December 17, 2012
Volume XLII, Issue 1
Don't Miss CONTENT IN THE CLOUD at CES
Plan now to attend the DCIA's third annual CONTENT IN THE CLOUD Conference within the 2013 CES Show taking place in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center on Wednesday January 9th.
Join us for six insightful keynotes, including Microsoft's Dr. Jin Li, GenosTV's Mike West, Dow Lohnes' Jim Burger, Akamai's Kris Alexander, and Huawei's Lucia Gradinariu on the latest advancements in cloud-based solutions for content distribution.
Four lively panel discussions will provide a wide range of perspectives on the impact of cloud-delivered, high-value entertainment on consumers, telecom industries, the media, and consumer electronics (CE) manufacturers.
Insiders from thirty-eight organizations will share how changes and progress in the cloud are revolutionizing data storage and delivery.
The effects are being felt across the CE industry, and it's only just begun!
To register for CONTENT IN THE CLOUD at CES, please click here.
INTELLIGENCE IN THE CLOUD at NAB Now Online
For those who missed the INTELLIGENCE IN THE CLOUD (IITC) Workshop conducted in partnership with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) in Washington, DC on December 4th, please click here for an archival version of the event and enter password "cloud2012" to access presentations.
Thank you again to event sponsor Front Porch Digital. Please click here for event photos.
Keynotes feature Dr. Suzanne Yoakum-Stover, Executive Director at Institute for Modern Intelligence (IMI); Michael Weintraub, Executive Director of Technology at Verizon Communications; Scott Campbell, Industry Principal, Media & Telecom at SAP America; Marlyn Zelkowitz, Global Director, Public Services Cloud Solutions at SAP America; Randy Kreiser, Chief Storage Architect, Federal Division at DataDirect Networks (DDN); Allan McLennan, President at The PADEM Group; John Heaton, Director at Aspera; Jeff Reich, Chief Risk Officer at Layered Tech; Sean Jennings, VP, Solutions Architecture at Virtustream; Greg Parker, CEO at DarpaTV; and Eric Klinker, CEO at BitTorrent.
Panels include WISC Enterprises' John Bordner leading a group of government and private sector professionals from Google, IMI, NGIA, and SAP; a session on legal considerations conducted by Edwards Wildman Palmer; and a wrap-up discussion of next steps with i3m3 Solutions partners and the author of "Securing the Cloud."
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The DCIA strongly supports the position taken by the United States (US) and several other countries at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) gathering of 193 nations this week in Dubai.
The US and its allies refused to sign-on to the UN International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) new telecom treaty.
The Internet, which has thus far been allowed to develop largely free from government controls, has established an unprecedented track record of technological advancement and economic expansion.
The emergence of cloud computing owes much of its success to this freedom.
The US delegation, led by Ambassador Terry Kramer, demonstrated commendable resolve in opposing this new treaty's dangerous threats to continued growth of the Internet.
But the troubling outcome of this meeting needs to be heeded by industry participants as a very serious warning.
Internet governance has succeeded as well as it has thanks to an inclusive multi-stakeholder process that can quickly respond to rapidly changing realities.
This open and responsive methodology has allowed web-based businesses and cloud solutions to flourish.
The many ITU member states that supported the new treaty were wrong in their willingness to discard a long-standing international consensus to keep the Internet insulated from intergovernmental regulation.
By agreeing to broaden the scope of the ITU's rules to include the Internet, encompassing its operations and content, these nations risk a radical undermining of the highly successful, private sector model of Internet governance that has served the public and commercial interests remarkably well up until now.
We agree with Ambassador Kramer's view that the revised International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) should have remained a high-level document and not have extended to Internet governance.
The current framework of the Internet is one area in global commerce that is not broken, and the UN treaty has no business trying to fix it.
Instead, however, the new ITRs contain numerous Internet references that could be exploited by repressive regimes as leverage for regulating Internet content and be applied against Internet service providers (ISPs), cloud solutions providers, and private network operators.
The ITU is not the organization to take control of the technical functioning of the Internet given the expressed interest of such participating countries to take advantage of this power shift to impose censorship and financial penalties, including charges to Internet content providers for access to domestic markets.
The new UN codes sanctioning greater government involvement in the workings of the Internet will be relied upon as a justification for these types of destructive restrictions, by provisions that for example give member states the right to manage all naming, numbering, addressing, and identification resources used for international telecommunications.
State-led regulation of the Internet will enable more autocratic countries to subvert the multiple underpinnings that currently ensure its freedom, stifle the spread of free speech, and clamp down on Internet commerce.
WCIT-12 could be a disturbing portent of what the future may hold unless industry participants come together to protect the global, open Internet — and the open access to information and communications that it fosters — against those forces that would turn it into a tool of political, economic, and other forms of oppression.
Even though the United States refused to sign the new agreement, consumers everywhere will ultimately pay the price for this power grab as web-based businesses, software programmers, and cloud solutions providers expend resources to address unwelcome new considerations imposed by an internationally politicized Internet.
If this assault on Internet freedom continues unabated, consumers' prices will rise while investment and innovation will be negatively impacted.
We need to prepare for an even more treacherous ITU treaty negotiation that will take place in 2014 in Korea. Those talks could seek to expand the ITU's reach even further.
Support for the United States and its allies and their continued opposition to these threats needs to start now. Share wisely, and take care.
Cloud Computing Tops 2013 CE Trends
Excerpted from CNET Report by Charlie Osborne
Cloud computing is one of the main trends to keep an eye on in 2013, according to a new report from Ericsson.
The electronics firm's Ten Hot Consumer Trends 2013 report suggests that not only is cloud computing becoming increasingly important in our daily lives, but also young people's use of the Internet will drive new businesses and products in the coming year.
The most important technological trend is cloud computing. More than 50 percent of tablet users and 40 percent of smart-phone users in the US, Japan, Australia, and Sweden subscribe to these kinds of services owing to the improved simplicity associated with being able to connect multiple devices — such as a Mac, iPad, and iPhone — through the cloud, making file-sharing and synchronization less of a hassle.
Market intelligence firm IHS iSuppli also found consumer-focused cloud-based services to be one of the biggest hits this year, backing up this prediction. The company said that the number of cloud-based service subscriptions surpassed 375 million in the first half of 2012, and this number is expected to rise to 625 million worldwide in 2013.
Michael Bjorn, head of research at Ericsson's ConsumerLab, said, "Our global research program is based on annual interviews with over 100,000 individuals in more than 40 countries and 15 megacities. Over the years we have amassed a huge database of consumer trend data — and we see that the pace of change is currently more rapid than ever."
The report says that not only are purchase patterns higher for tablets compared with desktop PCs but also that women are driving smart-phone mass-market adoption. Varied uses for smart-phones, including image sharing, social networking, the use of location-tracking technology, and coupon redemption are higher for women than men.
57 percent of smart-phone users said they use their gadgets in the workplace, and there's a rising trend of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) gadgets such as Google's Nexus 7 and Apple's iPhone. Ericsson says another trend is the use of such devices for "work, to send e-mails, plan business trips, and find locations."
Smart-phone use is not only expanding in the workplace — 32 percent of smart-phone users surveyed said they already shop with their gadget in order to try to avoid lines and to make price comparisons quickly. With the induction of smart-phones and a global commerce network now firmly established online, this trend is unsurprising. We look for the best deal, and if we can save a few cents by performing a quick search online — as well as miss the elbow-digs of stressed mothers and the wail of children dragged around when Christmas shopping — why not?
Ericsson also says that the humble television is becoming more social. 62 percent of viewers use social forums when watching their favorite show, and 42 percent of users enjoy discussing things they watch. With the induction of "smart TVs" and the rumors of Apple TV testing, the merging of broadcasts and social networks is unlikely to stop anytime soon.
The other top trends Ericsson believes businesses should keep an eye on are the transformative powers of technology in the classroom; the use of social networks and mobile gadgets by those living in cities to keep connected and exchange ideas; and the increasing use of personal networks online instead of traditional structures to stay informed and hunt for jobs.
Ericsson ConsumerLab bases its annual report on interviews with 100,000 people worldwide, in more than 40 countries and 15 "megacities."
Is Cloud Computing "Future of the Future?"
Excerpted from Guardian Media Report by Zahra Gordon
At the National ICT Business & Innovation Symposium recently, Jeremy Geelan, President of 21st Century Internet Group, concluded his keynote address by saying, "Cloud computing allows you to create and if you can create, you can be what's next."
The lecture, entitled "The New Cloud Enabled World," aimed to illustrate the many benefits of cloud computing. Geelan, who is also the Conference Chair of the International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, refers to himself as a "domain expert on the future of the future," i.e., The Cloud.
Cloud computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data rather than a local server or a personal computer.
When he rhetorically asked the audience, "Why move to the cloud?" his answers included these reasons: unlimited processing and storage, elasticity, maximized revenue, reduced cost, expedited time, and the ability to do more projects.
To support his claims, Geelan provided some statistics on Internet usage. According to Geelan, in the early days of the Internet during the 1990s, there were approximately ten million users. Now, the Internet has more than one billion users, he said.
This growth is also visible by looking at websites: a little over a decade ago there were one million websites — a number which has now leaped to 100 million.
The number of Internet connected devices now stands at five billion and Geelan believes that estimate is conservative. As further evidence, Geelan pointed out that the file-hosting site Dropbox, founded only in 2007, had 100 million users with one billion files saved every two hours.
One of the possibilities Geelan posed to the audience was the problem solving power of using the cloud: "If every car in Trinidad & Tobago (T&T) had an IP address it might be very easy to figure out why traffic is such a problem," he suggested.
The cloud-enabled concept car, Evos, revealed by US motor company Ford earlier this year can track driver preferences, work schedules, music, and weather information and it also allows for data to be shared through vehicle-to-vehicle communication.
While Geelan offered examples of many businesses and organizations that were 100 percent cloud operated such as Amazon, Coca Cola, Maersk and even the US Central Intelligence Agency, Guardian technology columnist Mark Lyndersay believes the road to full cloud dependency is still far reaching, particularly in T&T.
"Now that enterprise is looking into the cloud model for more everyday tasks, there are a number of issues that are coming to the forefront. Data security, broadband accessibility and reliability, and depth of Internet penetration become critical factors in doing business this way, which is quite a conceptual jump from individuals making use of services on the web," he said.
"There's a huge conceptual jump between having a Facebook page and running your business off a cloud-based service and that's where the evangelizing of cloud computing solutions has become critical."
Apart from security risks, Lyndersay also pointed out that cloud computing was not exactly a new phenomenon. "The real challenge that cloud computing proponents face is that they aren't really introducing a new product. The concept of cloud computing has been growing around us for several years now, long before it was formalized as a name and a decade's worth of young people and reasonably experienced web users have come to expect data held on servers on the Internet as part of the overall computing experience."
Geelan proffered that cloud computing was an example of the "democratization of IT" making access to services, learning and even funding easier, particularly for those living in T&T's rural areas. He said T&T may be ahead of the curve because business technology is now becoming social technology and the high saturation of smart phones in T&T could be the turning point.
However, Lyndersay was not convinced that the proliferation of smart phones and other mobile Internet connected devices was a sure sign of progress. "I'm not sure that it's true to describe T&T as being ahead of many countries in the saturation of smart phones. Such devices only get their intelligence with a broadband connection and that's still quite far from reaching saturation point," he said.
Cloud computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage and process data rather than a local server or a personal computer. The name comes from the use of a cloud shaped symbol used to represent the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams.
Cloud computing entrusts remote servers with a user's data, software, and computation. Consumers access cloud-based applications through a web browser or a light-weight desktop or mobile application while the business software and user's data are stored on servers at a remote location.
Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve coherence and economies of scale similar to a utility, like electricity, over a network.
Ways to Induce Adoption of the Cloud
Excerpted from Baseline Report by Dennis McCafferty
Is your company still on the fence when it comes to launching a cloud computing strategy?
If so, you know that the cloud is a technology model that practically guarantees greater ease-of-tech deployment, while greatly reducing costs. And those once-prevalent concerns about security appear to be fading.
Then there are the numbers: The overall cloud computing market will grow to $160 billion by 2013, according to Merrill Lynch. By the end of this year, four of every five new commercial enterprise applications will be deployed on cloud platforms, according to IDC. By the end of 2016, more than half of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in a public cloud, according to Gartner.
If your organization's decision-makers are still unconvinced after hearing all that, then present the issue to them using Janco Associates' 10 easy-to-digest reasons for heading into the cloud. They cover advantages ranging from cost to flexibility to speed — and even security.
UltraViolet Tops 7 Million Accounts
Excerpted from Home Media Magazine Report by Erik Gruenwedel
Consumers registering movies to the cloud-based UltraViolet digital locker exceeds 7 million accounts, with consumer awareness above 50%, a Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) executive told Home Media Magazine.
The tally, which is more than double the 3 million registered UV accounts announced in June, underscores ratcheted efforts by studios promoting the concept on DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and electronic sell-through releases in the fourth quarter.
"Awareness has really risen over the past year," said Lexine Wong, SVP of Worldwide Marketing with SPHE.
Updated year-end UV registered account numbers (expected to reach 8 million) and compatible titles will be released by the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next month in Las Vegas.
Sony Pictures, Warner, Fox, Universal, Paramount, Lionsgate, and DreamWorks Animation have all embraced UltraViolet through pre-street date digital releases of select titles via Sony Pictures Store, Best Buy's CinemaNow, Amazon, Xbox Video, Walmart's Vudu.com, PlayStation Store, and Google Play.
"In all of our releases we have links to learn more about UltraViolet because not every consumer knows what it is yet," Wong said.
Wong said the industry remains united marketing UltraViolet through stickers on DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases and similar language on disc promos explaining what cloud-based digital storage is and how it works.
The just-launched Sony Pictures Gift Store offers 500 UltraViolet enabled digital titles to gift during the holiday season.
"Every studio has an insert explaining what UltraViolet is, and if you go to the Sony store you'll find a 'What is UltraViolet?' educational link, in addition to banners and planning pages," Wong said. "We haven't done a broad-reaching consumer campaign on UV yet because we are waiting for more market penetration."
She said expanded marketing efforts involving studio and retail partners are forthcoming.
"We see that happening next year," Wong said.
Antik Unveils First BitTorrent Certified STB
Excerpted from Broadband TV News Report by Robert Briel
Antik Technology, a Slovakia-based manufacturer of IPTV devices, has begun selling the FullHD Juice Mini the first BitTorrent certified set-top box (STB) in the world.
The box was first announced during CES 2012 in Las Vegas last January. The device is able to play files downloaded as torrents directly on a TV.
"We are introducing the Juice Mini, the first set-top box with the BitTorrent protocol for telco companies, providers and retailers," said Igor Kolla, Antik Technology CEO, in a statement.
"This is a unique device as it is the first BitTorrent Certified box in the world. With thanks to our partnership with BitTorrent we have made this special IPTV device in response to customers who record hi-def memories with their smart-phones, digital SLRs and HD camcorders".
The Juice Mini allows consumers to seamlessly play content using the BitTorrent protocol, a peer-to-peer technology used for distributing large amounts of data. BitTorrent is an ecosystem of technology protocols, consumer software, and consumer electronics devices that help people find, share and move digital media.
Antik has prepared a soft launch in Slovakia during the Christmas season through the largest national consumer electronics chain NAY. The BitTorrent Certified Juice Mini will be delivered globally at the beginning 2013.
Amazon Cloud Player Now on Roku & Samsung
Excerpted from CNET Report by Matthew Moskovciak
It's been months since Roku announced that the Amazon Cloud Player was "coming soon," but today the company finally made good on that promise.
Amazon's cloud music service is now available on Roku and Samsung Smart TVs, offering the ability to stream your own digital music tracks without needing to keep a separate computer running. For Roku, it's a solid response to Apple's iTunes Match service, which offers cloud storage and streaming for $25 per year.
While Amazon Cloud Player started off as a largely free service, it now requires a similar fee as iTunes Match: $25 per year for up to 250,000 uploaded songs. That's a ton of digital music, although the competing Google Play Music allows you to store up to 20,000 tracks for free and is available on Google TV devices.
The release comes on the same day Amazon added an Amazon Instant Video app to the iPhone and iPod Touch as well.
Philips Adds Connected TV Partners
Excerpted from Broadband TV News Report by Robert Briel
CE manufacturer Philips has added a number of new partners to its connected smart TV platform Net TV.
The new entrants include Spanish regional broadcaster TV3 with its TV3 Alacarta catch-up TV service from the popular Spanish TV station.
From Turkey, there is the entertainment and children's TV channel Yumurcak TV.
Also Teknosa Film Kulübü, a new videostore for Turkey, as well as its colleague FilmBox Live.
New is the Son Kac webstore for Turkey.
Klix.ba offers news, Sports and Entertainment for Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia.
In the German speaking market, PC-Welt, the portal for Computer and Technic, has launched in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Earlier, the best series from Disney became available in Spain with Disney Replay.
P2P Data Storage Takes Run at Cloud
Excerpted from Midsize Insider Report by Doug Bonderud
Giants like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon offer a variety of data center-based cloud storage options. Now, developer Symform is making the case for peer-to-peer (P2P) data storage, hoping to take advantage of spare computing cycles and underutilized servers. But can it work?
As an article at ZDnet points out, this P2P idea isn't new. File sharing sites - especially those for music - used this kind of technology in small scale for years, and it's no surprise that developers want to use it for business applications as well.
In theory, this is a great idea. While data centers offer substantive centralized storage, the move to this kind of cloud computing leaves thousands of underutilized servers in its wake. Ideally, these machines can be tapped for business storage; Symform says it has 175 million files in a global, peer-to-peer cloud across 160 countries.
There have already been successes in this area that go beyond simple file sharing. The SETI program and Folding@home, which search for alien life and sequence proteins, respectively, have found fertile ground there for their computing needs.
Most of Symform's customers are IT professionals hoping for a more active role in their storage needs - the company requires that users sign an agreement stating they'll provide 80-percent uptime on Symform's hardware over a two month period. The model certainly comes with challenges, but there's real potential here for a viable cloud competitor.
The potential rise of P2P storage shows there's still room for growth in the cloud. As an adolescent technology, almost none of its borders are set in stone.
Recent efforts by North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and reported by a New Scientist article, show loopholes in current browser technologies that allow complex computations to be performed as well as any "legitimate" cloud computing technique.
Amazon's Silk browser and Opera Mini and Puffin tap into the cloud to decrease webpage loading times, but William Enck of North Carolina State and his colleague used bit.ly links to exchange data between cloud browsers and perform calculations instead, all at the same speed as typical processes.
For midsize IT the potential rise of P2P data storage, along with new techniques like the browser loophole, point to an evolving cloud landscape, one where IT admins aren't sidelined by providers but instead play an integral part of the storage, distribution, and consumption process.
There's no guarantee Symform's idea will be the "next big thing" but that efforts are being made show the cloud is far from a solidified concept; its nebulous nature leaves room for improvement.
Free Essay on Federal Cloud Computing
Excerpted from Anti Essays Post by Eddie Rhoden While working in the IT fields for the federal government, we are asked to come up with new and innovated ideas and keep up to date with the latest technology to improve the nation's technology.
Cloud computing will offer the government and private sectors convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
As the federal government moves to the cloud, it must be vigilant to ensure the security and proper management of government information to protect the privacy of citizens and national security.
Our researches will exam the risks the federal government will face throughout the system lifecycle. Risks that are identified must be carefully balanced against the security and privacy controls available and the expected benefits. Cloud computing is a computing platform that resides in a large data center and is able to dynamically provide servers with the ability to address a wide range of needs, from scientific research to e-commerce.
The provision of computing resources as if this were a utility such as electricity, while potentially revolutionary as a computing service, presents many major problems of information policy, including issues of privacy, security, reliability, access, and regulation.
This article explores the nature and potential of cloud computing, the policy issues raised, and research questions related to cloud computing and policy.
Predictions for Cloud Computing in 2013
Excerpted from Forbes Report by Joe McKendrick
Every year at this time, analysts, prognosticators, and pundits try to size up the year ahead in technology. And — no surprise — cloud computing is this year's hottest topic. Cloud is already a force to be reckoned with on the business technology scene — IT executives, vendors, and analysts alike are trying to keep up to determine what it all really means and where it is taking us.
To that end, I culled analysts' prediction lists for 2013 and identified some practical predictions that are likely to come to pass, if they haven't done so already. Here are some of the predictions that really make sense:
1) More hosted private clouds: They're not on-premises, but they're not public shared services either. Over the coming year, there will be a movement to private clouds managed by someone else, off-premises, says IDC's Chris Morris. It will be more cost effective as well, IDC says. "For critical applications, only a secure, non-shared private cloud will pass all compliance requirements. Initial enterprise strategies for on-premises private cloud environments have been limited by cost and time overruns and while virtual private cloud solutions have provided an effective solution for some organizations."
2) Cloud and mobile becoming one. This is an interesting one from Forrester's John Staten. Many cloud projects are driven by the need to mobile access to back-end applications. "More often than not, we are finding mobile applications connected to cloud-based back-end services (increasingly to commercial mobile-back-ends-as-a-service) that can elastically respond to mobile client engagements and shield your data center from this traffic. Nearly every software-as-a-service (SaaS) application has a mobile client now, which is proof of the model as well."
3) The new PCs — personal clouds. Gartner predicts the personal cloud will gradually replace the PC as the location where individuals "keep their personal content, access their services and personal preferences and center their digital lives." (And still can be called PCs, by the way.) "The personal cloud will entail the unique collection of services, web destinations, and connectivity that will become the home of computing and communication activities." And, Gartner optimistically predicts, "no one platform, form factor, technology or vendor will dominate. The personal cloud shifts the focus from the client device to cloud-based services delivered across devices." (See "cloud and mobile becoming one, above.)
4) More cloud services brokerages. Gartner predicts that IT organizations will increasingly be assuming internal "cloud services brokerage" roles — overseeing the provisioning and consumption of heterogeneous and often complex cloud services for "their internal users and external business partners."
5) The rise of industry-specific and community clouds. Look for "clouds that are purpose-built to serve specific vertical markets, such as healthcare, finance, retail, and manufacturing," says Dave Linthicum, CTO & founder of Blue Mountain Labs in Cloud Computing Journal. This will provide for the demands of the "specialized security, processes, and compliance requirements for each vertical market." Brian Patrick Donaghy , CEO of Appcore, says specific industry regulations will increasingly be addressed through what he calls "community clouds." A prime example are those arising in response to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations around standards for health-related data protection and storage. Another example is a telco community cloud provided specifically for telco disaster recovery to meet specific FCC regulations.
6) Cloud talent shortages looms. IDC warns of impending talent shortages that will emerge as a major differentiator for innovation and potentially as a constraint to enterprise technology adoption. Complicating this challenge is the fact that cloud engagements are coming from all different directions across businesses. "The unavailability of appropriate IT talent is being exacerbated by an expansion of technology procurement from IT to business units and consumers," the consultancy warns. "The IT team is no longer just a team of system administrators, DBAs, network managers and application developers but must also include service delivery managers, contract managers, relationship managers and business analysts."
7) "Cloud" as a defining term fades. Forrester Research's James Staten predicts that "we'll finally stop saying that everything is going 'cloud,' and get real about what fits and what doesn't." Sam Johnston , Director of Cloud & IT Services at Equinix, agrees, adding that "anyone with 'cloud' in their company and/or product names will scramble to rebrand… how many companies do you see with generic terms like 'Internet' or 'client/server' in their names today?" As an added bonus, he says "there will also be a merciful fading out of the clunky-sounding 'as-a-Service" or 'aaS' monikers, which "will also go the way of the dodo."
Mobile Cloud to Drive Tech in 2013
Excerpted from BCW Report by Kevin Tea
Researcher IDC has launched its forecast for the next 12 months and, surprise surprise, sees cloud computing and mobile cloud computing in particular as being a major if not dominant factor in the technology stakes. Furthermore, IDC believes the "third platform" will be built on mobile computing, cloud services, social networking, and big data analytics technologies.
"The IT industry as a whole is moving toward the mobile/social/cloud/big data world of the Third Platform much more quickly than many realize: from 2013 through 2020, these technologies will drive around 90 percent of all the growth in the IT market," said Frank Gens, Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC, according to an article in Biztech2.
"Companies that are not putting 80 percent or more of their competitive energy into this new market will be trapped in the legacy portion of the market, growing even slower than global GDP."
The article continues: "Cloud will also be a powerful contributor to industry developments in 2013 with the merger & acquisition (M&A) activity of the past 20 months actually accelerating.
IDC expects to see more than $25 billion in acquisitions over the next 20 months as cloud services become the centerpiece of more and more vendors' offerings. As packaged application become software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers themselves, they will increasingly battle with SaaS pure plays for leadership in some of the major application software markets."
Elsewhere in the cloud, IDC expects 2013 will see an explosion in industry public platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings as the market moves up the software stack and "horizontal" PaaS becomes commoditized by platforms built on open source-based infrastructure.
You can be sure that Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Bring Your Own Application (BYOA) will also feature heavily. The idea that employees might be accessing a company's crown jewels via their iPad or smart-phone might send tremors of fear down the spine of senior management but they can be sure that not only is it happening but it will grow.
AT&T and SaaS Providers Boost Performance
Excerpted from Computer World Report by Derek du Preez
AT&T is having "many discussions" with popular software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers about using its scalable dedicated networks for their cloud offerings, in a move that could make them more popular enterprises that have tough service level agreements.
Steven Caniano, Vice President of Hosting, Managed Applications and Cloud at AT&T, revealed at a briefing last week at the company's Global Network Operations Center that capacity on networks is a problem for popular public cloud providers that want to be seen as serious players in the enterprise. Although he was reluctant to be specific about what companies AT&T was engaged with, he said that there was "no lack of interest."
"I will tell you that a lot of the very common, large cloud providers, who desire a play in the enterprise, are having many discussions as to how to do that, and many of those discussions are with us," said Caniano.
"I would suggest that this is an area to watch."
Although AT&T offers its own variety of cloud services over dedicated global networks, which are designed to be more secure and more scalable than those available on the shared public internet, he believes that there is scope to partner and increase the company's market share in the "—as-a-service" market.
He said, "We will win a larger share if we find a way to be more relevant for when a customer needs a cloud capability we don't provide. Whether that's in another geography, or a SaaS functionality that we aren't in the market of building, but would sit nicely on top of our cloud - we believe that is a positive trade off."
Caniano explained that the traditional public cloud providers, which often rely on public internet infrastructure to deliver the data and provide services, are struggling to deliver the performance of a scalable, dedicated network, at a low cost.
"What's interesting in the traditional public cloud model, is that one of the big elements of costs is the network. Generally with those models, you pay on the traffic that leaves across the network. In some cases that's a higher proportion of the bill than what you get in the data center," said Caniano.
"Amazon and Google get a lot of attention by saying that they are lowering the cost of each virtual machine, but you almost never see them say anything about doing something with the network. They are going to need to - that's a hidden cost of cloud."
He added, "We have offered our AT&T cloud in an integrated fashion with our network. We have literally built the cloud into our network, such that when you are an AT&T VPN client, and they run traffic all over the world on our enterprise networks, without any additional pipe, in a secure fashion, you can dynamically access our cloud. We think it gives you the best of both, we scale the network with the cloud as you need it."
AT&T has already made moves in this area, albeit just at an infrastructure level, where it partnered with IBM earlier this year to provide its SmartCloud Enterprise+ solution over AT&T's virtual private network.
Caniano reiterated that AT&T's strategy is definitely to pursue partnerships like this in the future.
"I would say that we have a two-fold strategy in cloud. One is to offer a premier, integrated, network-based cloud that we sell directly to our customers. The second is to offer a secure, cloud-enabled network that connects to partners that we can offer through their clouds," he said.
"We are not a software company that is going to build a Salesforce.com CRM, we are not a Microsoft that is going to build a suite of services. There are many clouds out there that would benefit from our technology. "
He added, "We do see the opportunity to position our network as a platform for cloud processing across multiple clouds. A highway for business, that would not be open to public traffic, but would go to repositories it needs — the IBM cloud, partner X cloud, etc."
Huawei Will Open R&D Center in Finland
Excerpted from CED Magazine Report by Andrew Berg
Huawei Monday announced a move to set-up shop on Nokia's home turf. The Chinese company says it will invest $90 million over a five-year period to establish a research and development (R&D) center in Helsinki, Finland. Huawei said the move will add to its existing R&D deployments, which include more than 70,000 employees worldwide.
The Finnish R&D center will specifically specialize in mobile devices. Initial projects will focus on software development for smart-phones, tablets and rich-media devices and optimizing the user experience of existing operating systems such as Android and Windows Phone 8.
Huawei, which has traditionally focused more on network equipment, has recently made strides toward becoming a real contender in the smart-phone market. The company has released a range of smart-phone models in its home country of China, as well as a few mid- to lower-end models here in the United States.
Huawei said it initially plans to recruit 30 employees for the center, with the goal of hiring more than 100 employees over five years.
In September, Huawei announced a $2 billion investment in R&D, local procurement and center of excellence initiatives in the United Kingdom. Huawei currently employs more than 7,000 people across Europe.
CloudVelocity Emerges from Stealth Mode
CloudVelocity, the first company dedicated to the development of a hybrid cloud automation platform, has closed $5 million in Series A funding from Mayfield Fund. CloudVelocity also announced the release of beta trial software available for public download.
The company is using the money to accelerate the development of its hybrid cloud automation software suite (including cloud cloning, migration and cloud failover solutions).
The beta trial of the Developer Edition cloud cloning software allows users to quickly and safely clone multi-tier app clusters and services, without modification into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 cloud. The beta trial of the Enterprise Edition enables users to clone, migrate and failover multi-tier apps and services into the AWS EC2 cloud.
CloudVelocity software, based on the patent-pending One Hybrid Cloud (OHC) platform, extends the enterprise data center to the public cloud, by enabling multi-tier applications to run without modification in the cloud and access services that reside in the enterprise data center.
The CloudVelocity OHC platform delivers the promise of hybrid cloud to enterprises, by allowing them to seamlessly discover, blueprint, clone, and migrate applications between data centers and public clouds. The result is full server, networking, security and storage integration with AWS, a key enterprise requirement for complex, multi-tier applications in any cloud. CloudVelocity plans to integrate other public clouds in 2013.
"Mayfield Fund has a 43-year history of successful incubations, where we partner with entrepreneurs at the idea stage and help create a company that tackles big problems and CloudVelocity is another example of this," said Navin Chaddha, Mayfield Fund Managing Director. "We believe that CloudVelocity will have the same impact on public cloud adoption as VMware did on the adoption of server virtualization by making public clouds look like internal data centers."
"We are pleased to work with Mayfield Fund on this monumental effort to accelerate the adoption of public clouds," said Rajeev Chawla, chief executive officer of CloudVelocity. "Our goal is to enable enterprises to operate hybrid clouds as seamless extensions of the data center. Cloud cloning, migration and failover are our first steps in that direction."
"The CloudVelocity Enterprise Edition software trial worked so well that we've chosen to use it ahead of schedule in our production environment for cloud failover. This will help ensure that our online business stays available within the AWS cloud," commented early beta-user Nitin Shingate, VP Engineering for Lealta Media. "Because we cannot afford downtime, CloudVelocity has helped us to increase availability while also substantially reducing our expenses."
What Does SDN Mean for Telecom Infrastructure?
Excerpted from Network World Report by Lee Doyle
Software-defined networking (SDN) has the potential to transform the telecom industry by improving the ability of carriers (both wired and wireless) to flexibly deliver bandwidth "on demand."
It is critical that carriers improve both their network flexibility (improved customer value) and reduce their high operational costs as over-the-top providers (e.g., Google, Amazon, Skype, etc.) challenge the carriers' ability to grow their revenues and impact their margins.
SDN (and OpenFlow) technology is clearly impacting the data center network, including data centers in large carriers (e.g., AT&T, SingTel, Telefonica, etc.). In the enterprise, SDN is defined as follows: Separation of control and data plane — e.g., the intelligence of the switch/router is split out from the packet forwarding engine; and programmability — the ability to centrally change traffic flows, partition the networks and provide application-level QoS.
In the $100 billion-plus telecom infrastructure market, the way to define SDN is less clear. Technology infrastructure spans Layer 0-7 of the OSI stack and consists of a number of unique market segments, including optical networks, carrier-grade routers, wireless edge, wireless core, CPE, etc., and the transport network must be tied to a complex set of operational support and billing (OSS/BSS) tools to manage the network and bill the customer.
The promise of SDN for the telecom industry is significant improvements in the manageability and flexibility of the network. This promise includes automated traffic management, improved bandwidth engineering, and the ability to tailor the network "on demand" to customer needs.
Today the large carriers are unable to offer customers truly flexible data networks, where customers can pay for only the bandwidth they use and automatically burst traffic as applications require. And it is this bandwidth flexibility that could give carriers the edge they need to successfully deliver a range of cloud-based services.
A number of large equipment vendors have publicly discussed their SDN strategy, including Cisco, Juniper, Huawei, Infinera, ALU, and Ciena.
In fact, Cisco cited telecom SDN as its reason for recently acquiring Cariden for $141 million. And, there are a number of start-ups tying their products to telecom SDN, including Big Switch, ConteXtream, Cyan, Vello Systems and Intune Networks.
The technology vendors are all vying for the attention of the big carriers that have expressed interest in SDN, including Verizon, Deutsche Telekom, and NTT. These and other carriers hope SDN that can bring significant changes to their (relatively) static networks.
But challenges remain, including: What is the standard API (and its hardware dependencies)? And how does one create an ecosystem of applications that leverage the programmability? How to tie applications and traffic management systems to the underlying network infrastructure?
SDN is likely to reshape the telecom industry in new and interesting ways. Incumbent carriers are looking to increase the flexibility and manageability of their networks to deliver bandwidth where and when customers need it with a (more) self-serve model.
Large network equipment providers and startups are starting to invest heavily in new software centric network solutions. OpenFlow and other enterprise SDN technologies will emerge first in the cloud data centers of the large carriers.
Telecom-specific SDN technologies (in both the transport and management areas) are coming to market during 2013 and will help carriers to improve their network flexibility and reduce network operations costs over the next three years.
Coming Events of Interest
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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