May 6, 2013
Volume XLIII, Issue 9
Cloud Computing Forecast Is Bright and Sunny
Excerpted from Plant Engineering Report
Everyone has heard of cloud computing, but its practical applications in a manufacturing operation as less clear. As mobility becomes a greater force in manufacturing operations, the cloud will play a role in information delivery. Plant Engineering content manager Bob Vavra talked with Kevin Price, Senior Product Manager for Infor EAM, about the cloud and the forecast for the future:
PE: For manufacturing today, what are the practical uses of cloud computing?
Price: Cloud computing, from a maintenance management perspective, is an important service for manufacturers, as it gives them more time to focus on things that matter most — operation of their production environments.
Placing systems into the cloud, like asset management, removes the headaches of system availability, system responsiveness and system update/upgrade from local management to the cloud provider, who has the skills, knowledge, and scalability to meet these demands on a daily, if not hourly, basis.
What this means is that the local resources used to maintain these environments can now provide their value-added skills on higher-end system troubleshooting, system integration, end-user education and further business implementation of the application.
PE: Where does Infor think cloud computing is headed on the manufacturing front? What are the advantages to the cloud in the future?
Price: Infor has been in the cloud for quite some time and continues to be very optimistic on the use of its systems in the infrastructure. As systems become more loosely coupled but bound by vertical and micro-vertical needs, the cloud becomes an ideal infrastructure.
Systems no longer require collocation as their integration is augmented by tools like middleware. Systems no longer require a heavy hand to administrate. This allows local resources to focus on improving the business rather than maintaining the tools that make business happen.
In the future, as more de-coupling occurs, cloud users will continue to enjoy the benefits of hassle-free system availability, but will also enjoy the benefits of outsourced storage for big data, referenced asset infrastructure documentation sets, as well as work process instruction and verification materials.
PE: One of the biggest costs for any system manager is data centers. The cloud seems to address a great deal of that. But what are some of the limitations of the cloud?
Price: The limitations of the cloud, in a situation where systems hosted in the cloud are truly "cloud-enabled", are limited only by the access to them — by the web, by secure connection, through mobile solutions and remote integration.
With an inexperienced vendor, these limitations will persist for many years — until the vendor gets it right.
Experience and audited certification are requirements for doing business in the cloud. That's old hat for Infor.
PE: The biggest challenge seems to be adoption. How do you make the business case for cloud computing in manufacturing?
Price: A business case for anything will vary by industry, vertical, micro-vertical, system, and use-case for the system in question. There are many common threads to point to, but more and more are being unveiled as organizations dig deeper into their reasons for going to cloud in the beginning.
Disaster recovery, for example, is a costly idea for any organization, but if handled by an audited and certified provider, it's a simple alternative to consider.
System availability can also be a costly idea for most organizations as it involves oversight into many machines, systems, secure access to the administration of those systems and redundancy to everything — another headache removed in the growing cloud "norm."
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The Cloud Computing Association (CCA) and the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) welcome DCINFO readers to attend CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2013 (CCE:2013) from Sunday May 19th through Tuesday May 21st at the Marriott Boston Copley Place in Boston, MA.
CCE:2013 will focus on the use of cloud-based technologies by government, healthcare, and financial services to revolutionize business processes, increase efficiency, and streamline costs.
Learn about attendance options here; and sign-up to attend here.
An opening workshop on Sunday afternoon will provide delegate orientation. MIT-educated Dino Konstantopoulos, currently of MITRE Corporation and Boston University, and author of Components and Frameworks in the Cloud Era, will lead a lively discussion involving BU student experts and audience members.
This exclusive session will offer all conference attendees a common set of definitions of cloud computing, key use cases, deployment models, and related terminology, which they can rely upon and reference during the rest of the conference.
National Institute of Science & Technology (NIST) definitions will serve as a starting point for this, which the BU team has expanded into a glossary of cloud-computing terms selected especially for CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2013 and its concentration on hCLOUD, gCLOUD, and fCLOUD issues.
Then a welcome reception will offer networking opportunities for speakers, exhibitors, and audience members.
On Monday morning, keynote and panel sessions include Stefan Bewley, Altman Vilandrie; Matt Stevens, AppNeta; Jason Warman, Aspera; Larry Freedman, Edwards Wildman Palmer; Fabian Gordon, Ignite Technologies; Dan Rooney, Kronos; Brad Maltz, Lumenate; Joe Foxton, MediaSilo; Larry Veino, Presidio; Brian Benfer & Cameron Jahn, ShareFile; and Omar Torres, VeriStor.
After a pace-changing workshop entitled Take the Bore out of Boardroom by Wes and Amy Peper, and conference luncheon, attendees will have the opportunity to choose from among three event tracks offering panel discussions and case studies including the following speakers.
Nicole Nakashian, Agio Technology; David Cerf, Crossroads Systems; Tom Gonser, Docusign; Pete Manca, Egenera; Jamie Brenzel, KineticD; Brad Maltz, Lumenate; Scott Swartz, MetraTech; Yung Chou, Microsoft; Kevin Nyberg, NaviSite; Arwin Holmes, NorthPoint, Keith Hartley & Doug Natal, Oracle, Chris Christy & Marlyn Zelkowitz, SAP America; Peter Spellman, TraceLink; Grant Kirkwood, Unitas Global; Amit Khanna, Virtusa; and Adam Firestone, WSO2.
At day's end, there will be a networking reception in the Exhibit Hall.
On Tuesday morning, we'll continue our in-depth examinations of the subject matter with such speakers as Doug Barbin, BrightLine; Brian Benfer, Citrix; David Linthicum, Cloud Technology Partners; Tom Mountcastle, CSC Leasing; Chris Poelker, FalconStor; Daniel Beazer, FireHost; Whitney Vickrey, GCE;; Owen DeLong, Hurricane Electric; Mark Lundin, KPMG; Praveen Lobo & David Wayne, Lumedx; Russ Hertzberg, SoftServe; Jim Duval, Telestream; and Gerry Stegmaier, WSGR.
After a working luncheon that will feature solution provider showcase demonstrations, keynotes and panels will continue with James Mitchell, Cloud Options; Geof Griebel, Eoscene Corporation; Yesica Schaaf, IBM; Esmeralda Swartz, MetraTech; Allan McLennan, PADEM Group; Jaye Connolly, PathCentral; Rohit Mahna, Salesforce.com; Jay Gleason, Sprint; Mark Levitt, Strategy Analytics; Mohamad Ali, Wexford Health Sources; and Brian Drewes, ZYNC Render.
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.
Register now to attend CCE:2013. Share wisely, and take care.
RightScale Sees Uptick in Cloud Adoption and Multi-Cloud Use
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Jordan Novet
A survey from cloud-management player RightScale shows a rise in both cloud computing use and multi-cloud adoption. That bodes well for the company and its competitors.
Companies larger than 1,000 employees appear to be a bit further ahead of smaller companies when it comes to adopting cloud computing. Of those larger companies, 77 percent have adopted clouds in some way, compared with 73 percent for companies with fewer than 1,000 employees, according to a recent survey of 625 business, development and IT staffers from cloud-management provider RightScale.
The interesting area is the rise in the provisioning of resources on multiple clouds, which includes private-public combinations as well as multiple public clouds. Of the more than three quarters of larger companies that are adopting clouds, 77 percent of those are deploying across multiple clouds.
Last year's survey, which did not break out companies by size, found that 68 percent had deployments spanning more than one cloud.
It's great news for RightScale, which helps Zynga and other companies keep track of all their clouds from a single pane of glass. It also bodes well for competitors, such as Enstratius (formerly named enStratus) and Server Density.
At a meeting with reporters and representatives of RightScale customers, RightScale CEO Michael Crandell said that although he doesn't have survey data to back up the assertion, he believes the use of multiple clouds has been steadily rising.
"I think it multi-cloud use was lower before the first survey," Crandell said. "That's my gut instinct." Whether it's to save money, to have different applications running on different hardware or to focus on core competencies, companies have a variety of motivations to try running their operations on clouds.
Still, compliance with regulations and concerns about security keep some companies from trying out the public clouds or, in some cases, even private clouds. Crandell said it can come down to legal issues. Businesses might not want to risk putting their own customers at risk of data breaches. "It's their attorneys who are dealing with that as well as ours," Crandell said, describing the thinking of some businesses.
Even with those conditions, it does seem that cloud and multi-cloud adoption will keep going up, and that means full speed ahead for management companies such as RightScale.
Cloud Business Solutions to Surpass $123 Billion
The new study Cloud Business Solutions, Social Media, and Platform Systems of Engagement: Market Shares, Strategy, and Forecasts, Worldwide — 2013 to 2018 has 673 pages, plus 165 tables and figures.
Worldwide markets are poised to achieve continuing growth as the cloud computing systems are put in place to support mobile end-point information collection.
Cloud business solutions, social media, and platform systems of engagement represent major IT market shifts.
The lines of business are taking over from the IT departments. Systems of engagement leverage the apps market segment. A key cloud computing segment relates to development of apps for every industry. Visual feature and discovery decision tablets permit decision making. Visual decision making components can be exported.
A trapped decision discovery feature is not too useful. What the systems of engagement seek to do is to capture institutional knowledge, social media knowledge and make it accessible to a broader group of people. Solutions are global. They are based on language translation that makes apps useful globally.
Apps have support for mobile devices. Cloud providers are able to develop custom mobile applications that include toolkits and accelerated systems with common functions that are part of process delivery. Buttons, cameras, geo specific features are available in the apps. It is possible to build composite solutions from within the cloud. Cloud mobile solutions tools mean users can build mobile composite applications that span two platforms.
Cloud platforms market driving forces relate to implementation of modular systems. Marketing managers have a desire to control data in ways that permit flexible response to changing market conditions. Modular systems give them more flexibility in being able to do so. The aim of modern computing is to leverage analytics in a manner that supports new views of the customer and provides ideas of new ways to control infrastructure.
Massive changes are occurring in computing systems as smart phone proliferate, end point devices are varied, and cloud computing enters the mix. Back-end systems of record and customer systems of engagement leveraging mobile smart-phone reach to endpoints need to be interconnected.
Cloud platforms generally use this interconnection to leverage social media and mobile smart-phones by permitting implementation of analytics. Analytics are used in every instance of big data implementations.
Cloud platforms enable strategic cloud implementations that are platform-based. Cloud systems that have messaging enabled infrastructure are able to implement integration of systems. Mission critical messaging is key to operations in cloud computing environments. Mission critical messaging is used for integration of back-end systems of record and systems of engagement leveraging mobile smart-phones reach to endpoints.
A cloud adoption strategy is underlying the need for strong architecture and governance programs in 2013. Cloud systems are anticipated to go beyond customer service applications to include all the major applications used in the enterprise, so that these applications become available as cloud offerings across the business landscape. Price per seat is the major driving force.
Consolidation of servers is making the cloud computing a commodity. Organizations need to control the costs for automated process, and systems that are not proprietary can most cost effectively be delivered in the cloud because of workload sharing. The mainframe is the most efficient server to use that achieves workload sharing.
This study has chosen to look at cloud business solutions, social media, and platform systems of engagement to understand the incredible upswing of small player company formation that creates a massive cloud presence that cuts across the more traditional divisions of the cloud services market.
While the larger players dominate with market share, the thousands of new market participants are build apps for every industry that leverage smart phones and tablets and use to cloud to create data storage, data backup, and connectivity to the back-end. Systems management, collaboration, mapping, localization, healthcare delivery apps are but a few of the initiatives being developed by cloud market participants. Cloud systems will achieve trillion dollar status soon.
The cloud business solutions, social media, and platform systems of engagement market is expanding. Cloud solution markets at $34.7 billion in 2013 are anticipated to reach $123 billion by 2019. Market growth comes as cloud computing is used to aggregate data from the smart phone end points and integrate it with front end web data and back-end transaction system data.
Healthcare, Government, and Enterprise Cloud Investments by Verizon
Excerpted from TBR Newsroom Report by Jillian Mirandi
Verizon Terremark will see increased growth across its cloud business in 2013 driven by vertical-specific Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions targeting the government and healthcare spaces along with improved enterprise penetration.
Verizon spent 2011 and 2012 fully integrating acquisitions (Terremark which closed in April 2011 and CloudSwitch which closed in August 2011) to cement its IaaS foundation and has tweaked its technology to address government, healthcare and enterprise specific needs with high levels of security and professional services.
Verizon Terremark's 1Q13 investments in its Enterprise Cloud portfolio will successfully drive enterprise revenue growth in CY13. While IaaS vendors Amazon Web Services, Google (Compute Engine) and even Microsoft (Azure) compete on pricing, Verizon will leverage its strengths in professional services, networking, security offerings (buoyed by recent partnerships with Criterion Systems and Qualys) and hybrid capabilities to address the enterprise's top barriers to adopting cloud solutions.
Although Verizon Terremark's cloud business is still a tiny segment (less than 1%) of its corporate whole (Verizon Corporate generated over $29 billion in 1Q13), the company continues to credit its strategic investments in cloud technologies as a key driver for its Strategic Services line of business, which grew 6% year-to-year to over $2 billion.
TBR estimates that Verizon's cloud business grew 28% year-to-year to approximately $77 million in 1Q13, driven largely by adoption of Terremark's private cloud IaaS portfolio in data sensitive verticals such as government and healthcare. The bulk of cloud revenue (93%) comes from public cloud offerings, but we believe growth will continue to come from private cloud in CY13. We estimate that operating margin was 7.1% in the quarter, and that Verizon Terremark's cloud business has the potential to improve overall margins as the business grows over the next decade.
Verizon Terremark will not compete with more commodity IaaS providers, but instead has strategically chosen to target larger, more regulated customers with its vertical-specific clouds. Although Verizon Terremark's IaaS would benefit SMBs and mid-market customers technologically, the heavy professional services approach and high levels of security add costs that lower the vendor's appeal to these smaller entities. Verizon Terremark will compete with IBM, Dell and HP in the enterprise and more regulated spaces, and has the potential to pull ahead due to its wide and deep networking IP and head-start against Dell and HP.
While TBR believes Rackspace, AT&T, and Savvis will challenge Verizon in the IaaS spaces with similar core networking and hosting competencies, Verizon has the opportunity to differentiate with its Enterprise Mobility as a Service solution released in October 2012 by integrating its mobile device management suite into its compute and storage offerings as well as its high levels of security and global presence (namely in LATAM). The company additionally has the opportunity to spur technological differentiation by embracing open standards by joining Citrix's CloudStack, a chief competitor to OpenStack, a foundation many of its competitors already support.
To support cloud revenue growth in CY13, 1Q13 data center investments were aimed at expanding existing cloud-enabled data centers in mature markets (Dallas, London, and Canberra, Australia). For the rest of CY13, TBR believes that Verizon will primarily focus its growth efforts on enhancing security controls at its data centers in these locations to market compliancy and improved security. However, TBR additionally believes Verizon will focus on expanding and cloud-enabling its Latin America and Asia-Pacific data centers to position its business to meet local demand for cloud services.
Additionally, Verizon is continuing to introduce solutions in the healthcare space (HIPAA-compliant IaaS cloud in October 2012; SUMS data exchange platform for healthcare professionals in March 2013) and leverage major 1Q13 technological events such as CES and HiMSS13 to promote its solutions. By promoting its cloud-based healthcare technologies and generating goodwill from initiatives such as a $1 million prize for the ISV that generates the top innovation in healthcare utilizing Verizon's cloud, mobile and video technologies, Verizon is positioning healthcare as top of mind and ahead of competing vendors and the recently formed CommonWell Healthcare Alliance between legacy EHR vendors McKesson, Cerner, Athenahealth, Greenway Medical and Allscripts.
In 1Q13, Verizon Terremark expanded its healthcare-related partner ecosystem to address needs beyond cloud infrastructure and we expect the business to mimic this approach across its other clouds. By pairing its infrastructure with partners' technologies, Verizon Terremark both increases its own customer loyalty (customers are more likely to stay with Verizon Terremark if they can purchase end-to-end solutions), as well as leverage partners' customer bases to sell into as more healthcare vendors look to incorporate cloud into their IT environments.
Telefonica Opens its Largest Data Center
Today, Telefonica launched the first phase of its Alcala Data Center project, in which it has so far invested more than 120 million euros, with plans to invest a total of 300 million euros over the coming years. The new Data Center will be a world benchmark from the outset, and its aim will be to lead Telefonica's transformation into one of the leading companies in the new digital world environment.
Telefonica's Chairman, Cesar Alierta, explained the capacities and the features of the Data Center, located in the town of Alcala de Henares, near Madrid, during an opening ceremony attended by Ignacio Gonzalez, the President of the Madrid Region; Victor Calvo Sotelo, Secretary of State for Telecommunications and the Information Society; Carmen Vela, Secretary of State for Research, Development and Innovation; and the Mayor of Alcala de Henares, Javier Bello.
Accompanied by Jose Maria Alvarez Pallete, CEO of Telefonica, and Guillermo Ansaldo, General Manager of Telefonica Global Resources, they all visited the new Center's installations, which consist of 23 Information Technology (IT) rooms and a built area of 65,700 square meters on a plot of land the size of 8 football fields.
The start-up of this project is part of Telefonica's aim to turn Spain into a country with the facilities to house tomorrow's digital technology infrastructures and make this new Data Center a point of reference for companies and institutions all over the world.
The design of the Alcala Data Center is a modular configuration, with a redundant energy supply and communications, also capable of guaranteeing the highest levels of flexibility, reliability, safety, and efficiency.
Built by Ferrovial and Master Ingenieria, with technological advice provided by Digital Realty, it will cover the whole range of ICT services, from housing, infrastructures and cloud computing to full outsourcing of customer applications. It will also operate as Telefonica's cloud services base for Europe and will house platforms for customers in Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
Each module will be independent, allowing new rooms to be activated without affecting the operation of the rest. Similarly, the 1,200 KW of IT power for each room can be multiplied up to fourfold without impacting the housed systems.
This configuration will allow customers to continue to evolve technologically without expensive investment or having to worry about the power limitations or the increasing concentration of servers. The rooms will also house areas of high density by using cold and hot corridor contention, designed for high computing areas and cloud computing.
These capacities guarantee an annual reliability of 99.995%. The design has Tier IV certification from the Uptime Institute, which guarantees the highest level of fault tolerance. The fact that they are interconnected by a redundant fiber optic ring with the Julia¡n Camarillo Data Center (Madrid) will allow them to be used as mutual back-up Centers in case of faults, another added strength for reliability and security in the management of critical services.
At its new Data Center, Telefonica will provide the latest in Outsourcing services for Infrastructures, housing, backup, storage, monitoring, complete outsourcing of systems, IT contingency services, etc. Special emphasis will also be placed on the new Cloud services, offering customers the Virtual Data Center service, a flexible and made-to-measure facility, giving a company a private space in the securest environment to install all the business applications it needs: e-mail, intranet, corporate website, CRM, management tools, e-Commerce, etc.
Meanwhile, this great project is Telefonica's response to the challenge of implementing an innovative Center with the maximum capacity to house the digital services of the future. Telefonica has already established the bases for consolidating its leadership in the new digital environment, where it intends to operate the following businesses worldwide: video and entertainment, e-advertising, e-health, financial services, Cloud Computing and M2M (machine to machine connections), to name just a few.
Current exponential growth in traffic between applications and devices demands more advanced data Centers with a processing capacity of at least the equivalent, and which minimize energy losses. The company is meeting this challenge with this new Center, which is able to cover the demand for ICT services from the web and which joins its existing five Managed Data Centers in Spain and those recently opened in Brazil, Miami, and Mexico.
The project incorporates the excellence requirements of the most stringent international standards in its category. On the one hand, the international Green IT principles of eco-efficiency and sustainability, which includes the most up-to-date electrical and air-conditioning infrastructures to reduce energy consumption by approximately 75%. And in terms of design, construction, and operation, the necessary score was obtained to be awarded the Green Building Council's Leed Silver certification.
In addition, Alcala Data Center has been designed to meet all the requirements of the different management and safety quality certifications thanks to, amongst other measures, its round-the-clock closed circuit television and video surveillance system, with cameras installed on both the perimeter and in the IT rooms and internal corridors. In some restricted access areas, access will be controlled with proximity card readers and digital fingerprint readers.
This project was co-financed by the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness as part of the National Plan for Scientific Research, Development and Technological Innovation 2008-2011 and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) with numbers INP-2011-0001-PCT-430000-ACT4 and ACT5, with loans of 19,203,598 and 4,750,512 euros respectively.
Why Healthcare Must Embrace Cloud Computing
Excerpted from Forbes Report by Scott Good
Regulatory compliance for the healthcare industry is a hot-button issue. The overriding compliance requirements that this industry faces are dictated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), enacted by Congress in 1996. HIPAA was designed to protect the privacy of patients' medical records and restrict who has access to them.
The latest HIPAA standards surrounding the security and privacy of patient data makes many in the healthcare industry understandably cautious about adopting new technologies. In the past, healthcare companies preferred to keep any electronic data concerning business operations and patient care behind a secure firewall.
Now, HIPAA omnibus and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) requirements stipulate everyone in the healthcare industry begin migrating patient records and other data to cloud computing. Essentially, by 2015, all medical professionals with access to patient records must utilize electronic medical and health records (EMR and EHR), or face penalties.
A recent study by the firm MarketsandMarkets indicates that the healthcare cloud computing market, which is only currently about 4% of the industry, is expected to grow to nearly $5.4 billion by 2017. The cloud migration process, however, can be daunting for healthcare organizations since they have to move a ton of data.
Cloud computing and infrastructure security are continually evolving to meet the growing security requirements of heavily-regulated industries like healthcare. Legitimate cloud service providers have strict security protocols designed to comply with different regulatory mandates, including SEC, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and HIPAA.
Many cloud service providers have started offering HIPAA-specific compliant solutions. Healthcare service providers should verify that their chosen cloud service provider is HIPAA compliant before signing up for the service. If this information is not provided on the company's website, call the sales or support line for more information.
While privacy concerns have kept many healthcare organizations from migrating to a cloud computing solution, the cloud does offer major benefits to these providers.
Security: Online medical records storage is the main reason for using cloud computing for most healthcare providers. With a recent HIPAA update, cloud service providers are now as liable for HIPAA compliance as the healthcare entities they serve. This includes ensuring that data is encrypted and securely backed up, verifying that data can be easily recovered, and using permission-based data access.
Scalability: Unlike on-site hardware infrastructure, you can easily scale your cloud storage solution to manage ever-growing patient data. Healthcare service providers generally must keep records for at least six years. Considering the volume of patient data, the likelihood of this overwhelming any on-site IT infrastructure is inevitable. The leading providers of cloud computing, cloud server or storage solutions are able to adapt to your EMR/EHR load quickly and store terabytes of your patients' data in secure, redundant cloud storage.
Mobility: The increasing demand for physicians' time often means they only have the opportunity to review patient records and tests or do research during evening hours. In the past, this meant being stuck in the office after hours. With cloud computing solutions, patient information is readily available. Now, doctors can quickly and easily pull up medical records remotely. This improves the physician's ability to provide high-level care to patients. Patients see a reduction in the amount of paperwork that they need to fill out and the time and stress of disputing incorrect bills.
Cost Reduction: By adopting cloud-computing solutions, patients, physician's practices, and medical organizations experience cost savings. The patient doesn't have to endure paying for the same test twice when they go to different doctors or specialists or if the test results are lost. Physicians' medical offices avoid paying for on-site hardware infrastructure and maintenance in order to securely store patient medical records. Add to that the costs of new software and updates to existing software programs and the required on-site IT personnel. Physicians are able to submit prescriptions and refills electronically to pharmacies. Cloud computing also increases the accuracy of reimbursement coding.
According to a report by Healthcare Financial Management and depending on the scope and size of a healthcare organization, savings benefits of EMRs/EHRs can amount to upwards of $37 million over a five-year period.
Sharing: Cloud computing solutions keep physicians connected with patients and their colleagues. Referrals to specialists happen in a timelier manner, and healthcare service providers can easily access complete patient history and information online. Again, repeat diagnostic tests are avoided, saving time, money, and patient stress.
Cloud service providers are now offering a variety of new ways to access information via cloud applications and microsites designed for mobile devices. To specifically address the needs of the healthcare industry, cloud service providers continue to improve technology platforms to improve lab order entry, pharmacy records management, medical billing, imaging service requests and more. Cloud companies must start offering HIPAA-compliant solutions if they wish to meet the demands of healthcare service providers that need cloud computing services.
Governments Flock to Cloud Computing Market
Excerpted from Business Administration Report by Tyler Lacoma
A recent TechNavio report predicts that the global government cloud computing market will grow by an average annual rate of 6.2 percent through 2016 as governments began moving their data onto the cloud.
The report pinpointed governments' need to reduce costs, noting this as a major driver behind the transition to efficient cloud-based technologies. But, TechNavio added, concerns about the data's security are preventing governments from moving more quickly into the space.
In that regard, governments are not terribly different from a variety of entities looking to move toward cloud-based technologies. The State of the Cloud survey from technology company DCW noted that about half of responding US organizations — businesses, education, government, etc. — still cited security concerns as the biggest barrier to entry. But that is a big change from previous surveys, DCW mentions, when security was a dominant roadblock. Now, industries also list concerns about technological problems with integration, or whether cloud services will deliver their promised efficiencies.
For US state and local government, the No. 1 use for cloud services is storage, with nearly 20 percent of surveyed organizations primarily using the cloud to hold data — businesses and educational organizations reported storage as their No. 1, as well. Federal government groups, by contrast, primarily used it for conferencing and collaborating.
In international governments, TechNavio reports that US vendors dominate the cloud computing market; Amazon, IBM., Google., Microsoft, and Salesforce.com are the top players. Cloud is even trickling down into smaller businesses abroad. In the high-growth, emerging market of India, TechNavio puts the average annual growth rate between 16 and 25 percent, thanks to huge demand for greater efficiency.
Given the levels of cloud adoption on all sides, demand is increasing for more data specialists and a greater focus on training cloud technology. Some areas are already feeling the squeeze. A December 2012 white paper from Microsoft notes that cloud-related skills represent nearly all the growth opportunities in IT employment worldwide, and demand for positions will grow by 26 percent annually through 2015. But IT hiring managers report that they failed to fill the 1.7 million open jobs in 2012 because job-seekers didn't have the necessary training and certification.
The white paper mentions that Microsoft itself is hoping to change that, reinventing its certification programs to directly address technology's increasing evolution to the cloud. In addition, the company is changing programs such as Microsoft IT Academy, which provides high school and college students with technology-based skills, and Microsoft Virtual Academy, a program that connects IT professionals with free, self-paced training resources, to educate future IT workers employed in cloud computing.
Financial Services Industry Integrates Big Data
Excerpted from eMarketer Report
The varied issues surrounding the concept of Big Data remain something of a mystery to many marketers, and those working in the banking and financial sector are no exception.
The research and consulting firm Celent conducted a survey of bank and insurance business and IT executives in North America in January 2013, and found that more than half of respondents from both sectors thought the promise of Big Data was overhyped.
Nearly six in 10 from the banking sector thought that Big Data was simply a fashionable term for the data analysis the company was already doing, while three in 10 from the insurance sector felt the same.
Still, 90% of respondents from both sectors thought that the adept use of Big Data would help financial services companies succeed in the future. For operators in the complex financial services sector, it seems that parsed data about business and customers can provide a competitive advantage.
Those working in both industries foresaw a stronger role for Big Data in marketing in particular. Three-quarters of banking executives and 80% of those in insurance already had, or expected to have, a Big Data marketing-related project in the works.
Marketers across industries perceive Big Data as something of a blessing and a curse, according to a Q1 2013 survey of marketers worldwide from CMO Council and SAS. It found that 61% of respondents thought of Big Data as part obstacle, part opportunity.
Big Data presents a number of opportunities for marketers, but fully realizing them requires the allocation of substantial resources.
Teambox Brings Collaboration behind the Firewall
Excerpted from InformationWeek Report by Michael Endler
For avid tech industry followers, it's hard to go more than a few days without seeing another article about the benefits companies can gain by taking business into the cloud.
These benefits, such as the ability to better connect remote or mobile workers, can lead to legitimate gains in an organization's efficiency and bottom line. Nevertheless, cloud resources often demand that sensitive data be housed on an outside party's servers, so many institutions and enterprises are cautious about, if not prohibited from, adopting the new technology.
Teambox believes its newest offering, Teambox On-Premise, can help more businesses climb onto the cloud bandwagon. Released earlier this month, the product brings the capabilities of the Barcelona-based company's cloud platform behind the corporate firewall, allowing users to harness the file-sharing and collaboration advantages of the cloud while still meeting internal security and compliance requirements.
The enterprise-oriented cloud market grows more competitive every week, but for organizations in highly regulated industries, Teambox On-Premise could offer the secure ladder into the cloud that they've been looking for.
Some cloud services focus on online storage, but Teambox has cultivated a name for itself by integrating not only hooks to other cloud repositories, such as Google Docs, Dropbox and Box, but also a host of collaboration tools for sharing and working on the stored files.
The approach has attracted a variety of customers, including not only brand names such as Square and Groupon but also an impressive list of universities. For certain industries, such as healthcare and financial services, however, Teambox's tools have been, like all cloud products, too risky for broad deployment.
Teambox On-Premise was developed to solve this problem. According to statements made during a recent webinar by David Ovadia, the company's VP of Marketing, the new product was created to address the regulatory needs of a few "key customers." Healthcare institutions are bound by HIPAA requirements, publicly traded companies by Sarbanes-Oxley and credit card-processing businesses by PCI, he said, noting that these requirements prohibit data from being stored or moved without robust protections.
Teambox had to let these customers "use their own authentication systems, use their own processes for security, and use their own processes for backing and up maintaining data," Ovadia said. To do so, Teambox On-Premise brings all of the platform's resources, which include not only Yammer-like chat functions and note-taking tools reminiscent of Evernote, but also its APIs and mobile apps, inside an enterprise's existing infrastructure and workflows. Essentially, it's meant to provide the agility and efficiency of a more conventional cloud service without burdening users with the typical security and compliance headaches.
In an interview, Teambox CEO Dan Schoenbaum said the product was essentially a virtual machine that can run on VMware or Oracle hypervisors. "Customers are up and running in less than an hour, with almost no intervention or assistance from us," he stated. "It's designed to be self-service. It's just a VM you drop in."
Despite this simplicity and attention to security, Teambox is not the only company aiming to transition cautious businesses into the cloud. Dell, for example, touted last week how its growing software catalog allows medical organizations such as Green Clinic in Rustin, LA, to use HIPAA-compliant cloud tools. Vendors such as Dropbox, meanwhile, are busily working to expand their consumer success farther into the business landscape.
"File storage is gaining traction but it's also becoming more commoditized," Schoenbaum said of this shift toward more specialized and robust cloud functionality. He added that Teambox's strategy is "not to compete with Dropbox and Google Drive but to augment what they do" by "layering on a collection of lightweight apps for collaborating."
For at least one early customer, the strategy boasts obvious appeal. Shawn Stevens, senior IT administrator for GeoEnergy, said in an interview that Teambox On-Premise, which his company adopted a few months prior to the product's general release, has facilitated "big-time changes." The centralized sets of collaboration tools, he stated, is intuitive for "regular users who don't have much experience" and a boon for teamwork.
Just as importantly, Stevens — who considered alternatives such as Basecamp and Teamwork Project Manager — also found Teambox On-Premise appropriately secure. "Our company deals with oil companies that like to be very secretive about their stuff, so it was almost a requirement for us to have an on-premises solution," he said.
Vitesse & Huawei Advance Cloud Radio Access Networks
Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation, a leading provider of advanced IC solutions for Carrier and Enterprise networks, announced that Huawei is using Vitesse's VeriTime technology to facilitate field Cloud-based Radio Access Network (C-RAN) trials for the world's largest mobile carrier, China Mobile.
VeriTime is Vitesse's unique timing technology that delivers the industry's most accurate IEEE1588v2 timing implementation for IP Edge and Access networks.
According to Dr. Chih-Lin I, chief scientist at the China Mobile Research Institute (CMRI) in Beijing, C-RAN technology is expected to significantly reduce capex and opex for service providers looking to achieve high capacity, power-efficient and cost-effective wireless networks.
Other C-RAN benefits demonstrated by the CMRI studies include lower energy consumption, simpler system rollout, and superior service levels to users. As in 4G/LTE mobile backhaul networks, highly accurate timing synchronization is crucial to the stability and proper operation of C-RAN networks.
"The frequency and phase accuracy requirements for C-RAN are very stringent," said Uday Mudoi, Product Marketing Director at Vitesse.
"Vitesse specifically designed VeriTime to meet the exacting requirements of next-generation mobile backhaul Edge and Access broadband networks. We will continue to work with industry leaders such as Huawei and China Mobile to bring advanced network architectures like C-RAN to fruition."
BitTorrent: What You Didn't Know
Excerpted from iTechPost Report by Matthew Klickstein
BitTorrent. It's the way we send and receive files so large that even the Cloud and storage services such as Dropbox have to bow down to its disruptive power.
But do we really know about BitTorrent aside from its awesome ability for file storage and exchange ... and the fact it helps many to download movies, music and more at the click of a button?
This is why we were delighted to sit down with BitTorrent Director of Communications Christian Averill and Director of Product Development Farid Fadaie at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013.
Here are a few of the tidbits we took in from BitTorrent as regards everything from legitimate uses to new products in the pipeline.
BitTorrent is technology protocol founded in 2001 by Bram Cohen who created a company formed around it in 2004. He's Chief Science Officer now.
Because BitTorrent was built as an open source protocol, a lot of people don't have a very good idea what it is. It has taken on a life of its own, but was originally created as a replacement to http. When http was created, the Internet was largely text-based; they hadn't anticipated the large file sizes we use today. BitTorrent was built as a way to move large data sets.
Companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Blizzard and even geneticists and their ilk use BitTorrents to move files whose sizes boggle the mind.
To date, BitTorrent is the most efficient protocol for moving large files. Based on stats, over 40 percent of Internet traffic is being carried over by BitTorrent protocol. More than Facebook and Google combined.
Sync is a machine-to-machine file syncing component of BitTorrent that just launched 10 days ago.
Sync allows the user to choose his network. This is a way to manage large files without the Cloud. It's secure and not third party, as well as being cheaper and quicker than the Cloud.
Sync does not necessarily do everything Dropbox does, but as it is still in open alpha, BitTorrent is still figuring out what it will do with this new feature and will hopefully do so as a complimentary element to other existing services such as Dropbox. As more people use Sync, BitTorrent will figure out how to position this latest innovation.
This open aspect of BitTorrent is how the company has always worked to continue to innovate.
BitTorrent does not see itself as a very good tool for infringement, being that it is merely part of a stack of technology exploited by third-party groups. BitTorrent is not hosting or indexing infringing materials. It is not pointing to it or promoting it in any way. It is merely a means of storing large data files that happen to move through its pipes.
It claims to have never been targeted as an infringer of copyright because of this fact and alleges to have been recognized by the entertainment industry as a useful technology.
In the next month, BitTorrent will be announcing some undisclosed alignments with the entertainment industry as regards new ways for the latter to harness the power of the former. BitTorrent recognizes there is some "misunderstanding" as regards how it is viewed but if there can continue to be communication between entertainment companies and its own representatives can alleviate that.
In addition to not promoting pirated content that may be distributed by those who might be taking advantage of BitTorrents, the company hopes to invest enough legitimate material into the ecosystem that will override the infringing content.
Surf is one such tool BitTorrent has been developing that has been out for a few months and is being used to prioritize good, licensed material in addition to that which is created by content providers with which BitTorrent has been partnering up.
BitTorrent just last week launched BitTorrent accelerator, which companies can apply here in order to check out and utilize. If the companies think they have an eligible product -- discussed on the application page -- BitTorrent would be happy to check out the goods and maybe partner up accordingly.
BitTorrent has 175 million users. And it's growing.
BitTorrent would love to hear from you here.
Coming Events of Interest
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.
Cloud World Forum - June 26th-27th in London, England. The Cloud World Forum offers a comprehensive agenda and speaker line-up from the cloud sector, making it an ideal platform for global authorities to present their "how-to" strategy and vision. Many recognized headline participants along with detailed coverage of the enterprise IT market.
Cloud Computing Summit - July 16th-17th in Bradenton, South Africa. Advance your awareness of the latest trends and innovations from the world of cloud computing. This year's ITWeb-sponsored event will focus on key advances relating to the infrastructure, operations, and available services through the global network.
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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