansion into the $110 billion market for business computing. In the second quarter, Dell's server business grew 8 percent, networking grew 39 percent, and storage grew 6 percent. That happened while other big computer companies lost market share. Haas said the cloud business market will be a $110 billion opportunity in 2015.
Dante Orsini, the Senior Vice President of Business Development at cloud company iLand, said his company runs seven major data centers and it has had to adapt to the rapid adoption of cloud computing. It had to change the way that it deployed data center infrastructure, mainly by buying ahead of what it needed. It also took a huge amount of talent to deploy each data center.
"There's a lot of complexity going on," Orsini said.
With Dell's new technology, iLand believes it will be able to deploy data centers five times faster and with a lot more self-service than in the past.
"And every time we deploy, it will be done right and precisely," he said.
Storage Providers & Telcos Partner for Enterprise Cloud
Excerpted from Search Cloud Provider Report by Gina Narcisi
Enterprise customers consider the public Internet too unpredictable for accessing cloud services. Enterprise-grade cloud offerings must be backed by a reliable and trusted network — something cloud providers can't offer alone.
Some cloud storage providers are turning to telecommunications service providers — like AT&T and Verizon — to ensure reliable and secure network access to their services.
IBM recently announced it will partner with AT&T to provide enterprises with network connectivity to its cloud storage services. IBM will use AT&T's global network to power its SmartCloud Enterprise+ platform — an enterprise-class infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering that grants users on-demand access to virtual server and storage resources.
Customers of IBM's SmartCloud Enterprise+ services will be able to connect to these storage services through AT&T's virtual private network and quickly shift data or applications between their infrastructure and IBM's secure data centers. The new cloud storage services — which will be available early next year — will allow customers to move data between IBM's and their own data centers and wired or wireless devices, while still under the protection of a virtual private network (VPN), said Steve Caniano, Vice President of Hosting Services for AT&T.
"The new service will harmonize the operation of customers' cloud resources with their enterprise-grade network as an integrated service," he said.
Enterprises consider the public Internet too insecure and unreliable for connecting to cloud services, Caniano said. "This service attaches cloud services as a part of your enterprise network — which is more attractive to users who will have a lot more predictability and control over these cloud services rather than using an Internet-based solution."
The new cloud storage service could be particularly attractive to AT&T's existing large enterprise customers who are seeking a cloud storage service, noted Amy DeCarlo, Principal Analyst for Security and Data Center Services at Washington, DC based Current Analysis.
IBM isn't the only cloud storage provider turning to a telecom to make its cloud services more appealing to enterprise customers. Nirvanix, a San Diego, CA based cloud storage provider, recently partnered with CenturyLink, a Monroe, LA based telecommunications company. The relationship allows customers to access Nirvanix cloud storage services at higher speeds on CenturyLink's network, while reducing bandwidth costs.
Nirvanix Cloud Storage nodes sit on the CenturyLink network, which removes bandwidth roadblocks to cloud services, said Steve Zivanic, Vice President of Marketing for Nirvanix. Offering enterprise cloud services is a natural progression for service providers as more of their customers begin looking into cloud services — especially cloud storage, he noted.
"Telcos have the networks and the pipes," Zivanic said. "For them not to take advantage cloud storage services as part of their portfolio would be a lost opportunity."
Will integrated cloud/service providers offerings help grow cloud adoption?
Cloud providers have always had to work with service providers on a case-by-case basis to integrate their cloud services with carrier networks.
"No enterprise will move to the public Internet to go to the cloud," said Tom Nolle, President of CIMI Corp. "Realistically, there has never been an alternative for cloud providers."
As more cloud providers look to target the enterprise market, however, cloud providers need to develop more integrated partnerships with telecoms.
But while selling cloud to the enterprise market is no easy task, deeply integrated cloud offerings between cloud and service providers could translate into greater cloud adoption, AT&T's Caniano noted.
Secure cloud storage options — such as the new AT&T and IBM service — can give customers the opportunity to learn the advantages of cloud, such as shared resources, flexibility and provisioning, DeCarlo said. "Because customers will have a private connection into the IBM data center through the AT&T MPLS network, their data will be separated from other client traffic."
And AT&T and IBM will also have the opportunity to offer customers a strong and attractive service-level agreement because the two solutions are deeply integrated, presenting less of a security risk, she noted.
Huawei Unveils Latest Cloud Data Center Solutions
Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, is showcasing its latest series of new products and solutions which incorporate its latest innovations at GITEX.
Huawei will also organize a channel partner salon as well as a series of break-out sessions at the main Huawei Stand to share findings of Huawei's views and developments on the latest technology and business trends.
Another highlight of Huawei's GITEX activities includes the unveiling of its latest cloud data center solutions, introducing the benefits and advantages to global enterprises.
In line with the shift in the business environment and a growing interest in the cloud's potential to save resources and costs, Huawei's participation at GITEX will focus on cloud applications and the different applications of cloud computing in a variety of industry scenarios.
The company will showcase its newest data center solutions, as well as its latest HVS high-end storage subsystem which uses Smart Matrix Architecture.
Dong Wu, Vice President of Huawei Enterprise Middle East, emphasized: "GITEX presents a platform for Huawei to showcase our latest products and solutions, as well as share best practices with customers from different countries around the world. We will be holding and participating at a variety of activities during the show, to further cement relationships with our partners and customers."
Huawei will also announce the launch of its CloudEngine series switches in the Middle East at GITEX. The CloudEngine 12800 series core switches is the industry's highest-performance next-generation data center switches, providing large switching capacity of up to 48Tbps, three times the highest level currently available on the market, and bandwidth of 2Tbps per slot (scalable to 4Tbps in the future), which is four times the industry's highest level.
The CloudEngine 12800 series core switches and the CloudEngine 5800/6800 Top-of-Rack (TOR) switches support high-density connectivity for 100GE, 40GE, 10GE and GE interfaces, as well as network virtualization and computing, storage and network convergence.
This enables the evolution of four generations of servers over a 10 year span, helping customers build a sustainable data center network infrastructure with long-term stability.
At GITEX, Huawei will also showcase its comprehensive capabilities in enterprise networking. Key products on showcase include the S9700 series terabit routing switches with the industry's shortest cross-frame delay of 21us, industry's first enterprise-level 802.11ac WLAN access point, AR G3 series routers whose performance is two times higher than the industry, high-end routers NE40E, and new middle-range routers NE20E-S.
In addition, Huawei's transmission and access products on showcase include its microwave series products RTN950 that aggregates data from a maximum of five sites, Mini OTN system OSN 1800 that uses the OTN technology in the MAN access layer, Hybrid MSTP device OSN550 with powerful packet switching capability, and SmartAX MA5616 that is incorporated in the xPON solutions which has been deployed for commercial use for over 11 years.
Huawei will participate at GITEX's Cloud Confex, where one of Huawei's customers will share its experience on their recent deployment of the cloud virtual desktop infrastructure solution, as well as how the deployment has transformed the way that the university operates in the UAE.
Huawei will also lead a discussion on cloud computing in different vertical sectors, and the benefits it brings in the area of energy savings and sustainable development.
Cloud Computing: Growth Numbers Revised Upwards
Excerpted from FormTek Report by Dick Weisinger
Growth of public cloud computing services is exceeding even earlier rosy predictions. Gartner now says that computing services will grow by as much as 19.6 percent his year, reaching $109 billion.
This compares to another recent competing analyst study from IDC that estimates the public cloud market to reach $100 billion by 2016. Among the individual public cloud computing segments, the fastest growing is infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), which is expected to grow by as much as 45.4 percent this year and is on target to reach $6.2 billion.
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is expected to grow to $14.4 billion.
But the biggest piece of the public cloud computing market is something that Gartner is calling "business-processes-as-a-service (BPaaS)" which accounts for 77 percent of the total public cloud market size or $84.2 billion. Cloud advertising is included as part of BPaaS which accounts for a chunk of the BPaaS number.
Ratmir Timashev, President of Veeam Software, told CRN that, "We do not see the evolution of the cloud slowing down any time soon and expect this management and security growth to continue over the next several years. As the cloud grows to a mammoth scale, cloud management and security services will naturally grow to match."
Frank Gens, Senior Vice President and chief analyst at IDC, said that "The IT industry is in the midst of an important transformative period as companies invest in the technologies that will drive growth and innovation over the next two to three decades."
Cloud Fever Grips Oracle
Excerpted from The Financial Express Report by Sudhir Chowdhary
Not long ago, the founder and chief executive of Oracle, Larry Ellison, had famously mocked cloud computing, terming it as "complete gibberish and a fad." His outburst came in 2008 to be precise, in response to repeated queries from trade analysts. Seasoned industry watchers attributed the tech billionaire's annoyance to the hype and hullabaloo around cloud computing than the concept itself. That was then.
Cut to present. Cloud computing is hot these days; there's no denying it. And Larry is taking the cloud for business very seriously. The 68-year-old founder, who has led the company for over three decades, intends to make his $37.1 billion, 120,000 people strong enterprise-software-making firm a one-stop shop for cloud-computing products, offering operating systems, databases, computer programs, as well as computing infrastructure over the web.
He has put the iconic Silicon Valley company into a major reshaping mode to grab new opportunities in the marketplace. Smart managers have been deployed at strategic levels to give a strong impetus to his cloud dream. Oracle sales and marketing teams have been revved up to sell the new IT gear. Its R&D teams are working at frenetic pace to come up with new cloud offerings. Oracle had invested $4.5 billion on R&D last year; this year, it plans to invest $5 billion globally.
With a strong focus on emerging markets, Oracle is moving aggressively in India in terms of investments and positioning its products and solutions for customers here. "Cloud computing has moved beyond early adopter stage to mainstream in India," says Sandeep Mathur, Managing Director, Oracle India. Setting up a data center here to cater to the regional demand for cloud computing is high on the agenda.
For the uninitiated, cloud computing is a broad term referring to the delivery of computer services via the Internet from remote data centers. Chief information officers (CIOs) like the approach because it is faster to implement and has lower upfront costs than traditional software, which businesses need to install on their own computer systems.
Truth be told, Oracle was slow to embrace this trend. But the Redwood Shores, CA based firm subsequently introduced its own offerings in the rapidly growing area and also acquired several firms selling Internet-based software as its corporate customers embraced younger cloud rivals including Salesforce.com, Amazon, and Google.
At its recently held users' conference in San Francisco, CA Oracle unveiled new cloud products. It is offering the Cloud Infrastructure — also known as infrastructure-as-a-service or IaaS — which provides a complete selection of servers, storage, networking fabric, virtualization software, operating systems, and management software to support diverse public and private cloud applications.
The global tech giant is adding a new line of business, cloud computing, to its traditional lines of business of selling hardware and software. It has a new cloud database, called 12c, which will feature support for multi-tenancy and provide superior security, control and efficiency for software services delivered from the cloud. The company also launched the latest generation of its Oracle Exadata Database Machines — the Oracle Exadata X3 Database In-Memory Machine.
Arguably nothing is more important to a company than a CEO who understands both the market today and where it will be tomorrow. For companies to stay strong, it is vital to understand what the customer is going to want in future, maybe even before the customer knows it. With a deep background in the tech industry, Larry understands the potential of cloud computing and his new attraction is justified by healthy estimates from research firms as well.
The cloud services market is clearly a high-growth sector within the overall IT marketplace, says Gartner. Worldwide public cloud services revenue is on pace to total $111 billion this year. High growth rates will occur in emerging markets, including the top three growth countries of India, Indonesia, and China. The public cloud services market in India is forecast to grow 32.4% in 2012 to total $326.2 million, according to Gartner. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is the largest segment and is forecast to grow to $115.6 million in 2012, while infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is forecast to grow from $35.2 million in 2011 to $42.7 million in 2012.
India is one of the largest emerging markets in the world for Oracle. "Strengthening our market position in such high-growth markets is an integral part of our strategy to drive growth for the company," says Mark Hurd, President, Oracle. "BRIC countries are important to us. China and India are our growth markets in Asia — both these economies have significant scale for us to work best. In both countries, we have had a lot of growth in our sales force and most importantly we have development organizations in these countries. In India, we added thousands of jobs last year and it also houses one of our largest development teams outside the US," he adds.
Oracle employs 30,000 professionals in India — the largest number of employees after the US — across its sales, support, and development organizations. Steve Au Yeung, Managing Director and Executive Vice President, Asia Pacific, Oracle, says that India is on the company's radar for setting up of a data center to cater to the regional demand for cloud computing. Oracle has one data center in Australia and another one is being established in Singapore.
"We want to help customers become more efficient and save money as we help them innovate, even as big companies adapt to a world of mobile devices, cloud computing, and huge amounts of data," says Hurd, who was earlier the CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
"Oracle's four-pronged strategy is clearly defined, he stresses. "First, we want everything to be best-of-breed at every level of the technology stack. Second, we want to vertically integrate these pieces into our line of engineered systems to provide superior total cost of ownership. Further, we want to deliver next-generation cloud applications; and finally to deliver this technology to any industry, to solve customers' problems at the highest order of business value."
Cloud is a complex technology and two years ago, it was more of hype and cloudy. But Oracle has always believed in simplifying technology so that adoption increases. At a time when there is an overall cautious approach to IT spending in the market, the company is very excited about cloud and is exuding confidence to succeed in the niche area.
Worldwide Demand for Data Centers Surges
Excerpted from Baseline Report by Dennis McCafferty
Despite the growing profile of consolidation and cloud computing, data centers remain a major source of increased global spending, according to findings from the Datacenter Dynamics 2012 Global Census from DCD Intelligence.
As you might expect, a surge in activity in less-developed regions is supporting much of the investment, especially in the Asia Pacific region and Latin America.
While energy consumption continues to present issues, the forecast for future power usage looks encouraging. "Surprisingly, concern about power availability and cost — which have been constant topics in the media and data center professional groups in recent years — is actually down on a global basis," says Nicola Hayes, Managing Director of DCD Intelligence.
"This is explained in part by the increasing representation among the sample of companies in less-developed markets where power requirements are smaller than in mature markets." Also, data center companies are coming up with greater efficiencies to further cut power costs.
An estimated 5,000 data center operators and end users took part in the research.
DreamHost Unveils IaaS Cloud to Compete with Amazon
Excerpted from Data Center Knowledge Report by Rich Miller
Hosting provider DreamHost has spent much of 2012 preparing for its entry into the cloud computing market.
In April, the company said it was working with Nicira to optimize a speedy network for its OpenStack-based cloud. In June, DreamHost said it was expending its infrastructure beyond its core Los Angeles, CA market by opening an East Coast data center at a new Raging Wire facility in Ashburn, VA. In September it rolled out a cloud storage platform based on the open source Ceph file system.
This week, DreamHost unveiled DreamCompute, its infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud compute service, which it is positioning as an alternative to the market-leading IaaS cloud from Amazon Web Services.
The service is launching as a public beta, with pricing to be announced in coming weeks.
DreamHost CEO Simon Anderson said, "I'm excited to see that the web hosting industry in particular start to break the boundaries of hosting, which have been reasonably static for quite a long time."
"I think what I'd like everyone to see is, look, at its core, we are very good as an industry at highly efficient and scalable infrastructure. And we shouldn't forget that. Just because Amazon has come along and built a substantial multibillion-dollar business around delivering that infrastructure doesn't mean that we can't be out there competing with them."
DreamHost used Opscode Private Chef to automate configuration and environment management for its new DreamCompute public cloud and DreamObjects cloud storage service.
"By using Opscode Private Chef to automate its Ceph and OpenStack-powered services, DreamHost is enabling businesses to store and process limitless amounts of data and run web-scale applications on the Internet with the security of traditional data center infrastructure," said Adam Jacob, Chief Customer Officer for Opscode.
Cloud Services to Become Global IT Trend: IBM
Excerpted from GENS Report by Renee Chen
Influenced by ubiquitous mobile devices and network applications today, the future trend of information technology (IT) will be mobile management, information security, Big Data, and cloud computing, according to a survey by International Business Machines (IBM), the American multinational IT and consulting firm.
Responding to the IT trend in the near future, many Taiwanese makers of server components including Quanta Computer and Wistron, plan to seize the business potential of cloud computing and big data, which could also offset downturn in revenues from notebook (NB) related products.
With burgeoning demand for cloud computing globally, Quanta in 2012 started tapping markets as servers, storage devices, and networking switches, targeting revenues for non-NB segments of at least $10 billion.
A survey by IBM of chief information officers (CIO) worldwide recently shows 83% of respondents regard analysis of Big Data as key in advanced IT development and management of the future, followed by mobile management and cloud computing, with the proportions of 74% and 68%, respectively.
Rising cloud services drive global demand for servers and storage devices. Shipments of servers surged sixfold from 2000 to 2010, with growth of storage device shipments skyrocketing 69 times over the ten years.
Some 32 million plus servers exist globally, and the main purpose of Big Data analysis is searching business potential and predicting possible solutions among such massive digital data, according to Steve Mills, Senior Vice President of Software and Systems at IBM.
Boxee's 2nd Box All about Insane, Unlimited Cloud DVR
Excerpted from VentureBeat Report by Devindra Hardawar
The original Boxee Box, though much-hyped, failed to make a splash two years ago when it debuted for $199. So Boxee is trying again — and this time, it's aiming to evolve the concept of a digital video recorder (DVR) entirely to deliver an ambitious cloud DVR without storage limits.
This week, Boxee is announcing Boxee TV, a smaller and more traditionally-shaped set-top box (STB) that's more focused on live TV capabilities. It features a "No Limits" cloud DVR, which lets you save as much broadcast TV as you'd like. And, of course, you can view recordings across multiple devices.
At just $99, the Boxee TV is a direct strike at the Apple TV and Roku's popular media boxes, and it includes the usual assortment of online video services, like Netflix and Vudu. But it's the ambitious cloud DVR that piques my interest the most. Boxee will offer the DVR service for $14.99 a month, but that seems like a small price to pay to record an unlimited amount of broadcast shows.
"It is REALLY unlimited," Boxee chief executive Avner Ronen told VentureBeat, when we asked if there was some sort of invisible storage threshold for the DVR functionality. "We've been working on it for over a year. At first we didn't know if we could make it, if it was feasible, because it's a challenging technology problem to solve."
"Having a DVR that stores recordings in the cloud feels similar to the move from film to digital cameras," Ronen said. "Film cameras limited the number of photos you could capture, which made you think twice before taking a photo. It's the same with existing DVRs. The limited space and knowing that stuff will get deleted impacts your decisions about what to record in the first place."
We've heard rumors that Boxee was working on a cloud DVR service for over a year, but now that it's official, it's no less impressive. Instead of worrying about DVR space, you can record entire TV series and have them accessible at the touch of a button. Boxee will be buying up huge swaths of Amazon S3 storage to store the recorded video data, which will retain the same HD resolution and 5.1 surround sound audio from its broadcast.
The Boxee TV will feature a simple rectangular design rather than the strangely angular cube of the Boxee Box. The new device can fit in easily anywhere in your home theater setup. In many ways, the Boxee TV's design represents a maturing Boxee: Instead of aiming at the hardcore media geeks, Boxee is focusing on mainstream consumers with its low price point. At the same time, the cloud DVR service will be perfect for the hardcore media nerd audience.
Under the hood, Boxee TV features a powerful Broadcom chip that offers hardware video encoding and decoding. From the little I saw, moving around menus and accessing video on the device was very speedy. Surprisingly, Boxee TV sports no extra on-board storage to buffer the cloud DVR — it all happens within RAM.
One casualty of Boxee's move towards simplicity is the remote: Instead of the keyboard-sporting remote of the Boxee Box, the new device's remote is fairly simple. Typing will be a pain, Ronen admits, but he said that many users weren't using the keyboard anyway.
Boxee has also revamped its live TV interface beyond the TV stick it offered with the original Boxee Box. The channel guide interface feels almost futuristic, and switching between channels is fast. The Boxee TV comes with a fairly simple over-the-air (OTA) HDTV antenna, which should pick up most broadcast channels in your area. The box also supports basic cable feeds (and Boxee is working hard to get its voice heard in cable encryption policy talks).
The DVR service will initially be available in the top eight TV markets, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Boxee plans to add more markets next year.
There are definitely potential issues with Boxee's cloud DVR plan. It could easily eat up bandwidth from consumers stuck with a monthly data limit from their ISP. And even if bandwidth isn't an issue, you'll need a solid and steady upload connection to make sure DVR content is recorded smoothly. Still, it seems like a better solution than potential competitor Simple.TV, which relies on a user-provided external hard drive to store DVR recordings.
Boxee is basically betting the company on the new STB and its DVR service. Avner tells me he's no fan of forcing users to watch ads on the Boxee interface. Instead, the company hopes to start earning revenue from the DVR subscription plan. That may be tough initially, since Amazon's cloud storage expenses will quickly add up. But as the cost of that storage decreases, Boxee could reap the benefits of being a pioneer in providing a data-heavy consumer cloud service.
Boxee TV will be available in November. Boxee is based in New York City and was founded in 2007. The company has raised $26.5 million from investors including Union Square Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, SoftBank Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, and Spark Capital.
Jerry Yang Is Reportedly Backing Metacloud
Excerpted from Cloud Computing Journal Report by Maureen O'Gara
Ever get the feeling that soon there'll be so many clouds we'll never see the sun again? Well, here's another one.
It's called Metacloud.
After quietly starting early last year it's just hit the radar, turning up with an undisclosed investment from Storm Ventures and — according to Wired — former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's AME Cloud Ventures.
That makes some sense since Metacloud is headed by Steve Curry, who spent a dozen years at Yahoo managing its global storage operations, responsible for hundreds of petabytes of content and user data.
The other folks involved are emigres from Ticketmaster, the third largest e-commerce system in the world, including Metacloud CTO Sean Lynch who was head of technical operations there.
Metacloud will be using an enhanced OpenStack, the open source infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) project, to build subscription-based enterprise-grade managed private clouds. It says the widgetry includes automated deployment, building, scaling, and failover of key OpenStock support services.
It's apparently optimized the route to object storage services for high performance, enhanced OpenStack's networking model to conserve data center VLANs and maintain secure tenant separation, and included the Tenant Invite System, an Active Directory enhancement that organizes tenant management across an enterprise.
Ticketmaster manages its worldwide infrastructure of over 3,000 systems with Spine, an open source framework for managing large numbers of Linux systems. Evidently Metacloud is adapting the widgetry to its own purposes.
The company says it'll peddle private clouds customized to the client's workflows and deliver a software stack that'll run on the client's hardware that'll be managed and supported remotely 24/7 by Metacloud's people.
The customer retains control of its virtual servers, data, and intellectual property (IP); consumes compute; and passes any heavy lifting off to Metacloud, which claims its team has built private clouds based on OpenStack for Fortune 100 companies, and designed and deployed private cloud infrastructure for some of the world's largest e-commerce sites that are transacting billions annually.
It claims Metacloud is in production deployment at Tableau Software, the BI house, and at least one Fortune 500.
It positions its operational experience as "a unique asset, found nowhere else in the private cloud services sector today." It says feature enhancements will be streamed to accounts, "effectively delivering a private cloud as SaaS."
It says that "Despite the strong appeal of cloud computing, many companies have struggled to find a viable solution to meet their needs. Enterprises frequently cite data locality, cost, and pre-existing capital investment as top concerns that keep them from moving to a public cloud."
Metacloud's aiming to head them off so it can dip its bread in the private cloud gravy. IDC projects the private cloud market will reach $11.8 billion by 2014.
It claims Metacloud typically deploys in customer production environments in a tenth the time of a proprietary cloud implementation at half the cost.
There's an interactive demo of the widgetry on Metacloud's website, where users can build an OpenStack cloud at Test Drive.
How Big Data & Cloud Computing Push Nets to Brink
Excerpted from AllThingsD Report
A lot is expected of corporate networks these days. Companies are trying to add new services and support new devices. There's always more data that has to keep flowing, more stuff being connected to it. And the network is expected to perform, no matter what.
Now there are about five billion devices connected to the Internet and billions of individual users, all expecting their networks to perform. The folks at Juniper Networks started to wonder if the world of networking has reached some kind of fundamental inflection point.
They got together with the people at Forrester Research and surveyed 150 senior IT executives to try to get a better handle on how big trends facing the enterprise, like cloud computing and big data, are affecting enterprise networks.
The findings are kind of interesting and sort of troubling. While cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) products such as Salesforce.com tend to save money and time by taking dedicated hardware and software out of the equation, using them puts new demands on the network: 58 percent of those surveyed said cloud services had added enough demand to their networks that they had to upgrade the networking hardware.
Cloud services tend to go hand in hand with an increased usage of mobile devices: 47 percent of businesses have seen increased demand from employees bringing their own devices to work.
The complications for networks have grown past the point where you can simply add more bandwidth and hope for the best. The survey found that 86 percent of the companies in the survey have not been unable to spin up new services or support certain business demands, because their networks were simply not up to the task. Another 74 percent reported that their networks had become complex, while 35 said their networks had become "too rigid to manage."
So that leaves IT organizations at a point where networks are under more demand than ever, and less able to meet those demands. It can't go on like that. "We're reaching the point where the effectiveness of networks is inversely proportional to the volume of information they contain," Juniper CIO Bask Iyer told me last week.
The solution is to make sure that all the bits used to build the network work together well. The old way — running networks mainly by just adding more bandwidth — won't get the job done, Iyer says.
The network has to be built with overarching business objectives in mind, with teams that are usually separate — security, manufacturing, quality control — getting more intimately involved with building the network than they have been before.
Naturally, that's the opening for a larger discussion about the implications of the research. And, of course, Juniper is holding a Web event to explain what it means.
Abacast Now Offering Multi-Station Apps
Excerpted from Radio Ink Magazine Report
Abacast says it has developed a new multi-station mobile app for radio stations. Abacast CEO Rob Green says, "Because mobile is such an important part of their digital landscape, we developed an app that would make it easy for broadcasters to cross-promote their stations. Our new app gives our customers a fresh new and exciting way to connect to their listeners."
With the new Abacast app, broadcasters can stream multiple stations through one app, or stations can stream a choice of multiple sub-formats based on, and in addition to, the main music format of the station's broadcast signal.
Abacast Senior Vice President of Products Jim Kott says, "If it's a classic rock station, broadcasters can offer multiple sub-formats of classic rock, like the 60's or 70's classic rock or programmed playlists. Our new app enables broadcasters to take advantage of the Internet, where they are not constrained by a broadcast tower." The new app is now available as part of Abacast's complete radio streaming solution.
Cloud Computing Still in Its Infancy
Excerpted from Windows IT Pro Report by BK Winstead
We all know how important and ubiquitous e-mail has become, not just in business but in our lives. Can you remember when you learned about e-mail (i.e., electronic mail, e-mail) for the first time and didn't yet know how fundamentally this technology would change the way we communicate and do business?
Now think for a minute about cloud computing as being in that same sort of unpredictable infancy.
That's one of the findings of a study released by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and ISACA. The two organizations surveyed more than 250 participants ranging from end-users to C-level executives and from organizations of all sizes.
Using factors such as market size and diversity, levels of acceptance and integration, and amount of innovation, the survey determined that cloud computing is still in its infancy.
CSA and ISACA have defined four stages of development for cloud technology: 1) Infancy: "potential for growth and innovation . . . has not been realized;" 2) Growth: widespread adoption and innovation takes place and the technology is well understood; 3) Maturity: the main players are well-established, and the technology is "business as usual;" and 4) Decline: the market becomes saturated, and there's little room for new entrants or products.
Within the study results, respondents rated software-as-a-service (SaaS) as barely into the Growth phase and ahead of both infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS), with the overall result putting cloud computing squarely in its squalling infancy.
One of the characteristics of this stage is that it's the era of early adopters, according to the study — and most businesses don't want to be stuck changing the diapers for an untested technology.
Obviously, the cloud isn't really untested if you consider that it's just another way of thinking about the Internet, which has been around for -- how long, now? Yeah, quite a few years.
Nonetheless, for most businesses, this is a new way of thinking about getting important IT services, which takes some adjustment. Maybe the cloud just has a PR problem.
Another part of the Cloud Maturity study ranked the factors causing lack of confidence in the cloud. High among them are the sort of things we've come to expect: regulatory and compliance fears; data privacy and security concerns; contract lock in and exit strategies.
The full survey results have a lot more information about these factors, but it essentially all comes back to a lack of trust in the cloud service providers to offer the same level of security or service that companies feel they can provide themselves on premises.
According to the study, "Cloud computing can provide significant opportunities for enterprises to innovate in ways that could disrupt established ways of providing and using information technology. However, according to the participants in the CSA/ISACA survey, the cloud market has not yet reached a level of maturity that will support this scenario."
However, it seems inevitable that such a maturity level will be reached, and the study predicts another two to three years before cloud computing will be firmly in the Growth stage of development overall.
You can download the full Cloud Maturity survey results from CSA or ISACA. They also created the infographic on "The Rise of the Cloud" that accompanies this article.
And if you didn't get to participate in the CSA/ISACA study, feel free to let us know your thoughts on the state of the cloud by leaving a comment here. Do you think cloud computing will ever be as ubiquitous and commonplace in IT as e-mail has become?
Coming Events of Interest
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.
NAB Show 2013 - April 4th-11th in Las Vegas, NV. Every industry employs audio and video to communicate, educate and entertain. They all come together at NAB Show for creative inspiration and next-generation technologies to help breathe new life into their content. NAB Show is a must-attend event if you want to future-proof your career and your business.
CLOUD COMPUTING CONFERENCE at NAB - April 8th-9th in Las Vegas, NV.The New ways cloud-based solutions have accomplished better reliability and security for content distribution. From collaboration and post-production to storage, delivery, and analytics, decision makers responsible for accomplishing their content-related missions will find this a must-attend event.
CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2013 - May 20th-21st in Boston, MA. CCE:2013 will focus on three major sectors, GOVERNMENT, HEALTHCARE, and FINANCIAL SERVICES, whose use of cloud-based technologies is revolutionizing business processes, increasing efficiency and streamlining costs.
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