April 22, 2013
Volume XLIII, Issue 7
Counting Down to CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2013, Cont'd.
Following up on last week's announcement from the Cloud Computing Association (CCA) and the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) of the next wave of Monday May 20th speakers for CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2013 (CCE:2013), this week the CCA & DCIA proudly announce the next wave of speakers for Tuesday May 21st sessions.
CCE:2013 will take place from Sunday May 19th through Tuesday May 21st at the Marriott Boston Copley Place in Boston, MA, and will focus on the use of cloud-based technologies by government, healthcare, and financial services to revolutionize business processes, increase efficiency, and streamline costs.
An opening workshop on Sunday afternoon will orient delegates and provide a fundamental grounding in cloud models, deployment methods, and technology definitions. Then a welcome reception will offer networking opportunities for speakers, exhibitors, and audience members.
Last week's announcement of our next wave of Monday speakers can be found here.
The hCLOUD (health) track will address the challenges of an enormous, fragmented, and technologically disconnected industry in adopting cloud-based solutions to help it become more efficient, collaborative, and interactively connected.
The gCLOUD (government) track will explore how of an explosion in data has created an unprecedented need for redundant and highly secure storage, along with fundamental changes to natural resource management, transportation and utility grid monitoring, public safety, law enforcement, and emergency responsiveness.
The fCLOUD (financial) track will reflect the fact that international financial transactions and currency exchange, domestic banking and insurance services, as well as timely and efficient investment decision-making, are all being impacted by cloud computing. "The Cloud" is becoming the most advanced platform for an industry that makes up over one-fourth of our economy.
On Tuesday morning, we will continue our in-depth examinations of the subject matter — such as data storage considerations, one of the central topics for all cloud computing deployments — with Chris Poelker, VP, Enterprise Solutions, FalconStor.
Next, Whitney Vickrey, CSO, GCE, will discuss government cloud software applications, while Laura Girasole, Director, ShareFile for Financial Services, Citrix, and Sriram Subramanian, CTO, GiftGiv, will address cloud software applications for financial services.
A panel discussion will follow, zeroing in on security and reliability concerns. Panelists will include Owen DeLong, IPv6 Evangelist, Hurricane Electric; Russ Hertzberg, Vice President, Technology Solutions, SoftServe; Mark Lundin, Partner, KPMG; and Gerry Stegmaier, Of Counsel, WSGR.
Then, a session with Doug Barbin, Principal, BrightLine; Daniel Beazer, Director of Strategy, FireHost; and David Linthicum, Senior Vice President, Cloud Technology Partners, will examine compliance and regulatory issues across the three verticals.
After a working luncheon that will feature solution provider showcase demonstrations, Allan McLennan, President / Chief Analyst, PADEM Group, and Yesica Schaif, Global Market Segment Manager, IBM, will discuss cloud economics.
Then Mark Levitt, Analyst/Director, Strategy Analytics, and Rohit Mahna, Senior Director, Financial Services Solutions, Salesforce.com, will explore cloud vendor selection criteria.
Following a mid-afternoon networking break, a panel discussion with Mohamad Ali, MD, Assistant Medical Director, Wexford Health Sources; Jay Gleason, Chief Cloud Strategist, Sprint; and Brian Drewes, CEO & Co-Founder, ZYNC Render, will outline cloud implementation strategies.
And finally, the closing session with Geof Griebel, CEO, Eoscene Corporation, and James Mitchell, CEO, Cloud Options, will explore future cloud opportunities in all three sectors.
Platinum sponsors for CCE:2013 include Citrix Systems and ShareFile, and gold sponsors are A10 Networks, Aspera, FalconStor, and VeriStor. Silver sponsors include AppNeta, Ce3, CSC Leasing, Lumenate, NaviSite, Presidio, SoftServe, and Virtusa.
Associate Sponsors for CCE are Apptix, Aspiryon, Cloud Options, Edwards Wildman Palmer, Ignite Technologies, Infoblox, and Permabit Technology Corporation.
Investors and strategic-minded value-added resellers (VARs) will not want to miss hearing about the next BIG thing in the CLOUD! Learn about attendance options here; and sign-up to attend here.
CLOUD COMPUTING CONFERENCE at 2013 NAB Show
The DCIA again congratulates National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) President & CEO Gordon Smith and staff for a very successful 2013 NAB Show, and thanks John Marino, Vice President, NAB Science & Technology, and his team, especially, as well as all who participated in our record-setting CLOUD COMPUTING CONFERENCE (CCC) at the NAB Show.
Please click here for photos from this third annual DCIA event within the NAB Show, and like us on Facebook here.
A video from the keynote session of Mark Davis, CEO of Scenios, can be viewed here.
An electronic version of the conference brochure for the 2013 CCC at NAB is online here, and keynote speaker and case-study presentations along with panel session slides are available here.
Check next week's DCINFO for information about audio recordings from each session of CCC at NAB.
Once again, we thank the sponsors for this year's CLOUD COMPUTING CONFERENCE — Amazon Web Services, Aspera, DAX, Equinix, and YouSendIt.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 At 10:00 AM this Thursday April 25th, The US Senate Judiciary Committee will debate and mark-up the ECPA Amendments Act, S. 607, an excellent example of properly conceived and well-drafted bipartisan legislation.
This measure, sponsored by Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), will reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) by requiring law enforcement to get a warrant before obtaining your e-mail content.
In January, Senator Leahy said that updating ECPA was his top privacy priority for the 113th Congress.
"We have the opportunity to move forward on a proposal, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, to better protect the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against Government intrusions into our private lives," said Leahy, who also authored the original 1986 law.
"Millions of Americans filed their Federal income taxes this week, and like many of them, I have been concerned about reports that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may be reading our private e-mails without first obtaining a search warrant. I have long believed that our Government should obtain a search warrant — issued by a court — before gaining access to private communications," he added.
Leahy concluded, "I have worked over the last several years to update our Federal privacy laws to better safeguard our privacy rights in the digital age."
ECPA reform was the subject of two Committee hearings in recent years, and the Senate Judiciary Committee last November favorably reported legislation substantially similar to the Leahy-Lee bill introduced last month.
The DCIA last week joined with Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Rackspace, and many additional cloud-computing industry leaders in signing on to a letter to Chairman Leahy, Ranking Member Charles Grassley, and other leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
We are very grateful for Jim Dempsey, Vice President of Public Policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and all participating members of Digital Due Process (DDP) for their perseverance and excellent work on this:
"We, the undersigned companies, organizations, and individuals, are writing to express our support for Chairman Leahy's and Senator Lee's ECPA Amendments Act, S. 607, which the Committee will consider shortly.
The bill would update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to provide protection to sensitive personal and proprietary communications stored in "the cloud." We urge all Members of the Committee to support the bill.
ECPA, which sets standards for government access to private communications, is critically important to businesses, government investigators and ordinary citizens.
Though the law was forward-looking when enacted in 1986, technology has advanced dramatically and ECPA has been outpaced.
Courts have issued inconsistent interpretations of the law, creating uncertainty for service providers, for law enforcement agencies, and for the hundreds of millions of Americans who use the Internet in their personal and professional lives.
Moreover, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a provision of ECPA allowing the government to obtain a person's email without a warrant is unconstitutional.
The ECPA Amendments Act would update ECPA in one key respect, making it clear that, except in emergencies, or under other existing exceptions, the government must obtain a warrant in order to compel a service provider to disclose the content of emails, texts or other private material stored by the service provider on behalf of its users.
This standard would create a more level playing field for technology. It would cure the constitutional defect identified by the Sixth Circuit. It would allow law enforcement officials to obtain electronic communications in all appropriate cases while protecting Americans' constitutional rights.
It would provide clarity and certainty to law enforcement agencies at all levels and to American businesses developing innovative new services and competing in a global marketplace. It would implement a core principle supported by Digital Due Process, www.digitaldueprocess.org, a broad coalition of companies, privacy groups, think tanks, and academics.
For all these reasons, we strongly urge all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to support the ECPA Amendments Act, S. 607."
The DCIA believes that ECPA reform is one of those issues that is of critical importance to all citizens — regardless of whether your political preferences are conservative, moderate, or liberal — and strongly urges your support for S607. Share wisely, and take care.
Technology Proves its Value in Wake of Boston Bombings
Excerpted from Data Center knowledge Report by Bill Kleyman
In light of this week's events in Boston, one of the strongest statements we can live by is, "The good guys will always outnumber the bad ones."
While some people have said that these types of events bring people to live close to the edge (as in "You Only Live Once" or "YOLO"), the reality is that these horrible events actually bring people closer together and deepen our appreciation of each others' humanity.
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings — which brought many reminders of 9/11 — we saw a new hero emerge: technology.
The fast responses of medical professionals already onsite likely saved numerous lives. Furthermore, those runners that finished the race and then continued on to donate blood at the local hospital should be praised as well.
The human element, no doubt, played a vital role in minimizing casualties and helping people get medical attention quickly. Still, as the smoke clears and we begin to analyze and understand the situation, law enforcement and the officials working on this case have some interesting new tools at their disposal.
Technology has become the 'Good Guy' multiplier.
According to Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, the site of the bombing and the surrounding area — Bolyston Street which serves as the finish line of the Boston Marathon — is one of the most well-photographed and documented areas in the country. Although the crime scene is complex, the use of technology can help pinpoint the line of events that led to this horrible incident.
In 2001, the prevalence of recording and digital equipment wasn't anywhere as high as it is today. On April 15, 2013, a lot more "eyes" were watching the course of the day unfold.
Let's look at some of the areas where technology was involved in the event and aftermath.
IT consumerization. This is a common marketing term; along with BYOD. But the true magnitude of IT consumerization was on display on Monday. Because so many people have cell phones or other devices with cameras, thousands of high-quality photos were taken from almost every angle and vantage point during the Boston Marathon.
People were on the ground, in buildings, at the finish line and everywhere in between. Within minutes, photos of the bombing were circulated and analyzed. These digital photos were used to piece together a very difficult puzzle.
Modern phones are capable of taking 8-12 megapixel images. Compare that with phones from 2002 which could only do 0.3MP. As people took videos and photos documenting the event, these digital images are higher resolution than ever before, capturing more image and allowing details to potentially be used by authorities to find those responsible.
Everyone is a "digital technician." In the aftermath, the numerous high-quality images being produced from the event have helped law enforcement in their efforts to bring light to the situation, and citizens are helping to analyze them. All across the web, amateur digital technicians are examining photos and processing individual video frames to catch inconsistencies.
Just like law enforcement, these technicians have an eagle-eye for technology and can actually help officials pinpoint irregularities. Cloud computing and social media have been busy sharing pictures; discussing analysis of the event and helping everyone involved understand what happened.
CCTV and surveillance. As runners approached the finish line, they made their way through 26 miles of very public road. Along the way, there were hundreds of cameras and CCTV instances where live video was recorded and documented. A department store's high-quality outdoor security camera has already helped police identify people of interest.
The ability to zoom into a face or feature is paramount to helping bring those responsible to justice. These technologies are becoming more and more prevalent where high-quality feeds are capable of doing so much more than ever before. As the picture becomes clearer, officials will use every single frame from every source that they can.
This means that if the perpetrators took public transportation, video surveillance from around the city can help show the footsteps.
Social media and the cloud. The events of April 15th were captured both on video and, simultaneously, on the Internet. Social media reports were posted as quickly as professional reporters brought the news on TV, radio or Internet. Twitter, Facebook, and other heavily used sites became hot spots for conversation.
Social media served as a way to determine if friends and family on the ground were alright. In fact, I found out that a dear friend who was only 2 blocks away from the blast was alright — via a Facebook update.
Furthermore, valuable pictures, recordings, and new vantage points have helped people put together the course of events that happened that day. Above anything else, social media (and cloud computing) helped bring people together.
Whether it was words of support, an image of a friend, or just a though posted on Facebook, technology pushed aside human differences and the sharing through social networks brought everyone closer together.
Today's always-on, always-connected world strives to bring people and information closer together. During these types of events, technologists all over the world offer their support and work to utilize technological advancements to help people progress.
Everyone from pro photographers to ordinary people with their high megapixel smart-phone cameras can help authorities solve one of the most complex crime scenes in recent history. During these difficult times, the IT community has continued to offer its support to anyone who needs it.
As a technologist, journalist, and writer for Data Center Knowledge — I say with my whole heart — Boston, we stand with you.
Cloud Computing Gets Deeper and More Strategic
Excerpted from Forbes Report by Joe McKendrick
Close to two-fifths of organizations now run private clouds in one form or another, and one-fourth are using public cloud services in an enterprise capacity. Private clouds are being extended deeper into the organizations that have them — a majority expects to be running most of their workloads in the cloud within the next 12 months, especially platform-as-a-service (PaaS) middleware.
In addition, close to one-third of public cloud users report they are employing hosted services to run their private clouds for them.
These are some of the findings of a new survey just published by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc. The survey of 262 enterprise IT and data managers — most of whom are with the the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), finds that cloud computing continues gaining converts within the enterprise, and is pushing down deep roots within companies that have deployed the approach. I helped design and wrote the analysis for the survey, which was underwritten by Oracle.
In the survey, 37% of enterprise managers indicate they are running or piloting private clouds, up from 29% two years ago. Another 26% use public cloud services for enterprise applications, up from 14%. Among the public cloud users, 32% are employing outside services to host at least part of their private cloud infrastructures.
For purposes of this survey, "private cloud" is defined as on-demand shared services provided to internal departments or lines of business within enterprises. "Public cloud" is defined as on-demand services provided by public cloud providers.
Substantial portions of organizations' total workloads are going to private clouds, the survey finds. Currently, 38% of respondents with private clouds report that a sizable segment of their workloads (more than one-tenth of their total IT assets) are now running within their cloud formations. By next year, a majority, 51%, expect to be running substantial parts of their workloads within private clouds.
There has been significant growth in adoption of platform as a service (PaaS) environments within private clouds, the survey finds. PaaS provides a common, sharable environment for middleware and databases from which developers and operations managers across the enterprise can quickly deploy new applications and services. Application server platform as a service is the top-ranked service, as cited by more than half of respondents.
Adoption is up from two years ago, in the first survey conducted for this series—from 36% to 51%. Half also report they are overseeing database platform as a service projects, and this is up from 35% two years ago.
Skills and organizational issues are the greatest challenges for private cloud sites. When asked what may be holding back their cloud implementations, 37% of respondents say they are lacking expertise or knowledge, 35% say they are held back by funding issues, and 32% say gaining cross-organization support or participation is an issue.
There are a number of business benefits organizations expect to see from private cloud adoption. A majority, 61%, expect to save costs through consolidation/higher asset utilization. Another 44% see greater operational efficiencies as a result of their efforts. Elimination of duplication across the enterprise is an advantage seen by 43% of respondents.
Anticipated benefits of private cloud include cutting costs through consolidation and achieving higher asset utilization (cited by 61%), saving costs through standardization for operational efficiency (44%), saving costs through elimination of duplication (43%), and attaining faster time to market for new applications (36%). A majority of private cloud sites, 51%, report they have already seen some benefits.
Benefits seen from the use of public cloud services include the fact that there is mo need for data center, hardware, administration to fuss with (cited by 44% of SaaS adopters), the ability to rapidly start applications (43%), scalability on demand (33%) and the fact there are little or no upfront costs (29%). Notably, a majority of public cloud users, 56%, also indicate that they have replaced at least some services or applications offered by respondents' own IT departments. However, in only 6% of the cases have companies moved entirely to the cloud.
What these results tell us that private and public cloud adoption is still not pervasive in a majority of enterprises. However, where cloud has taken hold, it is growing deep roots, taking on more of the heavy lifting of enterprise computing.
Cloud Benefits and Challenges for Healthcare Providers
Excerpted from Velocity Network Solutions Report
Healthcare is an industry that often has difficulty adapting to new technology. This is not criticism of the Healthcare field so much as it is recognition that the challenges of keeping up with research, staying in compliance with HIPAA and other standards, staying afloat financially, and maintaining the treatment and privacy of patients can often be overwhelming for Healthcare providers.
This is why cloud computing offers much hope in this area but brings with it some challenges. Fortunately, in terms of cloud technology adoption the Healthcare field does not appear to be lagging behind other industries: in a recent IT survey 32% of respondents associated with Healthcare reported using cloud computing.
75% plan to adapt their current IT solutions to the cloud in the future. As we have an indication that the health field is ready to embrace cloud computing, let us break down some of the benefits and the challenges to this transition.
Benefits
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act provides monetary incentives to care providers who adopt electronic health records (EHR) and can demonstrate "meaningful use." Such records and solutions give themselves over well to the cloud because the motivation for many of the provisions of the act are to reduce duplicative records and lower the cost-barriers to maintaining electronic records.
Cloud services are not only typically service-based or pay-per-use, they allow organizations to avoid the high initial investments in hardware and labor.
Medical practitioners benefit from being able to access accurate, up-to-date medical records with great ease. In fact, the adoption of cloud technologies can mean more opportunities to integrate efficient mobile technologies into the Healthcare field as well.
Challenges
Though cloud solutions are much more secure than many people realize at this point, the health industry has to tread lightly as HIPPA privacy violations are quite severe. They are understandably worried about privacy implications, and it should be noted that cloud privacy makes the issue of liability for an information breach complicated.
Many of these technologies are in the "installation phase" and as such a Healthcare provider needs to make sure that the consulting and IT investment costs do not eventually cancel out HITECH incentive or long-term benefits.
It is important for Healthcare providers to understand the possibilities that cloud technology can offer. One of the most important steps in doing so is finding an IT company experienced in Healthcare to help develop and implement a practical, compliant cloud solution.
Cloud Computing and the Financial Services Industry
Excerpted from Identity Week Report
Are security issues preventing financial services firms from adopting cloud computing? If so, what can be done to improve cloud security and encourage financial firms to migrate to the cloud? To find out, we sat down with Philip Lieberman, President and CEO of privileged identity management vendor Lieberman Software.
IW: What is the status of financial services firms moving to the cloud?
PL: Today the financial services area is a mixed bag of on-premises IT for older legacy and high security applications, and private cloud to support modern portable internal applications. There is also some use of the public cloud for such offerings as Microsoft Office 365 and SalesForce.
IW: How large of a barrier is security for financial firms that are considering the cloud?
PL: By using private cloud as a migration path, many companies are essentially paying for the use of hardware, electricity, air conditioning, storage and bandwidth in bulk, while maintaining their own application security. However, physical security and privileged identity management become unknowns to a greater degree, given that the infrastructure of the private cloud is outside the control of the user.
IW: What exactly are the security issues that financial firms are concerned about?
PL: Several factors — unknown or unverified processes of cloud providers, untrusted cloud provider employees and contractors, and lack of access to audit records and physical access records. There's also an absence of transparency and coordination with regard to IT infrastructure management.
IW: What can be done to improve cloud security to the point where financial services firms are more likely to become cloud adopters?
PL: Cloud providers could differentiate themselves by offering transparency as to their internal processes. There is actually little real security because the internal processes of the cloud providers are opaque. These providers operate under strict non-disclosure agreements, which mean that inadequate security processes never see the light of day. The best scenario would be indemnification of clients against losses caused by poor security practices, in line with generally accepted standards of gross negligence.
IW: When is cloud computing likely to go mainstream within the financial services industry?
PL: If there is indemnification, along with government supplied safe harbors that protect adopters against litigation, cloud adoption would be easy. As for private clouds, there is a case to be made considering that cloud providers can offer economies of scale in the purchase and running of infrastructure, with minimal additional security risk versus an on-premises solution. Of course, there is little to nothing to be gained in security by such a private cloud solution, but in the never ending quest for reduced operating costs, there is a business case for the private cloud. On the other hand, if the private cloud vendor fails as a business or changes its strategy, then the customer has to have a "plan B" to migrate back to an on-premises solution or to find another suitable private cloud provider.
The 10 Most Important Companies in Cloud Computing
Excerpted from Business Insider Report by Julie Bort
In just a few short years, cloud computing has become a tech that affects everyone's daily lives.
Our personal files are stored in the cloud. We maintain our friendships via apps in the cloud. Mobile phones and tablets run powerful apps via the cloud, giving rise to new devices like tablets, and killing off others, like the netbook and, perhaps one day, the PC.
IT departments went from distrusting the cloud to allocating billions of dollars to spend on using it. Instead of buying every app and server they need, they will rent them.
But none of this is happening on its own. It's all being figured out right now by the companies building clouds.
A word about clouds…
Before we get to the list, let's define cloud computing. There are three types: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).
Cloud computing lets you rent the tech you want, paying a monthly fee for it. As this chart shows, SaaS means renting the just app. PaaS means renting everything but the app (often used by app developers). IaaS means renting just the hardware and tools to maintain the hardware (popular with startups and enterprises). Click here for a graphical chart.
No. 10: SoftLayer is the key to success for two big players.
IBM and EMC are reportedly both courting cloud-computing company SoftLayer Technologies in an acquisition expected to exceed $2 billion.
SoftLayer is known as the largest privately held cloud-computing and Web-hosting service provider.
If EMC successfully buys SoftLayer that will be a boost to EMC's VMware. VMware is trying to get some new cloud-computing plans off the ground. One of VMware's biggest rivals, Citrix, is a big SoftLayer partner and customer.
IBM would prefer to nab SoftLayer's customers and data centers for itself.
No 9: Joyent offers a powerful, low cost alternative for big data centers.
Joyent competes with VMware, OpenStack and Citrix, too, with its own cloud operating system.
It's become a popular alternative for service providers needing big cloud data centers because it costs them less, Joyent cofounder Jason Hoffman told Business Insider.
Joyent says it has more than 30,000 customers, including big names like LinkedIn and its backed by Intel, Dell, EMC and and Spanish phone company Telefonica. VC Peter Thiel also
invested.
No. 8: Citrix Systems is taking on VMware with some success.
Citrix makes software for clouds, competing with two main rivals, VMware and a consortium of vendors who built an open source, free cloud operating system known as OpenStack.
To compete with OpenStack, it gave its software, called CloudStack, to the Apache Foundation, the big non-profit group that manages many popular open source projects.
This move gives people a choice between buying VMware's vCloud and using OpenStack. Naturally, Citrix has its own commercial version, too. Plus, getting people to use CloudStack also helps Citrix sell more of its other data center software that competes with VMware.
No. 7: IBM: All in for OpenStack.
IBM has been a key player in a cloud tech called OpenStack for a long time. But in March, IBM upped the stakes in a big, big way.
It said it will use OpenStack for all the clouds it builds. This includes its own public "smart clouds" which it sells as a service and every "private cloud" it installs for in the data centers of
its enormous base of enterprise customers.
OpenStack is a cloud operating system that competes with technology offered by VMware and Citrix. By backing OpenStack, IBM encourages more enterprises and service providers to use OpenStack, too.
At stake is a huge $206.6 billion market bu 2016, Gartner predicts.
No. 6: Rackspace is leading a massive coalition for free cloud software.
Rackspace runs an IaaS cloud and made a name for itself by championing OpenStack.
Rackspace didn't want to pay companies like VMware for software it couldn't control. So it partnered with NASA after NASA invented some really great cloud software. It invited all the other players in and over 160 of them did, contributing code to make OpenStack work well and stay free.
Rackspace doesn't own OpenStack but its still a powerful player in the most powerful cloud consortium.
No. 5: Google was born in the cloud.
Google made big waves in cloud computing last year by launching its own IaaS service, the Compute Engine.
But even before that, Google was doing a bunch of stuff in the cloud including running a popular PaaS called Google App Engine, offering Google Cloud Storage and launching a new big data cloud app, Google BigQuery.
Plus there's consumer and business cloud apps like Google Drive and Google Apps. Its Chrome OS lead to Chromebook and Chromebox, PC-like devices that run all apps from the cloud, too.
No 4: Salesforce.com has proved that enterprises really do want the cloud.
The name Salesforce.com is almost synonymous with cloud computing. Salesforce.com proved that the world wants to buy software-as-a-service.
In 2012, Salesforce pushed into a bunch of new areas, spending more than $1 billion to acquire Radian6 and Buddy Media for its Marketing Cloud and in March, Salesforce.com raised another $1 billion in debt to pay for more shopping.
The company also has one of the most popular PaaS clouds for running your own home-grown applications: Heroku, bought in 2010 for $212 million.
No. 3: Microsoft is staking out its own turf.
Microsoft has a big enterprise cloud, too, Azure.
This is a PaaS cloud popular with the many developers who already write apps using Microsoft's coding tools. Microsoft just expanded Azure into the IaaS market, even letting users run Linux on its cloud, and promising to match Amazon's low prices.
Plus Microsoft offers many of its enterprise apps over the cloud, everything from its SQL Server database to Microsoft Office 365.
No. 2: VMware going deeper into all things cloud.
Until this year VMware didn't offer cloud services itself. It offered software called vCloud for building clouds.
It is one of the biggest players in the cloud software market, competing against a tech called OpenStack (run by a consortium of vendors, including IBM, Rackspace, HP) and Citrix.
But in March, VMware changed its mind and announced plans to launch its own public cloud. That's an interesting choice because VMware says about 200 services providers offer clouds built on vCloud, such as Verizon and CSC. Now VMware must carefully compete against them.
No. 1: Amazon, of course.
There's no question who the most important cloud player is: Amazon. Amazon basically invented the IaaS market.
Amazon's cloud offers a huge array of choices. It does everything from provide a bit of cloud storage for a few pennies a month to renting supercomputer-strength power for $5,000 an hour.
Amazon is now really going after the enterprise market, adding more security features to its cloud and hiring enterprise salespeople. It's not going to let VMware, Citrix and the OpenStack folks snap up enterprise customers without a fight.
It's amazing to think that an online retailer could have caused so much change in the IT industry and our daily lives. But it did.
Microsoft Matches Amazon Prices on Cloud Computing
Excerpted from Live Mint Report by Dina Bass
Microsoft, which is releasing new cloud-computing services on Tuesday, said it will match Amazon's' lowest prices for competing products as it seeks to win business in a growing market.
Microsoft is rolling out Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, which will let customers run existing applications on servers and storage machines in Microsoft data centers, after more than nine months of testing.
The company also committed to match market leader Amazon on prices for computing and storage services, even if Amazon cuts rates, said Steven Martin, General Manager of Windows Azure Business Strategy.
Seventy one percent of respondents in a Forrester Research survey said they used Amazon Web Services for cloud computing, compared with about 10% each for Microsoft, Google, and other vendors.
Revenue from public cloud services, which let customers run applications in an outside vendor's data center and access them via the Internet, jumped 20% last year to $109 billion, Gartner estimates.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, has more than 200,000 customers for its Azure cloud products, and 1,000 new ones sign up daily, Martin said in an interview.
Announcing DIRECT 3.4 — Download Manager
Excerpted from Solid State Networks Report
Create a connected experience with the most consumer-friendly download manager solution for electronic software delivery: DIRECT 3.4. The latest version of Solid State Networks' (SSN) Digital Delivery Application Platform offers an enhanced download manager solution packed with new features, all built on a proven and reliable platform that has handled billions of successful downloads worldwide.
Designers and developers will appreciate enhancements such as the flexible workflow engine, easier website integrations and a faster way to customize the download manager skins. SSN's engineers implemented Model View Controller (MVC) architecture into DIRECT to make it a truly designer friendly (not just developer friendly) technology. The benefit is that designers who are capable with HTML and CSS can customize their download manager, making for much faster turnaround and deployment.
SSN has also made significant user experience (UX) improvements including faster load times, improved CSS animations and performance, better localization, and fully customizable toast notifications. Beyond the performance enhancements, users will also see improved analytics and reporting options to give them the download data that's most valuable to themselves and their companies.
DIRECT is flexible and customizable download manager solution, so to learn more about how it can work (and to see it in action), please contact SSN for more details.
E3 Group Selects Octoshape for High Quality
Octoshape, an industry leader in cloud-based streaming technology, announced today that its Infinite HD-M technology has been selected to power Internet video distribution services for Quda Creative, a subsidiary of E3 Group, and regional provider of high quality content broadband events.
"With the unique Octoshape technology in our media services portfolio, we are certain that Quda Creative will lead the region in high definition video distribution over the Internet"
Quda Creative will leverage Octoshape's Infinite HD-M Federated Multicast platform to enhance its service offerings across Argentina. Octoshape's advanced video distribution technology provides high definition Internet video regardless of the geographic location, connectivity or network conditions of the viewer.
"With the unique Octoshape technology in our media services portfolio, we are certain that Quda Creative will lead the region in high definition video distribution over the Internet," said Hernan Portugal, CEO of Quda Creative. "Our parent company, E3 Group, is developing applications for SMART TV's, mobile phones and tablets to enable access to our high quality content powered by Octoshape's technology."
The Infinite HD-M solution enables TV quality, TV scale and TV economics for broadband TV over unmanaged IP networks by utilizing existing 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.
"The quality standard that the E3 Group and Quda Creative have set for video delivery to their customers is directly in line with Octoshape's value propositions," said Michael Koehn Milland, CEO of Octoshape. "Their aim is to continuously raise the bar for content and quality, and I am confident that together we will achieve a new standard in viewing experiences for their consumers."
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 1 broadband providers, connected television manufacturers and conditional access providers.
DataDirect Networks to Build World's Fastest Storage System
In support of its new Titan supercomputer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has selected DataDirect Networks (DDN) to build the world's fastest storage system to power the fastest supercomputer in the world.
ORNL is a national multi-program research and development facility managed by UT-Battelle for the US Department of Energy (DoE). The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) was established at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2004 with the mission of providing leadership computing for scientists working on some of the world's most pressing problems.
Titan is designed to deliver a peak capability of over 27,000 trillion calculations per second, or 27 petaflops, a system that is over ten times more powerful than previous generations of ORNL computers.
For the growing number of problems where experiments are impossible, dangerous, or inordinately costly, advances of this compute magnitude offer the benefit of immediate and transformative insights in energy, national security, the environment and the economy, as well as to answer fundamental scientific questions.
Using DDN's SFA12K-40 storage systems as the backbone for Spider II, this new file storage system is designed with 40 petabytes of raw capacity and is capable of ingesting, storing, processing and distributing research data at unprecedented speed.
This amount of storage capacity is equivalent to more than 227,000 miles of stacked books — or the distance from ORNL's facility in Oak Ridge, TN to the moon — and enables ORNL to dramatically increase Titan's computational efficiency and deliver vastly more accurate predictive models than ever before.
As the de facto standard in storage for the world's leading supercomputers, DDN continues to push the frontiers of science and technology from laptop to petaflop, building on its $100M investment in extreme scale computing and commitment to the DoE's FastForward program to pave the road to exascale.
BitTorrent Partners With Cinedigm to Promote Film
Excerpted from Hollywood Reporter Report by Seth Abramovitch
In a partnership that is sure to make many in Hollywood uneasy, BitTorrent — the company behind the digital file-sharing technology — is pairing with Cinedigm to promote "Arthur Newman," an upcoming romantic comedy starring Colin Firth and Emily Blunt.
"Utilizing the BitTorrent suite of software products," reads an upbeat press release, "Cinedigm will invite fans to view — exclusively -- the first seven minutes of the film prior to its theatrical release. Additional materials will include stills from the film, the official one sheet and the film trailer."
The arrangement is a calculated one for the San Francisco, CA based technology company, a fact that it openly acknowledges.
"This is a visionary move by Cinedigm and represents a significant shift in how the media industry perceives BitTorrent," says Shahi Ghanem, Chief Strategy Officer of BitTorrent, "Cinedigm is leading a renaissance in indie content distribution and BitTorrent is a great fit as a technology partner.
Enterprise Security Moving to the Cloud
Excerpted from Computer Weekly Report by Warwick Ashford
By 2015, 10% of IT security enterprise product capabilities will be delivered in the cloud, according to a report by research company Gartner.
The services are also driving changes in the market, particularly around key security technologies such as secure e-mail, secure web gateways, remote vulnerability assessment and identity and access management (IAM).
Gartner expects the cloud-based security services market to reach $4.2 billion by 2016.
"Demand remains high from buyers looking to cloud-based security services to address a lack of staff or skills, reduce costs or comply with security regulations quickly," said Eric Ahlm, Research Director at Gartner.
"This shift in buying behavior from the more traditional on-premises equipment toward cloud-based delivery models offers good opportunities for technology and service providers with cloud delivery capabilities, but those without such capabilities need to act quickly to adapt to this competitive threat."
A Gartner survey on security spending from January 2013 shows high demand from security buyers for cloud-based security service offerings.
Security buyers from the US and Europe, representing a cross-section of industries and company sizes, said they plan to increase the consumption of several common cloud services in the next 12 months.
The highest-consumed cloud-based security service is email security services, with 74% of respondents rating this as the top service.
More than a quarter of respondents said they were considering deploying tokenization as a cloud service.
Tokenisation is the process of replacing sensitive data with unique identification symbols that retain all the essential information about the data without compromising its security.
Gartner believes regulatory compliance measures to comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) , for example, are driving much of the growth of interest in tokenisation as a service.
Tokenisation allows security buyers to avoid having to store personally identifiable information (PII) or other confidential information.
The service allows organizations to remove tokenized systems from being considered "in scope" for PCI compliance, thus removing the burden of regulating the environment.
Another area that is likely to experience high growth is security information and event management (SIEM) as a service.
Much of the interest is attributed to regulatory compliance concerns and security buyers' need to reduce costs in the area of log management, compliance reporting and security event monitoring, said Gartner.
However, Gartner believes many enterprises will remain cautious about sending sensitive log information to cloud services. This will continue to be an important aspect for security-as-a-service providers to address, said Gartner.
"The overall customer demand for numerous cloud security services presents an opportunity for creating or partnering with cloud services brokers," said Ahlm.
"The customer demand for a brokerage becomes apparent as organizations move more assets to the cloud and require multiple security services to span multiple clouds and/or mixtures of clouds and on-premises," he said.
Gartner is advising value-added resellers (VARs) to supplement product implementations with cloud-based alternatives that offer large customers reduced operational cost and thereby increase the likelihood of customer retention in this market segment.
VARs that fail to offer cloud-based alternatives might experience a decline in implementation revenue from customers seeking cloud-based solutions in certain market segments, said Gartner.
Ease of deployment and relief from technology maintenance offer buyers of cloud-based controls direct cost savings.
Based on the value that cloud security brings, security buyers may purchase less hardware or software and require fewer implementation services. This means they can budget through operating expenditure, rather than through capital expenditure, said Gartner.
Cloud-based controls provide current protection, sometimes avoiding complex and costly upgrades.
"The value that cloud services bring to security buyers is measurable in terms of capital and operational cost reduction," said Ahlm.
"Security providers that currently offer only a hardware/software-based solution requiring implementation should build product road maps that allow customers to move to the cloud at their pace," he said.
Coming Events of Interest
Digital Hollywood Spring - April 29th-May 2nd in Marina Del Rey, CA. The premier entertainment and technology conference. The conference where everything you do, everything you say, everything you see means business.
CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2013 - May 19th-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.
NordiCloud 2013 - September 1st-3rd in Oslo, Norway. The Nordic Symposium on Cloud Computing & Internet Technologies (NordiCloud) aims at providing an industrial and scientific forum for enhancing collaboration between industry and academic communities from Nordic and Baltic countries in the area of Cloud Computing and Internet Technologies.
P2P 2013: IEEE International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing - September 9th-11th in Trento, Italy. The IEEE P2P Conference is a forum to present and discuss all aspects of mostly decentralized, large-scale distributed systems and applications. This forum furthers the state-of-the-art in the design and analysis of large-scale distributed applications and systems.
CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2013 — October 27th-29th in Las Vegas, NV. Three conference tracks will zero in on the latest advances in applying cloud-based solutions to all aspects of high-value entertainment content production, storage, and delivery; the impact of cloud services on broadband network management and economics; and evaluating and investing in cloud computing services providers.
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