September 16, 2013
Volume XLV, Issue 4
Don't Miss CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2013
Plan now to attend CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2013 (CCW:2013), the Cloud Computing Association's (CCA) and Distributed Computing Industry Association's (DCIA) business strategy summit taking place October 27th-29th at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, NV.
This year's themes are "Revolutionizing Entertainment & Media" and "The Impact of Mobile Cloud Computing & Big Data."
Representatives of these industry-leading organizations, among others, have already made plans to attend CCW:2013:
Amazon Web Services (AWS), AT&T, Comcast, Dell, DirecTV, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Netflix, NTT Data, Oracle, Rackspace, SAP America, Sony Games, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sprint Nextel, Toshiba, and Warner Bros.
They'll be joined by delegates from prominent up-and-comers and rapidly growing major players, ranging literally from A10 Networks to ZYNC Render, along with thought-leaders like ABI Research and the authors of 21st Century Television: The Players, The Viewers, The Money and Securing the Cloud.
The quickly expanding attendee list also includes executives from Aspera, Autodesk, BrightLine, Citrix, CSS Corporation, DataDirect Networks (DDN), Dell SecureWorks, eGistics, Equilibrium, GenosTV, Hughes Hubbard, Intertrust Technologies Corporation, Kwaai Oak, Las Vegas Sands Corporation, MasterControl, MP3 TechSupport, The PADEM Group, Rafelson Media, Red Bend Software, Savvis, SoftServe, TransLattice, Trend Micro, Unitas Global, V2Solutions, VASCO Data Security, and more.
Don't miss your opportunity to personally participate in this valuable and stimulating experience, which analysts describe as "THE Must Attend Cloud Computing Event of the Fall Season."
There's no question that advances in cloud computing are having enormous effects on the creation, storage, distribution, and consumption of diverse genres of content.
And most profound among these effects are those involving the increased proliferation of portable playback systems and the accompanying generation of unprecedented amounts of viewership, listenership, and usage information from audiences globally.
DCINFO readers are encouraged to get actively involved in CCA's & DCIA's CCW:2013. Please click here for exhibiting and sponsoring information and here to apply to speak at CCW:2013.
Viacom Rides Brightcove's Video Cloud
Excerpted from Multichannel News Report by Jeff Baumgartner
Viacom has tapped Brightcove's Video Cloud platform to deliver native video apps on multiple platforms, initially targeting iOS and Android devices and Xbox consoles.
Under the deal, which is now central to Viacom's TV Everywhere strategy, the media giant will work with Brightcove to offer long-form programming to those devices and bake in support for closed-captioning, authentication, audience measurement, and in-stream advertising.
The first Viacom properties to tap into Brightcove Video Cloud include MTV, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central. Initially, Viacom will offer native video apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Xbox devices, with future plans to expand to Android smartphones and tablets.
"Consumers today want to access their favorite shows from any device at any location," said David Kline, SVP at Viacom. "Brightcove's solutions remove the complexity of video publishing and distribution across devices and makes it easy for us to expand our second screen and TV Everywhere offerings. Brightcove's flexible, modular platform capabilities also help our brands achieve their specific objectives and fulfill their complex requirements for delivering high-quality video experiences."
Financial terms were not disclosed. Viacom originally joined the Brightcove customer roster in 2012.
Brightcove, which counts Comcast's thePlatform among its competitors and claims to have more than 6,300 customers, posted a second quarter loss of $3.3 million on revenues of $26.9 million, up 24% versus the year-ago quarter. As of June 30, Brightcove's platform turned out an average of 919 million streams per month, up from 853 million streams per month on average during the first quarter of 2013.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 This Wednesday September 18th, a Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) led coalition of two dozen organizations including the DCIA, will relaunch Vanishing Rights, a website urging the US Congress to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
ECPA, one of the Internet's most outdated laws, allows hundreds of federal agencies — including the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS) —as well as state and local agencies, to demand access to emails and documents stored in the cloud without a warrant.
The CDT has outlined Five Reasons to Reform ECPA Now.
Last fall, our coalition launched the original Vanishing Rights website to champion ECPA reform, which is sorely needed to help foster continued advancement of the cloud computing industry.
That effort helped lead to the passage of a bipartisan bill from US Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Mike Lee (R-UT) in the Senate Judiciary Committee that would require government agents to get a warrant before accessing people's private content on the Internet.
Since then, we've seen steady progress on the Leahy-Lee ECPA reform bill (S. 607), as well as the introduction by Congressmen Kevin Yoder (R-KS), Tom Graves (R-GA), and Jared Polis (D-CO) of a companion bill — the Yoder-Graves ECPA reform bill (H.R. 1852) — in the US House of Representatives.
Now, we're turning our attention to the House of Representatives; we're calling on all Members of Congress to support the Yoder-Graves bill, which has already picked up 137 co-sponsors.
With each passing day, as more of our private information goes online, the need for ECPA reform becomes more urgent. Now is the time to update ECPA.
The public has been shocked by a series of revelations about overbroad government surveillance, particularly by the National Security Agency (NSA).
ECPA reform won't solve everything — its focus is on criminal investigations, while the NSA's activities center on national security investigations.
But ECPA reform is a major part of the solution. It is bipartisan and has the wide support of the tech community and advocacy groups across the ideological spectrum.
The bill has been through multiple hearings and two committee markups.
Now is the time for Congress to finally step-up and give the public what it deserves: an updated ECPA reform bill that ensures our email, online documents, and data in the cloud are protected from warrantless searches.
If you agree, click here and call or email your elected Members of Congress and urge them to co-sponsor the Yoder-Graves bill and reform ECPA.
Also ask Members to oppose an amendment that would allow the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to obtain content without a warrant, a provision that would open up the floodgates for other government regulatory agencies like the IRS to skirt the Fourth Amendment and get warrantless access to content in the cloud.
If you run your own website or blog, link to Vanishing Rights. Spread the word on your social media. Share wisely, and take care.
AirTies & Octoshape Offer Global OTT IPTV Platform
Octoshape, an industry leader in cloud-based over-the-top (OTT) streaming technology and AirTies Wireless Networks, a leading supplier of advanced technology to the broadcast and broadband industry, today announced a partnership for high quality OTT Internet-protocol-television (IPTV) delivery, fueled by customer production launches with premium content.
The AirTies - Octoshape solution combines the best of both companies, leveraging AirTies' proven operator class set-top box (STB) architecture and incorporating Octoshape's disruptive video acceleration technologies. The video acceleration is achieved by optimizing standard streaming formats to be delivered via high performance Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard, multicast-enabled protocols over the public Internet.
The AirTies product range includes market leading, compact, multi-format, high-definition (HD) IP STBs for cable, IPTV, WebTV/OTT, video-on-demand (VoD), and home media applications, that have powerful and flexible HTML5, HBBTV and JavaScript engines.
The production roll-out of the STB complements the efforts of a leading European satellite broadcaster to develop a fully-functional, high quality OTT IPTV experience. The service expands the reach of the content to any Internet connected location around the world.
The combined and integrated solution leverages Octoshape's multi-path and multi-source capabilities that dynamically route traffic around congestion, facilitating TV quality video and guaranteeing uptime to broadband connected devices.
"Integrating Octoshape's InfiniteHD breaks the barriers of geographical reach and TV quality viewing for OTT IPTV where traditional streaming solutions fall short," says Bulent Celebi Founder and Chairman at AirTies Wireless Networks. "Watching an AirTies-Octoshape powered experience is equal or even better than a traditional broadcast equivalent. The combined solution enables our customers to increase their consumer footprint by addressing subscribers beyond their network boundaries and reducing time to market."
"The partnership with AirTies is another major step forward in enabling the transition from broadcast TV to broadband TV on connected devices. Our combined customers can now enjoy the same TV quality, scale, and economics that traditional broadcast systems have historically guaranteed" said Michael Koehn Milland, CEO of Octoshape. "Our joint solution represents a major opportunity for our customers to increase revenues by offering services in new markets, at the same time enabling the Internet as a true TV scale medium."
DDN & ASG Offer Private Cloud Solution for Media
DataDirect Networks (DDN) and ASG Software Solutions (ASG) have partnered to deliver an integrated solution built on DDN Web Object Scaler (WOS) and ASG-Digital Archiving (ADA) technology that will address the active archiving, collaboration, and massive storage needs of media and entertainment companies today.
A large international Media & Entertainment Post Production company was facing problems handling very large amounts of data including movies, documentaries, trailers, etc. The company needed to be able to archive data at very high speeds, secure it in different locations and retrieve it quickly for post-production requirements.
Any of the video sequences also had to be available to editors when requested, even during peak times and off-hours. The company turned to DDN and ASG for a high performance, high availability active archive and collaboration solution, that in the future can also address the company's need to access geographically distributed data.
The fully integrated DDN and ASG solution is based on ADA, an open archive software solution, and WOS distributed object-based storage technology. The WOS-ADA solution leverages ADA archiving and data movement capabilities in conjunction with the WOS appliance's web-scale storage capabilities, high performance read/write abilities, efficient disk utilization and geographic replication.
The result is a huge archive platform that archives billions of files and performs at 5.8 TB/hour. The post production company is equipped with 8 WOS Nodes offering a total of 720TB of storage and an ADA archiving platform powered by two data movers. ADA is collecting data on shared storage and then creating multiple archiving streams to store data on the WOS storage platform at a pace of 1.7GB/s per ADA data mover.
DDN and ASG worked together to integrate ADA with WOS technology which capitalizes on the high capacity of affordable storage and fast performance data movement. The integrated platform also delivers short-term storage with backup capacity and long-term archiving capabilities that support the preservation of data with its associated user metadata. Advanced ADA features essential to media and entertainment post production are also available, such as the partial retrieval of MXF (media files), so editors can retrieve quickly a sequence or a group of frames directly without needing to retrieve the whole movie/file.
"Our integrated solution represents the best of breed in active archiving and is built and designed for the very high performance archiving needs of today's media and entertainment post production houses. The WOS-ADA solution gives customers all the functionality and collaboration they need with the speed of a high performance, hard disk-based platform but with a cost closer to that of tape," said Michael King, DDN Director of Product Marketing.
Huawei & CCTV Cooperate on Big Data for Media Storage
Huawei has inked a strategic agreement covering big data management with China Central Television (CCTV) .
Under the agreement, Huawei and CCTV will jointly develop an energy-saving high-density media resource storage system, which will provide large capacity and high performance storage, improve media resource access and management efficiency, and save energy by 60% to 80%.
By the end of August 2013, Huawei had deployed 330 data centers around the world, including 70 cloud data centers. It cooperates with over 260 cloud computing customers worldwide in the exploration of cloud business value-added services.
During the first quarter of 2013, Huawei says its storage shipment ranked first in the Greater China region and it ranked eighth in the world. At the same time, the company's server shipments were among the top three in China.
BitTorrent Tests Self-Serve "Bundles" for Publishers
Excerpted from Billboard Report by Alex Pham
BitTorrent, a San Francisco, CA company founded by the creator of the BitTorrent file transfer protocol, on Wednesday released a test version of its Bundles product, a self-service platform that would allow content creators to release content in exchange for email addresses and, eventually, monetary contributions.
The company has worked with dozens of musicians, writers, and filmakers over the past two years to build out the Bundles concept, most recently with artists such as Jet Life, Linkin Park and Kaskade.
The idea is to let content creators put up free content to encourage downloads as well as layers of additional content behind a "gate" that downloaders can unlock by completing an action, such as submitting their email addresses, sharing the content, taking a survey, or entering a contest.
The 44 Bundles released so far have been "handcrafted," said Matt Mason, BitTorrent's Vice President of Marketing, making Bundles a fairly labor-intensive endeavor.
The self-serve platform, now available to publishers via a "closed alpha," is a step at automating the process of putting together Bundles to make available to the estimated 170 million people who use BitTorrent each month. The initial version will only allow creators to collect email addresses, but later versions will incorporate other features, including the ability to charge for access to a premium content tier.
So far, the company has not charged a fee for helping artists produce Bundles and doesn't plan to do so with the self-serve option while it's still testing the service, Mason said. What won't change, however, is the ability for creators to keep all the customer data that they collect from their Bundles -- largely because the data goes directly to the artist, rather than through BitTorrent.
Earlier Bundles have generated high rates of opt-in emails, sharing and downloads, as Billboard reported earlier. What remains to be seen, however, is how willing BitTorrent users will be to paying for content.
Dell Plans Cloud Computing Workstation-as-a-Service (WaaS)
Excerpted from V3 Report by Daniel Robinson
Dell is looking at how to deliver a workstation-as-a-service (WaaS) cloud computing offering in future, whereby users will be able to remotely access demanding applications running in a data center rather than on a workstation box sitting under their desk.
The move was disclosed in a V3 interview with Rik Thwaites, Dell's head of business development in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as Dell unveiled its new mobile and desktop precision workstation models based on the latest Intel Haswell Core chips and Xeon processors.
Thwaites warned that this is a long-term project, and that Dell is carefully looking to build up a picture of how best to deliver such a service through 2013 and 2014 before it is likely to see the light of day.
"We're looking at enabling ways we can move performance from under the desk and into the data center. We're not saying this is the only way to go, because there are always going to be people who want to have a workstation at their desk, but there is a growing interest because of the benefits of centralizing applications and data," he said.
"We're building a good picture of who is able to use that type of technology, and that will probably set the scene for who we may be able to offer the cloud-type workstation as a service to. There will be certain markets and user types that are going to lend themselves to it more readily than others, and as we go through 2013 and 2014, we will build up a picture of how we are going to enable it," Thwaites explained.
Dell already offers a portfolio of solutions known as Dell Desktop Virtualization Solutions (DVS) that enable enterprise customers to build their own virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) offering desktop-as-a-service (DaaS). These are typically used to serve workers with business applications running on a hosted Windows desktop.
The problem with remotely running workstation workloads the same way is that they tend to have diverse requirements, with some applications calling for high-performance 3D graphics while others benefit more from massively parallel number-crunching capabilities.
"It's not quite the same as offering DaaS, which is very horizontal and all you need is a CPU and integrated graphics does the trick. With workstation applications being so diverse, a little bit more thought needs to go into it in terms of addressing certain markets," Thwaites said.
"We have some great building blocks with our server, storage, and networking offerings, and we are building lot of experience in virtualization generally, plus a lot of experience in workstations, but we have to try and marry that all together in a way that is meaningful to the customer," he added.
Getting support from the software vendors that produce workstation applications is also proving to be an issue, according to Thwaites.
"There's a lot of discussion and work to be done around how we interact with our software partners because there's Autodesk, which fully embraces virtualization, and Siemens with NX, which are good to go, but a lot of companies like Dassault are a little bit more resistant, shall we say," he said.
Thwaites did not specify what stumbling blocks Dell is meeting in discussions with software vendors, but these could be due to licensing issues or concerns over application performance in a virtualized environment, the latter of which he acknowledged as a challenge.
"We are learning from partnering with Citrix and Teradici on what sort of levels are acceptable in terms of response times and quality of service," he said.
"The next step is to really drive virtualization where it makes sense and where customers want this. It certainly won't replace tower and mobile workstations in their entirety," he insisted. "It's still in the planning stage and not something we're suddenly going to throw out there and do in a rush."
Verizon Expands 100G Footprint
Excerpted from Zacks Equity Research Report
Verizon Communications recently announced the expansion of its 100G network technology to the US and European markets. The company is taking up its 100G to additional 0,921 kilometers (13,000 miles) in the US and 2,600 kilometers (1,616 miles) in Europe to meet the growing network traffic demands.
The latest ethernet technological solution not only supports network traffic but also strengthens the deployment of 4G LTE services in high traffic areas and cloud usage, requiring higher bandwidth.
So far, Verizon remains successful in deploying 100G on selected areas in the US, including Atlanta to Tampa, Kansas City to Dallas, and Salt Lake City to Seattle. In Europe, the company has expanded this network infrastructure in routes between London and Paris, and London and Frankfurt. These network routes represent a high traffic zone, which can be facilitated with 100G deployments to make operations easy.
In November 2007, Verizon became the first operator in the US to successfully complete the trial of 100G technology. Several trials followed and in Mar 2011, the company deployed the 100G network in Europe, thereby expanding infrastructure and performance for its customers. Following the European launch, Verizon successfully launched the network technology in several US markets.
The appetite for cloud based and video streaming services has increased in the past few years. Increasing penetration of smartphones has increased the demand for wireless data services. Unprecedented uses of these services are driving bandwidth demand for major carriers including archrival AT&T.
We believe Verizon is expanding its 100G technology to meet this huge bandwidth demand. Additionally, the expansion will build on the company's leading position in the Ethernet market, thereby enhancing the end-users experience.
Verizon, which operates with other telecom companies like Sprint Nextel and CenturyLink has a Zacks Rank 3.
Google to NSA: You'll Have to Take our Data the Hard Way
Excerpted from InfoWorld Report by David Linthicum
According to the Washington Post, "Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments."
A series of revelations by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden shows that the United States, the United Kingdom, and perhaps other governments routinely spy on a broad range of Internet services, not in the targeted ways most people were led to believe.
With this response, Google sends the message that it won't make it easy for governments to quietly conduct mass-spying efforts, but instead will force the government to explicitly acknowledge its spying, such as through court orders. This also indicates that Google, like other cloud computing providers, views the NSA scandal as a potential market killer. They are all in damage control mode, pushing out new privacy technology aimed at protecting data.
However, most experts understand that encryption is not a cure-all for data security. "Encrypting information flowing among data centers will not make it impossible for intelligence agencies to snoop on individual users of Google services, nor will it have any effect on legal requirements that the company comply with court orders or valid national security requests for data," the Washington Post story notes. "However, we do know that widespread use of encryption technology makes mass surveillance more difficult -- whether conducted by governments or other sophisticated hackers."
In other words, if Google and others apply greater security measures -- particularly if they develop ones not surreptitiously weakened by the government, which has happened for years, according to Snowden -- the government will move on if the data is too hard or impossible to access, or get a court order to obtain the keys from the data owner. If that occurs, at least the owner of the data will receive a legal heads-up.
As the implications of the NSA spying scandal continue to sink in, more cloud providers will seek ways to keep existing customers and recruit new ones by offering better and more secure cloud-based platforms. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and others are moving in the same direction as Google. You can count on more encryption and security services. Indeed, this could spawn another wave of innovation, with startups focused on keeping your data away from the government, more so than away from hackers.
5 Takeaways from Amazon's Public Sector Summit
Excerpted from Washington Post Report by Mohana Ravindranath
Amazon held its fourth annual public sector cloud summit Tuesday, marketing its Internet-based cloud offerings to federal and public sector clients.
Attendance for the conference, this year held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, has been growing — this year about 2,500 public and private sector representatives registered. In 2010, attendance was about 100.
Patrick Gallagher, Director of the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Frank Baitman, the Health and Human Services Department's Chief Information Officer, delivered keynote speeches. In break-out sessions, representatives from Amazon, smaller tech companies that deliver Amazon's services, and officials from the public sector discussed cloud applications.
More than 600 government agencies and 2,400 educational institutions have implemented Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to the company. Amazon doesn't release revenue figures for its cloud offerings, but it's certainly the market leader in federal cloud computing, Gartner Analyst Lydia Leong said. The company isn't alone in the space — competitors include Verizon's Terremark — but it is one of few with a product designed specifically for federal clients, she said.
Here are a few takeaways from the summit:
1. Not everything belongs in the cloud
In his keynote address, Baitman described the Health and Human Service Department's (HHS) adoption of cloud technologies. For instance, HHS currently uses AWS to power HealthData.gov, a public online health data repository for entrepreneurs and scientists.
But Baitman noted that adoption of new technology must be strategic and cost-effective, especially in the public sector. Agencies will likely discover that not all operations necessarily work better in the cloud, though some might.
"The cloud isn't the answer for everything," he said.
2. One cloud provider won't necessarily rule the rest
For instance, HHS encourages many cloud providers to meet federal technology standards, Baitman said. An ultimate cloud solution might involve services from various providers such as Amazon and its competitors, Salesforce and Verizon's Terremark.
3. A "cloud broker" model is emerging
Tech companies can generate revenue by helping clients integrate cloud technology, instead of actually providing the cloud technology itself, Baitman explained. Many of Amazon's tech partners, including SRA and Aquilent, offer AWS and other cloud solutions, often serving as "cloud brokers".
4. There are barriers to adoption
Transitioning entire server systems to the cloud can be challenging for government clients with complex databases, said Max Peterson, Amazon Web Services' Director of Partners and Contracts: "Customers sometimes don't know where to begin."
Peterson noted that the federal security accreditation system has improved in the past two years, but federal clients are sometimes still concerned about the risks of new technology.
5. Public education may benefit from the cloud
Cloud adoption could help public schools process large volumes of learning analytics, helping educators improve material, said Karen Cator, Chief Executive of Digital Promise, an educational nonprofit.
School systems "can't afford the capacity required to manage a server-based farm," she said.
Some states school systems — North Carolina's, for instance — are already transitioning data to the cloud, she said.
DARPA Reinvents P2P for Battlefield with Tactical Torrents
Excerpted from Ars Technica Report by Sean Gallagher
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently conducted a field test of a technology that could make it possible for troops on the ground to share intelligence and reconnaissance data over local wireless and radio networks without having to be tethered to a server. Called the Content-Based Mobile Edge Networking (CBMEN) program, DARPA's effort is combining mobile ad-hoc networking with a peer-to-peer (P2P) technology that replicates images, documents, and other media across a range of devices—without all of the overhead of the Department of Defense's (DoD) existing intelligence-sharing network.
In the short term, the technology being developed by the CBMEN program could find its way into the field in Afghanistan or on missions where the military needs to share data without phoning home over its global network, including humanitarian operations in response to disasters that have knocked out key communications infrastructure. But the technology could also benefit first responders and relief agencies and could create the basis for data sharing between organizations because it can be deployed on commercial smartphones.
In late August, DARPA conducted the test of Phase I of CBMEN at Fort AP Hill in Virginia. The software developed by the program was loaded onto Android smartphones with cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity, as well as on UHF- and L-band- capable Rifleman Radios based on the Joint Tactical Radio System standard. Rifleman Radios are relatively lightweight, wearable radios that allow simultaneous voice and data transmission and can be jacked into computers and biometric data collection devices via standard interfaces such as USB and serial connections.
The CBMEN software is in some ways like P2P file-sharing software, except that it pushes content out to other devices on the network rather than simply serving up responses to download requests. Each device acts as a server, broadcasting availability of its content over Wi-Fi, cellular, or radio networks and then synchronizing with other CBMEN-equipped devices as they discover and join the network. As a result, all the content within the cloud of devices gets passed to each new member device without their users having to take any action.
The test was performed using a scenario out of recent military history. Two squads were sent out on foot patrol in search of a "simulated person of interest." The first squad had identifying information on the suspect; as the squads came within communications range, that information was synchronized to the second squad's devices, which they were then able to use to identify and apprehend the target.
DARPA has begun the second phase of the CBMEN test program, in which the agency wants to demonstrate it can provide "improved war-fighting mission support in a complex joint-content sharing environment" — allowing Army and Marine Corps units to share data across multiple types of networks, using additional commercial smartphones and military radios.
The Cloud Era Begins for Enterprise Tech
Excerpted from New York Times Report by Quentin Hardy
Let's say it: Last summer was the beginning of the end for the old guard in what is still the biggest part of technology — business spending on everything from servers to software. This fall begins a new competition for the hearts and minds of corporate customers.
Consider a few of summer's events. Dell started to go private in the face of eroding personal computer (PC) demand. Hewlett-Packard once again announced lower revenue, and had more executive reshuffles. Microsoft's chief executive, Steven Ballmer, resigned, then in the last big weekend of summer bought the handset business of a deeply weakened Nokia.
That last step, an effort to build up mobility, is at the heart of Microsoft's efforts to be relevant in a new world of cloud computing, smartphones and tablets. So was VMware's announcement that it is building out its cloud business and changing its sales strategy globally.
With autumn, we begin the new round of tech announcements, the way Detroit used to announce next year's car models. What you should look for is how the old guard adapts to the cloud, and how the new guys aim to consolidate disparate offerings and win trust.
The world now passing away consisted of business systems dominated by computer servers and personal computers. The new one subsumes these into cloud computing and devices like smartphones and tablets. The inability of companies like Microsoft and Dell to cope quickly enough with this change led to their current problems. The steady, thorough way that companies like Amazon and Salesforce have used the new technology to go after their elders' business is what makes them contenders.
Other challengers include Google, Workday and NetSuite. There are many more, but these companies in particular have both the assets and the money to build comprehensive offerings in software and services, and also to afford something like service guarantees in what many see as a still-unstable and security-challenged world.
One way to do that is to become the unifying agent for all the data that companies are spreading across their servers and cloud services. On Friday, Salesforce announced Salesforce Files, which searches through things companies have stored in Sharepoint, Dropbox, Google Drive and other storage and collaboration services.
"The way to remove friction among all these repositories is to virtualize everything into a common repository," said Nasi Jazayeri, general manager of Salesforce Chatter, the company's corporate collaboration product. He added, "We're not trying to compete with the other repositories — we're trying to make it easier for people to find things."
Salesforce wasn't trying to compete with the repositories because Chatterbox, its effort to do so, was a dud. But if Salesforce becomes a central hub for sorting diverse information, that loss can be a win.
Workday, which has announced that it is putting data-analysis services in its cloud-based human resources and financial software, may be making a similar move to consolidate information for customers. "Big data analytics is unifying," said Dan Beck, Workday's vice president of financials and analytics, since it may draw from information in, say, a Workday database and an SAP or Twitter database. "We're broadening out our applications footprint. Customers expect that."
In the past several months, Amazon has introduced a "trusted advisor" program that inspects a company's use of Amazon Web Services, its cloud service, and suggests ways it can be better used. It has had a global series of "summits" aimed at ordinary business people along with skilled technologists, and built out a lot of big data offerings.
Google has also expanded its corporate cloud strategy, enlisting more developers and guaranteeing higher performance for its cloud. It is also selling new and different ways people can use Google for big data analysis.
Big data is being sold as a way to build efficiency and gain insights. But for many of these companies, offering big data services is also a way to consolidate data for customers. If you control information, you are almost by default the trusted partner, or what is known in the business as "the single throat to choke if something goes wrong." Jobs like that pay a premium.
Some of these older enterprise tech companies, which also include Cisco and Oracle, will make the transition, just as incumbents like IBM made it from mainframe computers to servers and PCs. Oracle's approach is to offer a complete system, making it a single throat to choke. IBM already seems to be working both camps in the new world, offering its own systems and consulting with the new players. But just as surely as all of them, in their time, supplanted big incumbents, there will be other companies coming along to topple them.
Demand for Cloud Storage: No End in Sight
Excerpted from CIO Insight Report by Karen Frenkel
Companies of all sizes are increasingly moving operations to the cloud, according to a survey, "A Snapshot Into Cloud Storage Adoption," conducted by storage solutions company TwinStrata, of 148 people who recently attended the Cloud Computing Expo in New York.
The report updates surveys that TwinStrata released in June 2012 and January 2013. The company recognizes that its sample skews toward organizations favorably disposed toward cloud computing, but TwinStrata believes analyzing the practices and views of this cloud-mature audience may help predict the market's future direction.
Last year, market research firm IHS iSuppli estimated that storage densities are growing 20 percent annually, enabling organizations to fit more capacity in less space.
But according to The Gartner Group, storage capacity demands are growing 40 — 60 percent annually, significantly outpacing density growth, the TwinStrata report notes.
Most organizations quickly face capacity demands that outstrip their on-premises storage. Three in five respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, "It seems like we are always running out of storage." Savvy IT professionals recognize this impending issue and are reacting accordingly, says TwinStrata.
"We've passed the tipping point—across all cloud initiatives," the report says, "more people have actually deployed cloud services than plan to deploy them."
Public Cloud Computing Skyrockets
Excerpted from Midsize Insider Report by Marissa Tejada
Public cloud computing is gaining steam, according to a new study by IDC. Midsize firms today are more seriously considering public clouds on account of their proven economy and speed. As vendors take a closer look at security concerns, growing firms will certainly contribute to greater growth in the public cloud market.
According to IDC's latest look at the public cloud market, services will add up to $47.4 billion this year and will more than double within the next five years to more than $107 billion. It is a significant increase, says the IT research firm, because the public cloud market's compound annual growth rate (CAGR) adds up to more than 23 percent. That is five times faster than the growth rate of the IT industry as a whole.
The findings, which were detailed in an article in InfoTech Spotlight, pointed to the growth of the third platform that is run by cloud services and that includes big data, social media and mobile technologies. IDC analysts observe that cloud computing is becoming more of a core for "business-as-a-service," which is valuable to IT pros at any level.
Private clouds have traditionally been the preferred option for companies very concerned with security. However, according to IDC's analysts, the public cloud computing options also equally enable privacy and control features.
This opens up the door to more public cloud options for IT professionals at midsize firms who are tasked with finding the right provider to meet their firm's IT information infrastructure goals. In the past, certain security objections may have held a firm back from public cloud adoption. The surge in the market and demand for various security features is quickly changing what vendors can offer growing firms.
The article highlights the fact that the public cloud model is now offering a good blend of private and public technologies, including the virtual private cloud (VPC). VPCs are public but leverage multitenant public cloud services. At the same time, the public cloud's increased demand naturally will result in increased affordability, which is always good news for midsize firms that must scrutinize all costs and investments down to the last dollar.
As a result of the increased demand for public cloud services, vendors will continue to push services that entice companies to adopt the technology. An increase in security options has already changed the minds of companies that previously felt more at ease with private cloud computing. Midsize firms can take advantage of more choices in the public cloud market that are geared toward their needs, are increasingly affordable and enable them to be as competitive as possible while keeping their data safe.
Guess Which Stocks Are Leading the Cloud Computing ETF
Excerpted from Fox Business Report
Just enough folks know there is a cloud computing exchange-traded fund (ETF).
That is to say the First Trust ISE Cloud Computing Index Fund (SKYY) has nearly $117 million assets in under management (AUM) comfortably ahead of the $100 million watermark that so many ETF analysts and pundits put so much faith into despite the lack of empirical evidence that an ETF's AUM total is anything more than a superficial metric.
The important point is investors can tap the cloud with SKYY. Now just over two years old, SKYY's staying power and ability to accumulate assets have validated an ETF that was heavily criticized as being to much of a niche play upon debut.
The really important point about SKYY is that the ETF is up 16 percent in the past 90 days. Explaining SKYY's recent success is easy. And surprising. Surprising because the stocks that have ignited the ETF's rally are not the first ones investors well-versed in cloud computing think of when they think of this sub-sector. Facebook and Netflix are SKYY's two largest holdings, combining for about 9.5 percent of the fund's weight.
Netflix has previously helped SKYY shoot higher and since the stock has more than tripled than tripled this year, it has been helping SKYY quite a bit.
To be precise, Facebook is 5.28 percent of SKYY's weight and Netflix is 4.18 percent. In the case of Facebook, there are several other ETFs with heftier allocations to Mark Zuckerberg's company.
Although about 80 ETFs hold shares of Netflix and over five percent of the company's $18.1 billion market capitalization is held in those ETFs, only SKYY and the PowerShares NASDAQ Internet Portfolio (PNQI) have "decent" weights to the stock. That will presumably change as the market value on Netflix expands, but for now ETF investors that want some Netflix need to opt for SKYY or PNQI.
Facebook and Netflix exposure has helped SKYY hit a string of new all-time highs. Still, some may wonder how these stocks even qualify for admission to a cloud computing ETF.
It is not a secret. SKYY's index sets aside 10 percent of its weight to technology conglomerate companies and makes room for "Non Pure Play Cloud Computing Companies: Companies that focus outside the cloud computing space but provide goods and services in support of the cloud computing space," according to First Trust.
If there is a knock on SKYY, and it should be said knocking this ETF has not been the way to go, it is valuation. Not surprising given that Netflix is not exactly a cheap stock. Nor is Amazon, another 3.1 percent of SKYY's weight. SKYY sports a P/E ratio of almost 27, a price-to-book ratio of 3.75 and a price-to-sales ratio of three, according to First Trust data.
For more on ETFs, click here.
Joyent Cloud Co-Founder Steps Down
Excerpted from InformationWeek Report by Charles Babcock
Jason Hoffman, who co-founded the only cloud that runs SmartOS, an open source version of Solaris, is stepping down at Joyent after 10 years as CTO.
In a blog posted Monday evening entitled "The Next Chapter," he wrote: "I've loved the process of building Joyent into what it is today, as any respectable founder wishes, you look for people better than yourself who can go execute and you let them do that. The company is in great shape, with a brilliant management team and a change-the-world technology vision in very capable hands with Bryan Cantrill."
Cantrill is SVP of Engineering at Joyent and a former Sun Microsystems Engineer. He authored the Dtrace analytics probe for Sun Microsystems storage appliances, which was later adapted for use in Solaris. SmartOS at Joyent also uses Dtrace to insure reliable uptime and performance in its cloud servers. Cantrill was a winner of The Wall Street Journal's top Technology Innovation award in 2006.
"Although my departure is undoubtedly bittersweet, the company is in a phenomenal place right now," Hoffman said. Hoffman termed the whole management team "brilliant," without mentioning executives other than Cantrill. He also wrote: "As an advisor, I will stay closely connected to Joyent."
Hoffman once disclosed that he built his first large-scale computing cluster after quitting his job as a pathologist to research a possible cure for his mother, who was suffering with breast cancer. He found that existing clusters used in medical research had too many choke points to be used effectively. The result was an architecture for Joyent.
Hoffman was an unapologetic advocate of cloud computing. Several years ago, in answer to a question from the audience at a discussion in San Francisco, he said, "I think I'm a better builder of infrastructure than you are."
In his farewell blog, he noted that the "'think differently' spirit of innovation is built into our DNA, and we've accomplished many amazing things living by it. It's also something I value, and for that reason, I've made the decision to embody it in a new way by moving on to pursue new ideas and projects. I've loved the process of building Joyent into what it is today," he wrote.
Healthcare Cloud Changing with a Vengeance
Excerpted from Government Health IT Report by Tom Sullivan
Even though healthcare is often perceived as being behind other major industries in cloud computing, that is changing and doing so perhaps even faster than previously thought.
"We were really surprised with these research results showing that 60 percent of the C-suite rates the need for cloud computing on a 4 or a 5 of a five-point scale," said John Haughton, MD, CMIO of Covisint, a vendor that provides what it calls a cloud engagement platform. "It's no longer, 'Do I have to go to the cloud?' Now we're at a majority saying, 'I really need to engage.' And we didn't expect that to happen so quickly."
The research Haughton referenced is a study shared exclusively with Government Health IT prior to its publication that Covisint sponsored and Porter Research conducted.
The report, "Healthcare Industry Reaches Tipping Point: CIOs Now Demand the Cloud for Shared Savings and Interoperability," found that one-third of EHRs lack critical population health management functionality including reporting capabilities, despite the demand for integrated workflow isolated processes are rampant and shared savings programs, ACOs included, are all driving healthcare organizations to consider cloud-based solutions across the spectrum of technologies.
What's more, Porter's survey found that 58 percent of responding CIOs rated their confidence in cloud computing to securely access information from disparate locations at either a 4 or 5.
"Healthcare is changing with a vengeance, and companies who excel at improving the cost and quality of care will benefit from these findings," said Cynthia Porter, president of Porter Research, in a soon-to-be published media release. "We set out to determine where the true, industry game-changers were, and the results were eye-popping."
Porter pointed to the aforementioned statistic that "58 percent of the nation's leading healthcare executives place a high importance in cloud-based technologies," explaining that it was particularly surprising in an "industry still greater than 70 percent paper-based."
In addition to functionality-lacking EHRs, the move to shared savings and risk, accountable care organizations specifically and the notion of a care continuum overall, make it important to have information available and interoperable across organizations.
"So it moves that CIO's perspective to, 'I need to access this information and the only place it lives is in the cloud, and I need to get at it in a secure, reliable way,'" Haughton said. "That's the tipping point. We're on the downstream side and it's happening really quite fast."
Coming Events of Interest
CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2013 - October 27th-29th in Las Vegas, NV. Two major 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; and the impact of mobile cloud computing and Big Data analytics in this space.
International CES - January 7th-10th in Las Vegas, NV. The International CES is the global stage for innovation reaching across global markets, connecting the industry and enabling CE innovations to grow and thrive. The International CES is owned and produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $209 billion US consumer electronics industry.
CONNECTING TO THE CLOUD - January 8th in Las Vegas, NV. This DCIA Conference within CES will highlight the very latest advancements in cloud-based solutions that are now revolutionizing the consumer electronics (CE) sector. Special attention will be given to the impact on consumers, telecom industries, the media, and CE manufacturers of accessing and interacting with cloud-based services using connected devices.
CCISA 2013 – February 12th–14th in Turin, Italy. The second international special session on Cloud Computing and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and its Applications within the 22nd Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, and Network-Based Processing.
NAB Show - April 5th-10th in Las Vegas, NV. From broadcasting to broader-casting, NAB Show has evolved over the last eight decades to continually lead this ever-changing industry. From creation to consumption, NAB Show has proudly served as the incubator for excellence — helping to breathe life into content everywhere.
CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2014 - May 13th-14th in Washington, DC. Three major conference tracks will zero in on the latest advances in the application of cloud-based solutions in three key economic sectors: government, healthcare, and financial services.
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