December 10, 2012
Volume XLI, Issue 12
Cloud ERP Is the Next Big Thing in the Cloud
Excerpted from CloudTech News Report by Sharon Florentine
The cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) landscape is expanding, and competition is heating up. Back in July 2012, web-based business software provider NetSuite's Q2 revenue and earnings numbers were the first indicators of a growing trend in the Cloud ERP space.
As Ben Kepes reported in the Cloud Ave Blog, NetSuite's subscription and support revenues were $61 million, a 27 percent increase over Q2 2011. And NetSuite's cash flow from operations was up 80 percent year-over-year to $15.2 million.
Don't yawn — yes, earnings reports in and of themselves aren't exactly riveting. But as Kepes said, the trend that these numbers indicate signals a very important shift in the ERP space.
Enterprise software isn't "sexy," but it continues to be a growth sector year-over-year, he said, because it's directly monetizable — enterprise software companies deliver a service customers are very willing to pay for.
Couple it with the cost-saving, productivity-enhancing, and efficiency-creating properties of the cloud, and it's no surprise ERP in the cloud is becoming the next frontier for many enterprise software providers.
Brian Sommer, CEO TechVentive and research analyst with Vital Analysis, notes that there are a number of new developments and up-and-coming players emerging, which point to a more competitive ERP landscape.
Sommer offers detailed run-downs of well-known players (Microsoft, SAP, NetSuite) and new start-ups (Kenandy, RootStock, Infor, Workday, to name a few), but what's most interesting is his analysis of what this reinvigoration of the ERP landscape means.
Sommer believes that many of the "new guard" players may likely disrupt the leader board for ERP software. He recommends that, if your firm is selecting software from the same, ten-year-old short list, you might be making a mistake; it would be wise to investigate and consider a few of the new arrivals, he said.
Sommer hints that your chosen integrator might not be pleased with your choice to move ERP to the cloud. "Cloud ERP products don't take anywhere near the time or cost to implement as on-premise apps. Integrators hate this reality," Sommer said, but customers don't.
Expect some resistance and some hard selling from integrators used to the lengthy, lucrative contracts required by traditional ERP solutions.
That said, Sommer admits that some of the newer cloud ERP solutions aren't as 'battle tested' as many legacy applications. He recommends checking out a vendor's PaaS, which may offer a deep, rich ecosystem of other products that serve up data, programmer communities, databases, and apps to round out any functional holes in the solution.
On the other hand, avoid new solutions that simply mimic the functionality of older generation products.
Old ERP was designed when everything was constrained: bandwidth, disk storage, processing speed, CPU availability, disk storage, etc., Sommer said. For today's needs, new solutions should look at actions, inventory, etc. of external entities like suppliers, governments, customers, etc. — rather than just accounting transactions.
The new solutions should have been designed from the onset as externally aware and strategically (not just operationally) excellent. Get the best business-thinking built into a new solution (not old thinking in new code).
While ERP isn't new by any stretch of the imagination, there's certainly a shift happening in the landscape. And even though many ERP solutions have been available on the cloud in hosted or hybrid modes for a few years, it seems the next twelve to eighteen months could spark a new era of innovation in the space.
Lots of competition fuels innovation and choice for the buyer, Sommer said, and can offer you increased leverage as you negotiate with your current and future ERP provider.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The DCIA is pleased to announce the speakers for our third annual CONTENT IN THE CLOUD (CITC) Conference within the 2013 CES Show taking place at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Wednesday January 9th.
Join us for six insightful keynotes and four lively panel discussions highlighting the latest advancements in cloud-based solutions for content distribution.
Insiders will share how changes and progress in the cloud are revolutionizing data storage and delivery.
The effects are being felt across the consumer electronics (CE) industry, and it's only just begun!
At the 2013 CITC, we'll pay special attention to the impact of cloud-delivered, high-value entertainment on consumers, telecom industries, the media, and CE manufacturers.
Our opening keynote by Dr. Jin Li of Microsoft will answer the question What Is Content in the Cloud, Really? How should cloud computing be defined? What are the key economic considerations and prospects for sustainability of the cloud-enabled delivery phenomenon?
Our first panel with Radio Mitre's Guillermo Chialvo, Arrayent's Shane Dyer, Verizon's Jason Henderson, Endpoint Technologies' Roger Kay, IC4's Theo Lynn, PADEM Group's Allan McLennan, PMI's John Schiela, and Citrix's Peder Ulander will discuss The Impact on Consumers of Implementing Cloud Computing for Media Access and Storage.. 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.?
Our next keynote two keynotes by GenosTV's Mike West and Dow Lohnes' Jim Burger will balance Consumer Benefits of Cloud-Delivered Content: Ubiquity, Cost, Portability Improvements with Consumer Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content: Privacy, Reliability, Security Issues. What advantages do cloud-based solutions applied to popular entertainment bring to users? 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 happens if a cloud provider goes out of business?
Then a panel with Octoshape's Scott Brown, YuMe's Ed Haslam, Strategic Blue's Rob Kay, Equinix's Jon Lin, Core Analysis' Patrick Lopez, KPMG's Mark Lundin, Aspera's Jay Migliaccio, and Iris Media's Dr. Wolf Siegert will evaluate The Impact on Telecommunications Industries of Cloud Computing. 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?
A follow-on keynote by Kris Alexander of Akamai will summarize Telecommunications Industry Benefits & Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content: New Opportunities vs. Infrastructure Challenges. 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?
The next panel with Front Porch Digital's Brian Campanotti, Playcast Media's Guy De Beer, American Standard Television's Ian Donahue, Rovi's Gerald Hensley, Chyron's Todd Martin, Wiredrive's Bill Sewell, Gaikai's Robert Stevenson, and Gracenote's Stephen White will consider The Impact on Entertainment Industries of Cloud Computing. 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?
Then a keynote by Jean-Luc Chatelain of DataDirect Networks will highlight the top-line Entertainment Industry Benefits & Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content: Flexibility and Reach vs. Disruption and Accountability. 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?
Our final keynote by Lucia Gradinariu of Huawei will outline Consumer Electronics (CE) Manufacturer Benefits and Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content: Expanded Opportunities for New Products and Recurring Revenue Streams; New Challenges Related to Interoperability and Data Security. What unforeseen impacts, both positive and negative, do cloud-based solutions applied to popular entertainment properties bring to CE manufacturers?
And then our closing panel with Best Buy's Christopher Allen, Altman Vilandrie's Stefan Bewley, Coughlin Associates' Thomas Coughlin, Pioneer's David Frerichs, Youneeq's Murray Galbraith, Hughes Hubbard & Reed's Wayne Josel, IHS Automotive's Dr. Egil Juiliussen, and Navigation Solutions' Linda Senigaglia will explore The Impact on CE Manufacturers of Cloud Computing Deployment. 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?
To register for CONTENT IN THE CLOUD at CES, please click here. Share wisely, and take care.
Cloud-Based Net2TV Corp. Launches
Excerpted from Media Daily News Report
A new television company, Net2TV Corp., has launched. The company provides ad-supported, cloud-based television programming services.
Net2TV's first television service, Portico, features free, ad-supported programming from CBS Interactive's food site CHOW.com, Popular Science, and "WSJ Live" from The Wall Street Journal.
The Portico TV service is available on Philips Smart TVs in the US. The company is based in Redwood City, CA.
Cloud Showdown: Amazon/Rackspace/Microsoft/Google
Excerpted from Computer World Report by Brandon Butler
It wouldn't be a mischaracterization to equate the cloud computing industry to the wild, wild west.
There is such a variety of vendors gunning at one another and the industry is young enough that true winners and losers have not yet been determined. Amazon has established itself as the early market leader, but big-name legacy IT companies are competing hard, especially on the enterprise side, and a budding crop of startups are looking to stake their claims, too.
In its latest Magic Quadrant report, research firm Gartner lists 14 infrastructure as a service (IaaS) companies, but we looked at four of the biggest names to compare and contrast: Amazon Web Services, Rackspace (and OpenStack), Microsoft, and Google.
Amazon Web Services
It's hard to find someone who doesn't agree that Amazon Web Services is the market leader in IaaS cloud computing. The company has one of the widest breadths of cloud services - including compute, storage, networking, databases, load balancers, applications, and application development platforms all delivered as a cloud service. Amazon has dropped its prices 21 times since it debuted its cloud six years ago and fairly consistently fills whatever gaps it has in the size of virtual machine instances on its platform - the company recently rolled out new high-memory instances, for example.
There are some cautions for Amazon though. Namely, its cloud has experienced three major outages in two years. One analyst, Jillian Mirandi of Technology Business Researcher, has suggested that continued outages could eventually start hindering businesses' willingness to invest in Amazon infrastructure.
That sentiment gets to a larger point about AWS though - the service seems to be popular in the start-up community, providing the IT infrastructure for young companies and allowing them to avoid investing in expensive technology themselves. But Mark Bowker, a cloud analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group, says Amazon hasn't been as popular in the enterprise community.
"Amazon's made it really easy for pretty much anyone to spin-up cloud services or get VMs," he says. Where is Amazon getting those customers from? Some are developers and engineers who get frustrated by their own IT shops not being able to supply VMs as quickly as Amazon can, so they use Amazon's cloud in the shadows of IT.
"Taxi cabs pay for a lot of VMs," says Beth Cohen, an architect at consultancy Cloud Technology Partners, referring to users expensing Amazon services on travel reports. The point is there's a hesitation by some enterprises to place their Tier 1, mission critical applications in a public cloud.
Amazon is looking to extend its enterprise reach though. In recent months the company has made a series of announcements targeting enterprises and developers. It rolled out Glacier, a long-term storage service, while it's made updates to its Elastic application development platform and its Simple WorkFlow Service, which helps developers automate applications running in Amazon's cloud.
It has expanded partnerships as well, including with private cloud company Eucalyptus, allowing customers to create hybrid clouds that span their own data center and Amazon's cloud.
Amazon has also forged new agreements with BMC and F5, which add on top of the robust marketplace of software applications that are already available on Amazon's cloud. More partnerships expected into the future could push Amazon further into the enterprise market.
Rackspace
Behind Amazon, the rest of the market could be described as "everyone else," but there are some leading candidates to take on Amazon in the cloud and one of the strongest is Rackspace.
Powered by the OpenStack cloud computing platform, Rackspace is positioning itself as the open source alternative to Amazon, and the company's executives make no shame in aiming critiques directly at its chief competitor.
Bowker, of Enterprise Strategy Group, says Rackspace has a leg up on many of its other competitors because of its history as a managed hosting and collocation provider. It's been in the enterprise business before.
Others believe that Rackspace's OpenStack involvement allows it to compete at the scale and capacity of Amazon. Rackspace is attempting to build a cloud that can scale to just about anyone's needs, says financial analyst Pat Walravens, and he believes with the OpenStack backing the size of deals that Rackspace is able to land will only continue to increase.
"If Amazon is going for scale, cost, and breadth of services, Rackspace is going for its services, including what it calls its fanatical support for customers," says Forrester analyst Dave Bartonelli. "They're really trying to make the play that they're the safer enterprise choice and with OpenStack, they want to be known as the non-Amazon."
The open source aspect of Rackspace's cloud appeals to customers concerned about vendor lock-in, Bartonelli says. An open source architecture may give customers additional freedom to move workloads among OpenStack-powered clouds, although Gartner has disputed the significance of that.
One Rackspace strength is its ability to roll out the latest and greatest OpenStack features. The latest OpenStack code, for example, incorporated virtual networking capabilities, which Rackspace has since rolled out, and hopes to advance the functionality of it in the coming months.
There is a view by some though that Rackspace has married itself to OpenStack, perhaps to its own detriment. As the Gartner report on OpenStack states, OpenStack can be successful independently of Rackspace's success now that the company has ceded control of the project to a foundation. Overall, Bartonelli says Rackspace's involvement in OpenStack is positive for the company and will only help to position it as a leading alternative to Amazon.
Microsoft
And for good reason, he says. Microsoft owns a lot of back office IT operations for enterprises between Office, Exchange, and SharePoint. Because of that real estate the company already has in the enterprise market, Microsoft has an opportunity to extend those customers into its cloud, Bowker says.
Microsoft has been more aggressive than ever in recent months about encouraging customers and partners to join its cloud. Earlier this year the company rolled out on-demand Windows and Linux-based virtual machines and cloud storage to accompany its platform as a service as well.
Combined with the release of Windows Server 2012 and Windows System Server this year, Microsoft is also making a play for powering private clouds behind a company's firewall.
That will help Microsoft craft a story for customers to have hybrid cloud deployments all powered by Microsoft and its Hyper-V virtualization software.
"Amazon doesn't have as strong of a play in the hybrid cloud conversation," Bartonelli says, which - combined with Microsoft's strong relationships with a large number of enterprise IT shops - could be an advantage for the company moving forward.
Google
If anyone can compete with Amazon on scale, it's Google, says George Reese, founder of enStratus, a cloud management company. Amazon may have the largest scale in the industry, which Rackspace is attempting to match. But Reese says Google has a lot of data centers that are optimized for massive scaling, which is heavy artillery in cloud battles.
Google's play thus far has been focused on application development and hosting. It got into the game with Google App Engine, a development platform, and has since - like Microsoft - expanded into the infrastructure-as-a-service space with Google Compute Engine, giving customers an on-demand virtual machine and storage service.
It also has a consumer cloud-facing service in Google Drive, seen as a competitor to Microsoft's SkyDrive.
"Google's not trying to displace Microsoft or Windows developers, nor are they necessarily trying to displace Rackspace," Barontelli says. "They're really going directly after Amazon on pricing and capacity saying 'Hey, we've got scale, too.'"
But Amazon's been in the cloud game longer than Google, and both companies suffer from a lack of perceived support for users. But the strengths of Google's platform, and its activities in the start-up community, could make it a viable competitor in the cloud market.
Octoshape & Juniper Quality Broadband Video
Octoshape, an industry leader in cloud-based streaming technology, has developed an integrated technology showcase with Juniper Networks to provide a foundation for Broadband TV with the scale, quality, and cost efficiency of broadcast TV.
The showcase is being hosted from Juniper Networks' New Jersey-based OpenLab, the Junos Center for Innovation, which facilitates a collaborative environment for Juniper's customers, partners and academia to learn about and develop new network integrated software applications.
The showcase integrates Octoshape's Infinite HD-M Federated Multicast platform with Juniper Networks MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers for both Native Multicast, and Automatic Multicast Tunneling (AMT). The HD-M solution for high definition Internet video has been in production since April 2012, and now utilizes the first commercially available AMT relay from Juniper.
The collaboration between the two companies is a huge step forward in making the Internet a reliable medium for high quality video distribution. The integration of Infinite HD-M differentiates Juniper Networks in the OTT IPTV marketplace by enabling telco, operator and campus networks to facilitate Multicast over the unmanaged broadband network.
"Octoshape's advanced video distribution technology provides high definition Internet video regardless of the geographic location, connectivity or network conditions of the viewer. Combined with Juniper's AMT technology on its MX Series routers, it enables us to transform the quality and economics of Internet-based video," said Mike Bushong, Senior Director Product Line Management, Junos, Juniper Networks.
The collaboration between the two companies is a huge step forward in making the Internet a reliable medium for high quality video distribution. The integration of Infinite HD-M differentiates Juniper Networks in the OTT IPTV marketplace by enabling telco, operator, and campus networks to facilitate Multicast over the unmanaged broadband network.
"Octoshape's advanced video distribution technology provides high definition Internet video regardless of the geographic location, connectivity or network conditions of the viewer. Combined with Juniper's AMT technology on its MX Series routers, it enables us to transform the quality and economics of Internet-based video," said Mike Bushong, senior director product line management, Junos, Juniper Networks.
The Infinite HD-M solution enables TV quality, scale and economics for IPTV over unmanaged IP networks now utilizing existing Juniper infrastructure in the telco and operator network. Infinite HD-M enables large volumes of broadband TV to be delivered efficiently over last mile networks without requiring the vast infrastructure upgrades necessary with traditional video delivery platforms.
"Juniper Networks has a proven track record of bringing innovative, high performance, scalable solutions to the Internet," Michael Koehn Milland, CEO of Octoshape. "When combined with Octoshape's Infinite HD-M technology it enables us to jointly bring together the entire video distribution solution for a unique and industry-changing offering in the Internet video distribution segment."
Telco and cable operators that are part of the Infinite HD-M Federated network receive the signals via native IP Multicast in a way that allows them to easily manage large volumes of traffic without upgrading their Internet capacity. Octoshape's federated linear broadband TV ecosystem will continue to expand globally in carefully planned phases adding content contribution partners, tier one broadband providers, connected television manufacturers and conditional access providers.
Ten Ways Cloud Computing Will Change in 2013
Excerpted from ZDNet Report by Nick Heath
As spending on cloud services and platforms picks up, the way businesses use such services will also evolve. Forrester has put together ten ways its analysts expect attitudes surrounding cloud to change next year.
Business Will Get Real about Cloud Costs
Organizations will start paying more attention to cloud costs in 2013, Forrester claims.
Cloud isn't always cheaper, it's just likely to be cheaper if organizations follow the right use model. To get the best ROI out of cloud services and platforms organizations need to model the cost profile of applications, monitor the resources they use and adjust any deployment to balance cost against performance, according to the analysts.
Cloud cost-monitoring tools like Cloudyn, CloudCruiser, Cloudability, Newvem, and Rightscale, plus the cost-reporting tools from large cloud vendors, provide a way of doing these calculations.
Good cost management should also drive business' hybrid deployment, service selection, and discount schedule negotiations, Forrester says.
CFOs are likely to wake up to this opportunity to reduce the cost of cloud services in 2013, it predicts.
Attitudes about Cloud Service Level Agreements Will Change
Organizations will realize that it is better to build the resiliency they need into the cloud-based apps, rather than the platforms they run on.
Taking this approach will allow organizations to stand more chance of getting the performance, availability and security they need, Forrester said.
The other advantage is not incurring the cost of negotiating a high SLA from a cloud vendor when only one in 10 of the apps deployed on a platform require that level of guarantees.
Development of Enterprise Apps in Public Clouds Will Be Sanctioned
Infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams will accept that in-house developers will be using public cloud platforms to build apps.
Sanctioning development, rather than attempting to block it, will allow I&O teams to provide guidance on how to use these platforms securely and put in place appropriate oversight.
Cloud Will Take Off for Back-Up and Disaster Recovery
Data that previously was cheaper to back up to traditional DR storage will be cheaper and easier to back up through a cloud-based disaster recovery system - where virtual machine data is replicated to a multi-tenanted cloud platform - as well as faster to recover, it predicts.
Part of the reason for the possible cost reduction is that a cloud-based disaster recovery system will be pay-per-use, eliminating the need for a capital investment to build a secondary DR site.
Cloud Won't Have to Mean Commodity
Cloud services might be renowned for running on low-cost, commodity hardware but 2013 will see a proliferation of services backed by high-end components, Forrester predicts.
As demand rises for market-specific cloud services and cloud vendors attempt to differentiate themselves it predicts a rise in services backed by non-commodity hardware.
The analyst house says the trend is already evident, in services backed by high-end GPUs and SSDs.
Amazon Web Services Will Have a Fight on its Hands
In 2013 Amazon Web Services will face stiffening competition for the cloud platform market that it currently dominates, with as much as 70 percent market share, according to Forrester.
It predicts challenges from Microsoft and Google, thanks to what it calls "significant improvements to their platforms". By the end of 2013 Forrester also expects there to be "at least three substantial OpenStack-based clouds building strong positions".
Businesses Will Accept that Not Everything Belongs in the Cloud
2013 will be the year that the idea that everything is going to go to the cloud will go away, Forrester predicts.
IT buyers will increasingly understand the strengths and weaknesses of cloud platforms and how they differ from traditional virtual infrastructures and hosting environments. Companies should recruit in-house developers with hands-on experience of these different platforms to help decide what workloads belong in which environment, it says.
Cloud and Mobile Will Become One
During 2013 there will be greater convergence between mobile applications and cloud-based services.
Forrester predicts a growth in the already popular practice of connecting mobile applications to cloud-based back-end services that can elastically respond to demand from mobile clients.
It says the practice also has the advantage of lessening the load and security risks of having this traffic connect to a business's data centers.
Forrester analyst Glenn O'Donnell says "cloud plus mobile is a classic more than the sum of its parts combination."
Businesses Will Acknowledge that Virtualization Does Not Mean Cloud
Enterprise I&O departments will need to stop miss-selling virtualized environments as private cloud in 2013, Forrester says.
These virtualized environments are typically not private clouds, it says, as very few offer self-service to developers, fully-automated provisioning, standardized services or cost transparency. Instead they are mostly static virtual environments that drive workload consolidation, operational efficiencies and fast recovery.
In 2013 I&O teams should acknowledge that both have a place in the datacentre, according to the analyst house, and stop trying to sell one as the other.
Developers Will Realize Development Isn't that Different in the Cloud
According to Forrester's cloud developer survey the majority of languages, frameworks, and development methodologies used in the enterprise are also in use in the cloud.
There are few excuses for a well-trained developer to not be productive in the cloud, the analyst house says.
How Will Government IT Change in 2013?
Excerpted from GCN Report by Rutrell Yasin
Consolidation, cloud, mobile computing, and lots more data will drive federal, state and local government use of information technology (IT) in 2013, according to the latest predictions by market research firm IDC Government Insights.
"Operational efficiency and mission effectiveness are the key drivers for IT value in government in 2013," said Thom Rubel, Vice President of IDC Government Insights. "Government organizations are rapidly adopting "third-platform technologies" — which IDC defines as mobile computing, cloud services, social networking, and big data analytics — in tactical ways that will quickly transcend to broader 'smart' strategies, Rubel said.
Rubel, along with fellow IDC Government Insights analysts Ruthbea Clarke, Shawn McCarthy, and Adelaide O'Brien, highlighted ten market predictions for the year ahead at a December 4th web conference.
IDC's top 10 market predictions are:
Cloud-created consolidation. Infrastructure consolidation will hit its peak as governments accelerate cloud adoption by more than 50 percent over 2012 levels, accounting for more than 7 percent of all government IT spending.
Tactical take on big data. Deployments of big data solutions will grow by more than a 30 percent compound annual growth rate and will drive more analytics deployment, laying the foundation for smart government with specific emphasis on mission/operations improvement and sentiment analysis.
Identification of best-use devices. Agencies, organizations and offices will rapidly begin to rationalize and establish baseline costs for IT assets and identify endpoint device choices — PCs, tablets, and smart phones — for "best use."
Records management issues. Mobile devices and apps, smart sensors, cloud computing solutions and citizen-facing portals will create a surge in digital information, creating new records management access and retrieval issues.
New procurement models. Cloud sharing/collaboration among governments (federal, state, and local) and shared services will account for 18 percent of the government cloud market and create new business models for IT procurement and provisioning.
Rise of social analytics. Though they continue to lag behind other industries in investing in social business software, 35 percent of government organizations will initiate social analytics tools evaluation and/or use.
Ever more mobile. All levels of government will accelerate mobile applications development. In 2013, 35 percent of new federal and state applications will be mobile and 45 percent of new local applications will be mobile.
Smart cities. Over 40 percent of local governments will be in the research and evaluation stage for smart city pilots and projects, and 50 percent of these start rolling in 2013.
Opportunities for open data. Government organizations that promote open data will generate 25 percent more private commercial activity in apps and services that will improve outcomes on a range of government goals.
More partnerships. Public/private partnerships will be redefined based on goals and outcomes that create mutual partnership and research benefits.
Altogether, the coming year will present significant changes in government and commercial partnerships to achieve mutual goals," Rubel said.
How Is Cloud Computing Changing Healthcare?
Excerpted from Healthcare Communications News Report by Bernie Heller
Cloud computing is altering the healthcare landscape worldwide, pooling together unlimited resources in unprecedented collaboration. Its enormous storage capabilities, economies of scale, and potential for rapid innovation make cloud computing a natural fit for the healthcare industry. Use of cloud services is only rising.
By 2017, the cloud computing market is expected to reach $5.4 billion, according to a report by research firm MarketsandMarkets. The omnipresent cloud has already set healthcare on the path to rapid evolution and will continue improving the industry in the following ways:
Privacy. There are widespread concerns cloud computing security is less than stellar when it comes to safeguarding data. Doctors and health practitioners express concern over storing confidential patient information in a server outside their facility. Server data is safely encrypted preventing even the VPS hosting provider from accessing any information.
Relying on efficiency and economies of scale, providers of cloud services vouch for the healthcare and credit card industry's privacy standards in addition to the Federal Information Security Management Act.
Mobile applications. Mobile health and cloud computing will merge to a greater degree in the near future. Greg Arnette, Chief Technology Officer at cloud-based technology developer Sonian, said there will soon be an app that allows the patient to directly interact with healthcare providers to fill out forms and collect data. By storing data in the cloud, healthcare companies grant access to information at wherever they want to make it available.
Mobile apps also function as a result of a cloud infrastructure. According to Information Week, many apps are on the horizon to ease doctor and patient communication and further educate those needing medical attention. One app allows patients to bypass language barriers to seek the medical help they need. Another lets doctors use interactive diagrams to visualize ailments within the patient's bodies and inform the process and location of various procedures.
Innovation. Cloud computing services continuously improve data, computing power, and overall services. This innovative modus operandi is completed quickly and with little cost and interruption to services. The sheer speed and power of working in the cloud allows researchers to process gargantuan chunks of information to quickly churn out results.
The cloud provider provides previously unheard-of levels of collaboration between healthcare facilities. Data can be synchronized and shared across large institutions and between organizations for the benefit of doctors and patients alike.
Expense. Matt Wood, head of scientific and technical computing at Amazon Web Services, says pharmaceutical companies are taking advantage of renting computing power and paying for it hourly, a kind of pay-as-go computing, according to NPR. This saves massive amounts of money; companies don't have to buy new computers nor pay IT professionals to set them up. Financial savings are further compounded as upgrade costs are eliminated through the years.
Proformative Financial Services Cloud Survey
Proformative, the largest and fastest-growing online community and resource for senior level corporate finance, accounting, treasury and related professionals today seeks feedback from its constituency with its second annual Cloud Computing Survey tied with a "cloud" giveaway.
Cloud computing and cloud services have become so prevalent and integral to organizations of all sizes that Proformative is hosting another Cloud Computing Survey to gain even more insight into the topic.
Cloud Computing is very easily applied to the accounting and finance departments. Traditional on-premise software used to record, process, and report on company business can all be taken to the cloud where it can go beyond the debits and credits to managing people, payroll, commerce, treasury, BI, and a whole host of formerly difficult-to-acquire and integrate technologies.
"One important consideration when taking financial or accounting based systems into the cloud is security and backup. Since this information is very sensitive and valuable to the organization, make sure that you are using well-vetted and established cloud providers," urges John Kogan, CEO of Proformative and a four-time CFO. "Most online accounting software has backup and disaster recovery functionality built into the system, with degrees of redundancy and layers of security that are non-replicable by most companies trying to do it themselves."
Cloud services benefit not just finance, but operations, marketing, sales, and virtually all functions within the organization.
The top five benefits include:
1. Anytime, Anywhere Access From Multiple Devices - Perhaps the biggest advantage of using cloud software and services is the ability to access information from virtually any device, anywhere at any time. This means mobile, tablet, desktop, and any other device that has internet access from your company's HQ, your home office, or any coffee shop, airport and hotspot worldwide.
2. Creating a Global Workforce - By hosting services and software in the cloud, organizations gain access to a global workforce. This means access to services and talent is no longer restricted by geography.
3. More Flexible Work Environment - Cloud services and software allow you to make changes in personnel and technology much more quickly and efficiently to fit the needs of your business in real-time.
4. Cloud Computing Is Green - Many companies agree that adopting cloud services and software has helped to reduce their footprint and waste by allowing consolidated and efficient cloud providers to thrive.
5. Cost Savings - Cloud computing services allow organizations to only pay for resources as they use them, without needing to build redundant infrastructure or hiring IT staff to maintain under-utilized systems, creating significant cost savings.
Data collected from this survey will be released to Proformative's online peer network of more than 600,000 corporate finance and business professionals in its fast growing network specifically designed to help corporate finance professionals be successful in their jobs and careers.
BitTorrent's Android Apps Surpass10 Million
Excerpted from Digital Trends Report by Andy Boxall
BitTorrent has announced its collection of Android mobile applications have been downloaded 10 million times, with its uTorrent and Remote apps making up a large portion of that figure.
Keen BitTorrent users have really embraced the company's Android applications, as they have been downloaded 10 million times since they first started to appear in November last year.
BitTorrent offers four official apps through Google Play: uTorrent Beta, BitTorrent Beta, and a Remote app for both. The Remote apps provide the opportunity to remotely control your BitTorrent or uTorrent client on your desktop machine or server. All the information you could want is there — from file sizes to seeding numbers — and torrents can even be activated from the app, too.
The 10 million download figure is broken down like this: The BitTorrent Remote apps have been downloaded 4.7 million times, while the BitTorrent client app has racked up 1.5 million downloads. Finally, the uTorrent Beta app, which was released in September, has a download total of 3.8 million already on the books.
According to BitTorrent's figures, 75 percent of its uTorrent users have no problem recommending it to others, 45 percent claim to use it a couple of times per week, and a truly dedicated 25 percent use the app each day.
While BitTorrent says its apps are available across all major platforms — iOS, Windows Phone, and Android — this isn't strictly true, as it's only Google Play and the Windows Phone Store which have let in its dedicated mobile apps, while iOS users must make do with accessing the remote platform through a browser.
BitTorrent released uTorrent and BitTorrent Remote apps for Windows Phone in October, both of which are still available in the store and are compatible with Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8.
P2P Storage: Can It Take on the Cloud?
Excerpted from ZDNet Report by Jack Clark
In a world where IT is centralizing, some companies have been trying to involve users by producing clouds based on peer-to-peer (P2P) technology architectures. The past has shown it's not an easy trick to pull off.
All around us the Googles, Facebooks, Microsofts, and Amazons are building data centers so they can store companies' information, allowing organizations to spend less on their on-premise IT equipment.
According to the digital cognoscenti, this breed of cloud computing is the way of the future. But what if there was another way to create a global cloud, one that didn't involve cementing the dominance of global technology companies like Microsoft, Google and their ilk? Would you use it?
Symform thinks you would. The three-year-old company told ZDNet this week that, as of November 30th, it is storing petabytes of information across 175 million files in a global P2P cloud. This data is not being stored in data centers - as it is in the Amazon, Google, and Microsoft clouds - but on the drives of servers, desktops and NAS boxes in 160 countries across the world.
The company is far from being the first to try to put the spare compute and storage capacity of people's machines to work, and judging from those who have gone before it, there's no easy path ahead.
P2P architectures for computing have had variable success over the last decade.
There have been successes, like the distributed computing programs of SETI or Folding@home which use the spare compute cycles on people's machines to search for aliens or sequence proteins, but there have also been failures.
One would be Wuala, a P2P file storage technology developed by researchers at the University of Zurich that was spun off into its own company and subsequently brought by consumer storage giant Lacie. However, shortly after being bought, the P2P technology was shut down and the system was re-designed to operate from Wuala's data centers.
Another service based on similar technology was All My Data, but that ran into funding difficulties and shut down in 2010.
The majority of Symform's users are IT professionals or IT service provider companies
"The problems in all of these cases is an average consumer is not sophisticated enough and doesn't have enough data," Praerit Garg, the President and Co-Founder of Symform, says. "The complexity of the problem they tried to solve was too high."
To that end, Symform makes users sign the equivalent of a service-level agreement that sees them agree to provide 80-percent uptime from their Symform hardware over a two-month period. The majority of Symform's users are IT professionals or IT service provider companies.
This strategy works because IT professionals are more likely to want a cloud data storage alternative to Amazon Web Services or another major cloud than a consumer, Garg says.
These companies and individuals are "afraid of cloud because it marginalizes their role. Here is a system they can be part of", he says.
But will P2P be the success that its proponents hope?
"The challenge with P2P storage products is that the cost of storage is falling precipitously, making P2P storage often no more cost effective than cloud storage solutions," the chief executive of a cloud storage company who wished to be anonymous told ZDNet.
Aereo Wouldn't Exist without Cloud Computing
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Jeff Roberts
Aereo, a TV-on-the-go service that relies on small antennas, is getting a lot of legal attention. The bigger story should be how it is using economic breakthroughs in computing to offer a new form of TV.
Aereo is a service that lets people watch live TV anywhere they go by renting them a personal antenna that beams shows to their phones, laptops, or tablets. The service, which can be bought for $1 a day, is getting lots of attention because big broadcasters are suing try to sue it out of it existence.
Speaking in New York on Wednesday, Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia explained that the service is only possible because of a "perfect storm" of technology advances that have dramatically lowered the costs of broadcasting and subscriber acquisition.
For example, Kanojia pointed to Aereo's "antenna farm" in Brooklyn. The site hosts thousands of mini-antennas, each about the size of a dime, that subscribers in New York can rent on a daily or monthly basis. The technology, which offers a combined TV/DVR service, is so compact that Aereo can fit 50,000 pairs of antennas in just 200 vertical square feet.
This is remarkable but perhaps more remarkable are the plunging data and transcoding costs that meant Aereo could build the site in the first place.
Kanojia says the company is buying "tens of petabytes of storage" for as low as $95 a terabyte, and that the price is dropping all the time. What this means is that when and if Aereo clears the legal hurdles, it can scale nearly instantly in cities and towns outside New York.
"The cost structure based on the cloud is a fraction of what it was," he said, adding that companies like Aereo can plan businesses "on the anticipation of these cost curves being driven down."
Kanojia credits massive R&D by the giants of the tech industry with not only lowering the costs of cloud computing but also changing consumer expectations about media and TV subscriptions.
He says these changes have made it possible to offer $1/day subscriptions where consumers can come and go as they wish.
"There are no installers, no boxes, no lost equipment … they can come in and give it a try for $1."
While Kanojia is a Steve Jobs fan, he doesn't think the late Apple founder's "give them one price" philosophy works for subscription services which, he says, work better with a blitz of options.
In the bigger picture, the Aereo founder says that "TV should be like Twitter" — available everywhere and backed in every application.
None of this will please the big broadcast networks whose content Aereo is rebroadcasting without permission. But Aereo-style technology now seems to be an inevitable part of the future — going back makes about as much sense as going from light-bulbs to candles.
Coming Events of Interest
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.
2013 Symposium on Cloud and Services Computing - March 14th-15th in Tainan, Taiwan. The goal of SCC 2013 is to bring together, researchers, developers, government sectors, and industrial vendors that are interested in cloud and services computing.
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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