September 23, 2013
Volume XLV, Issue 5
One Month to CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2013
This week marks the one-month countdown to 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." What are the top five reasons to SIGN-UP NOW for CCW:2103?
5. Find out before anyone else how major players in the Media & Entertainment Sector — like ABC-Disney-ESPN, Comcast, DirecTV, Netflix, Sony Games, Warner Bros., etc. — intend to exploit cloud-based solutions in 2014… and just as important, what they won't be doing in the cloud anytime soon.
4. Be the first to learn what mobile cloud computing movers-and-shakers — such as AT&T, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, NTT Data, Sprint Nextel, Toshiba, etc. — have in store for next year to dramatically accelerate "Content Everywhere"… and the already exploding "Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD)" phenomenon.
3. Preview where the top Cloud Computing Leaders — including Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Rackspace, TransLattice, etc. -- plan to take the industry in 2014… and have your questions about what these new directions mean to you personally answered by them.
2. Hear the warnings from the most insightful analysts, advocates, and industry observers — like ABI Research, CDT, Hughes Hubbard, and the authors of 21st Century Television: The Players, The Viewers, The Money and Securing the Cloud, etc. — about what could burst the Cloud Computing Bubble for some entities… and how to leverage efforts and innovations already in progress to blow away obstacles standing in the way of success. And the most important reason you MUST ATTEND —
1. CCW:2013 is the single best way to prepare yourself with the knowledge, resources, and contacts you need to advance in your career during 2014 amidst the highly kinetic activities and rapidly expanding markets developing around Cloud Computing.
You'll network with speakers, featured delegates, and exhibitors — in addition to the above participants — ranging literally from A10 Networks to ZYNC Render.
The fast-growing list includes Aspera, Autodesk, BrightLine, Citrix, CSS Corporation, DataDirect Networks (DDN), Dell SecureWorks, DSA, eGistics, Edwards Wildman Palmer, Equilibrium, Gaikai, GenosTV, Hughes Hubbard, Intertrust Technologies Corporation, Itron, Kwaai Oak, Las Vegas Sands Corporation, MasterControl, MP3 TechSupport, The PADEM Group, Rafelson Media, Red Bend Software, SAP America, Savvis, SoftServe, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Trend Micro, Unitas Global, V2Solutions, VASCO Data Security, ViaWest, and more.
DCINFO readers are encouraged to get actively involved. Please click here for exhibiting and sponsoring information and here to apply to speak at CCW:2013.
March on Washington before Heading to Vegas
Edward Snowden laid everything out: The National Security Agency (NSA) watches us online. Its overreaching surveillance creates a climate of fear, chills free speech, and violates our basic human rights — and it operates without any meaningful oversight. Its corruption of security threatens to break the fabric of the Internet.
But a movement is building to change this. And we're about to take the next step.
On the 12th anniversary of the signing of the US PATRIOT Act, thousands of people from across the political spectrum will rally in Washington, DC to protest mass surveillance.
Please click here to learn more, get updates, and sign-up to attend.
At the STOP WATCHING US rally on Saturday October 26th, attendees will remind our elected officials that they work for us, not the NSA, and that they must reform the laws that have led to the NSA's abuses and hold the NSA accountable for its anti-democratic programs.
More than half a million of us have already signed petitions since the NSA's unconstitutional surveillance was revealed, and dozens of members of Congress have stood up to introduce bills to reign in the NSA.
But these bills — and our voices — need to coalesce as a movement to end this spying.
October 26th is our chance to show the country that this is not a small issue and we won't quit until it's fixed.
Join us! STOP WATCHING US is backed by a diverse coalition of more than 100 public advocacy organizations and companies from across ideological lines.
This will be the biggest rally for privacy the US has ever seen.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 As we announced here last week, the new Vanishing Rights went live on Wednesday, supported by a Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) led coalition, which includes the DCIA, that has now grown to more than two dozen organizations.
Welcome to the Internet Association and Internet Infrastructure Coalition, our newest Vanishing Rights coalition members.
The re-launch of this website, which urges the US Congress to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), was highlighted in Politico and The Hill and is now drawing a tremendous response.
This includes the decision of the CCA and DCIA to dedicate our Sunday afternoon October 27th session at CLOUD COMPUTING WEST 2013 (CCW:2013) to a town-hall meeting on this most important topic.
ECPA, one of the Internet's most outdated laws, allows hundreds of federal entities as well as state and local agencies to demand access to data stored in the cloud without a warrant.
As the National Security Agency (NSA) scandal so publicly exposed, the most critical threat to ongoing advancement of the cloud computing industry today is privacy.
Our discussion will focus on what industry participants and supporters can do now to improve security, particularly against warrantless federal government intervention.
Other responses include Congressmen Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Jose Serrano (D-NY) signing-on with 137 co-sponsors of the Yoder-Graves ECPA reform bill (H.R. 1852) in the House of Representatives, the chamber where our efforts center now, to require government agents to get a warrant before accessing people's private content on the Internet.
This is the companion bill to the bipartisan Leahy-Lee ECPA reform bill (S. 607), which has now passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The CDT and other coalition members are now blogging about the issue: ACLU, American Library Association, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, CCIA, Citizens Against Government Waste, Defending Dissent Foundation Digital Liberty, Internet Infrastructure Coalition, Liberty Coalition, Open Technology Institute, and Techdirt.
Mashable's coverage of the re-launch included, "A coalition of digital civil liberties groups, joined by Internet companies like Reddit, FoxyProxy, and DuckDuckGo, are making a renewed push for yet a new bill in a fight to reform a 1986 online privacy law that privacy advocates deem outdated. The battle has been ongoing for over a year, and the reform is intended to shore up email privacy and extend Fourth Amendment protections to Internet communications."
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.
Cloud Activity Set to Explode
Excerpted from Fierce Enterprise Communications Report by David Weldon
Research firm International Data Corp (IDC) recently heralded the beginning of a new phase for cloud services, dubbed Chapter Two, in which the scale of cloud adoption will grow significantly but will have a more user- and solution-driven approach.
The anticipation is that IT departments will become more innovative and will have more competitive cloud application offerings in the future.
Former research analyst Antonio Piraino, who now serves as CTO at ScienceLogic, believes the cloud market is ready to explode with new activity.
"More and more, the large enterprises have woken up to cloud computing, and more of them are outsourcing applications to the cloud," Piraino told Fierce Enterprise Communications. "Two-thirds of our customers are now management service providers."
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Indeed, it seems like everyone either wants to be in the cloud or become a cloud services provider, Piraino notes.
Driving much of this activity is the aging of the IT infrastructure at many organizations. Systems are becoming so complex and costly that organizations are desperate for an alternative solution.
"The tools of yesterday can't cut it anymore. Everyone is having to upgrade their infrastructure," Piraino notes.
Piraino, who was previously a research analyst at Tier 1/451, says a majority of ScienceLogic's customers are losing control over their workload deployments. They are seeking greater automation because of the amount of traffic and devices they are struggling to manage.
Those organizations are increasingly finding the solution in the cloud, and cloud adoption is truly as aggressive as recent studies have suggested, Piraino says. While he says cloud computing isn't really new, he cites a huge spike in activity since last year.
Piraino also agrees with studies that forecast the rise in hybrid cloud computing models. He believes the majority of organizations will take a hybrid approach within the next three or four years. That will enable IT departments to work on more innovative and mission-critical initiatives for their organizations. Applications development will increasingly go to the cloud, he says.
The good news for users is that all of this pressure in the market is forcing cloud providers to improve integration and automation, Piraino says: "The market is being led more by the vendors than the customers."
But there is a down side, Piraino adds, since concerns over data security in the cloud are very justified. And as organizations move more of their applications to the cloud, what they realize in operational savings may be offset by higher costs for security.
CET Market to Reach $22.6 Billion in 2016
Market Monitor, a service of 451 Research, projects that the cloud-enabling technologies (CETs) market revenue will increase at a 21% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach $22.6 billion in 2016.
The recently published Market Monitor Cloud-Enabling Technologies overview report defines CETs as technologies that are installed, delivered, and consumed on-premises.
The report examines 143 vendors, segmented into three primary categories: virtualization, security, and automation and management. CETs, by definition, are not hosted by third parties. Report highlights include these points.
Virtualization, the foundation of cloud computing, accounts for the majority of total market revenue, with a 66% share. But, as the most mature market segment, it also has the lowest CAGR through 2016 (16%).
Automation and Management, a broad category that includes incumbent technologies and cloud platforms, will continue to grow at a healthy 28% CAGR as users move up the stack from first-tier virtualization implementation.
At the top of the stack is security, with no single vendor dominating. This sector has the highest CAGR through 2016 at 29%.
Since September 2012, there have been 12 significant acquisitions in the CET space. Going forward, we expect to see more of the same as firms look to either bulk up their cloud offerings or make an initial 'roll of the dice' in the cloud market.
Revenue generated by public firms accounted for 87% of the total, with private firms accounting for the remaining 13%.
Public vendors accounted for 21% of the total companies in the CET space, with private vendors accounting for 79%.
A smaller percentage of companies are generating less than $5 million in revenue than the year before: nearly half of the vendors in 2012 generated less than $5 million in revenue (44%), compared with 58% in 2011.
Roughly one-third of vendors fall into the midmarket range (defined as $5-to-25 million), up from 27% in the midmarket the year before. Only six vendors have revenue (deriving strictly from CET) over $500 million.
"The drivers of growth are twofold," said Victoria Simons, Research Analyst, 451 Research. "Initial adoption of the cloud is driven by the need for cost reduction and more efficient computing options. As the infrastructure is virtualized, customers then need tools to manage, control and secure their IT environments to fully realize the benefits of virtual/cloud environments. We see the cloud-enabling technologies market growing strongly as large enterprises and SMBs continue along the path of flexible computing."
What Is Big Data? And Why It's Important
Excerpted from Cloud Computing Path by Pravin Anchan
Big Data is a term recently invented that applies to huge amounts of information. Big data has been around for quite some time, but only recently with the advent of extremely powerful low cost computing has this filtered down to general use.
In comparison to normal data stored in databases, big data is extremely gigantic in proportion, approaching sizes of terabytes or even exabytes, collected at frequent intervals.
Big data may not be structured and could be a random collection of information including machine data, transactions taking place, social data, web visit data, and so on.
Consider that 90% of existing data has been created in the last two years and data production will increase by 50% in 2020 compared to 2010 growing by 2.5 billion GB every day.
Today an average person processes more data in a day than the average person did in his entire lifetime in the 1500s.
Information and analytics based on big data will power business in the future, helping raise efficiency and generate revenues. Big data is growing in importance and value, with related technologies and markets assessed to be in excess of $16 billion by 2015.
The largest contributors to big data are social media; CRM data; web visit analysis (such as those on Facebook and Twitter where hits are in millions); data collected from machinery; web logs; data generated during scientific, meteorology, environmental and biological experiments, and research; tracking e-commerce data; and transactional data generated by business trade portals.
Big data covers a huge amount of complex information that can prove useful after extensive analysis.
Big data is essentially unstructured, large, and does not fit in with standard database relational systems.
Data can be so large, as when derived from a number of sensors, that querying it would be difficult with normal tools.
On the other hand, voluminous data sets could contain essentially basic and small information, as happens in the case of sensor derived data. In some cases, such as mobile telephony or web streaming, data is big but defining parameters can be broken down to a few items.
A typical big data set running into terabytes or exabytes cannot be processed the regular way using traditional relational database management systems. Big data needs hundreds of servers running parallel software simultaneously to come up with meaningful analysis and statistics after sifting through the voluminous information.
When it comes to big data volume, speed of processing it and the data types involved assume significance.
According to Gartner, a prime research firm, big data could be high speed, high volume, or high variety information necessitating newer and advanced processing techniques to achieve the objectives of discovery and decision making.
Big data is different from business intelligence. Whereas the latter uses descriptive statistics as a forecasting tool, big data relies on inductive statistics based on non-linear systems to draw inferences, show dependencies, and predict behaviors.
Handling such unstructured data calls for new open source technologies like Hadoop that permits data processing across multiple systems.
Google too has been active in coming up with a framework termed MapReduce that delineates a parallel programming model to handle big data. The framework automatically distributes data to connected nodes for parallel processing.
Hadoop is essentially based on Mapreduce. With such hardware infrastructure data of the order of exabytes can be processed and analyzed in real time.
SAP's Hana is another tool to handle big data as is the analytic platform Arcplan. NoSQL is yet another technology that departs from the conventional to handle big data sets where the focus is on storing, accessing and reading huge data sets.
The game plan changes when companies wish to handle and analyze big data calling for radically new and more sophisticated technologies in terms of hardware and software or modifying existing systems to become capable.
With a steeply accelerating growth curve, big data is the thing of the future necessitating specially trained manpower all along the data chain including managers and analysts. Those planning a career in IT could plan on specializing in big data since there is going to a huge demand and shortage not only in the US but all over the world.
This segment is worth over $100 billion with giants such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle deeply involved in its growth.
Internet, mobile telephony, web transactions, and science will drive big data growth. EMC's Bill Schmarzo goes as far as to say that big data is evolutionary and a game changer and that if companies do not incorporate it as part of their business strategy, they are likely to drop into oblivion. Big data, according to him is not an end to itself but an enabler for business.
As the Internet grows; as automated sensors are even more widely deployed; as people use social media and online buying even more and sophisticated technologies for research the amount of big data will grow exponentially, necessitating more intense investment in terms of resources, manpower and technologies.
Just as cloud technologies paved the way for a whole new paradigm shift in manpower and technologies, big data will dictate future modes of operation and is a high growth area for all stakeholders.
The Ten Commandments of BYOD
The rapid proliferation of mobile devices entering the workplace feels like divine intervention to many IT leaders. It's as if a voice boomed down from the mountain ordering all of the employees you support to procure as many devices as possible and connect them to corporate services en masse.
"Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)" was born and employees followed with fervor. There's no sense pretending it isn't happening or saying, "We don't let our employees do that." The truth is, they're doing it already and will continue to burrow noncompliant devices into your network with or without your permission.
Forrester's study of US information workers revealed that 37% are doing something with technology before formal permissions or policies are instituted.
Further, a Gartner CIO survey determined that 80% of employees will be eligible to use their own equipment with employee data on board by 2016.
This raises the inevitable question: how will you support workforce desire to use personal apps and devices while allowing them to be productive in a secure environment that protects corporate data?
The Ten Commandments of BYOD show you how to create a peaceful, secure, and productive mobile environment:
1. Create Thy Policy Before Procuring Technology
2. Seek The Flocks' Devices
3. Enrollment Shall Be Simple
4. Thou Shalt Configure Devices Over the Air
5. Thy Users Demand Self-Service
6. Hold Sacred Personal Information
7. Part the Seas of Corporate and Personal Data
8. Monitor Thy Flock—Herd Automatically
9. Manage Thy Data Usage
10. Drink from the Fountain of ROI.
Please click here for the full report.
MSFT Deal with AT&T Shows New Path for Cloud Partnerships
Excerpted from InfoWorld Report by Serdar Yegulalp
Microsoft's newly announced joint venture with AT&T, in which AT&T customers get VPN access to Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, may be a sign of how the cloud giants are looking in novel places -- like telecom providers -- for partnerships and alliances.
Cloud vendors and telecom outfits have been slowly knitting together partnerships in which the telcos provide high-grade, high-speed data transports for customers looking to move their data into (or out of) the cloud.
AT&T teamed up with IBM late in 2012 for a similar initiative. There, customers could connect to IBM's cloud resources via AT&T's VPN, allowing protected movement of data between private and public clouds.
Before that in 2011, VMware partnered with Softbank Telecom in Japan to allow customers to shuttle data between their own private cloud and Softbank's public cloud.
Most recently, enterprise cloud host Savvis -- a subsidiary of Internet provider CenturyLink -- partnered with VMware to provide vCloud-powered colocation, again to provide businesses with a protected channel to and from the cloud.
No discussion of this issue would be complete without some mention of Verizon purchasing cloud-service provider Terremark in 2011 -- with both Verizon and Terremark having been major VMware vCloud users.
Having cloud outfits reach out to carriers and network providers as partners only makes sense. The cloud lives and dies on its network links. Consequently, the more direct a route that can be provided into and out of the cloud, the easier it is for customers to get on board — especially those with multi-terabyte migrations that require a robust and secure network.
The release for the new Microsoft-AT&T joint venture boasts that their VPN solution will provide "as much as 50 percent lower latency than the public Internet." That said, it won't be possible to test claims like that until the first half of 2014, when the partnership finally goes online.
What also remains to be seen is how exclusive these deals could get. Right now, it's in the best interests of both parties to work with as many partners as possible, but it's not unforeseeable that we could see exclusive deals between cloud and network providers, perhaps for major discounts on both the cloud resources and the network access.
Such a thing would inspire the ire of many an advocate for Net Neutrality, and given how many resources are being moved into the cloud these days, they might not be wholly wrong.
DDN Powers Business-Critical Broadcast System
Starz, a leading provider of premium subscription video programming through its flagship STARZ and ENCORE pay TV networks, has successfully implemented DataDirect Networks (DDN) GRIDScaler parallel file system and NAS solution to power its business-critical broadcast system, laying the foundation for future programming content growth.
As an industry-leader in delivering high-definition (HD), On Demand, HD on Demand, and advanced online services, Starz looked to upgrade further to a massively scalable, high-density and powerful storage platform to ensure expedited and reliable delivery of more than 600TBs of digital media for the more than 1,000 movies and original series episodes it provides to its millions of subscribers each month.
DDN leveraged its unmatched performance and industry-leading density to help Starz nearly double its storage capacity, cut in half both its transcode and data center footprints including licensing and hardware costs, and add disaster recovery capabilities without adding additional administrative overhead.
Faced with explosive data growth and constant content creation, Starz was looking to further optimize its storage intensive video and audio workflows, as well as performance-sensitive encoding processes that require frame by frame translation from videotape to storage.
The company required a storage solution that would ensure consistent scalability across its environment. With original programming increasing in both quality and scale, Starz emphasized storage performance to deliver high quality encoding and transcoding for optimal uploading and playback of content.
As the leading broadcast storage solutions provider, DDN is uniquely positioned to support all of Starz's ever-increasing digital media workflow demands while elevating disaster recovery capabilities for the organization.
Colin McGuire, Director of Infrastructure Services for Starz, said, "DDN GRIDScaler is incredibly dense, as we now support primary and DR storage in four racks, compared to the nine racks we had for our legacy system in Englewood alone. This lowers our storage Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) considerably and elevates energy and disk-performance efficiency."
"Based on our experience, we would have needed at least two more storage administrators to manage that much additional storage capacity and a DR facility as well if we had selected another solution."
"DDN's powerful storage solution has exceeded my expectations."
Joyent & Riverbed Introduce CDN Alternative
Joyent, the high-performance cloud infrastructure and big data analytics company, and Riverbed Technology, the application performance company, today announced an alliance to launch the Riverbed Stingray & Joyent Content Delivery Cloud (CDC), a fast and efficient content delivery platform for organizations looking to take back control of their content delivery while saving money.
The new offering combines Joyent's public cloud infrastructure and the Riverbed Stingray Application Delivery Controller (ADC) software to improve performance while providing greater flexibility and control to content owners and customers without the need for an expensive, traditional content delivery network (CDN).
Unlike a traditional CDN, which leverages a global network of servers to deliver content for all CDN customers, the Riverbed Stingray & Joyent CDC uses public or private infrastructure to offer a private, CDN-like experience for the delivery of a customer's content. This new solution offers a content owner flexibility and control of content delivery, while providing significant improvements for the end user.
"Building on our partnership with Riverbed, the Riverbed Stingray & Joyent CDC is a prime example of helping customers come up with more cost effective cloud solutions through innovation," said Henry Wasik, CEO, Joyent. "Better performance and lower costs can only come through insight and controls traditional CDN infrastructures can't deliver."
While companies are spending millions of dollars on their incumbent CDN, they often have concerns due to the high overall cost, shared nature of the infrastructure, and lack of controls available to customers. Riverbed and Joyent are working together to drive down these costs by supplementing, and in some cases, replacing these networks. Joyent and Riverbed are delivering the Riverbed Stingray & Joyent CDC with control features such as auto-scaling, content caching, bandwidth management, performance monitoring, and content compression.
The Stingray Traffic Manager (STM) routes the user request to the most appropriate location based on the parameters set by the application owner such as geographic proximity and required response time. In addition to routing user requests, Stingray's additional capabilities enhance the performance and security of the Riverbed Stingray & Joyent CDC with Stingray Application Firewall for deeper application level threat identification and mitigation and Stingray Aptimizer for end-user content optimization.
"Riverbed and Joyent share a passion of innovation to deliver customers an unparalleled experience," said Jeff Pancottine, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Stingray at Riverbed.
"Running the Riverbed Stingray software ADC in the Joyent cloud provides the flexibility and control content owners require. Content demands can vary widely, and now for the first time these peaks and valleys can be addressed in a cost effective way."
Octoshape & Silica Partner on Video Contribution
Excerpted from Rapid TV News Report by Gabriel Miramar-Garcia
Octoshape, which provides cloud-based over-the-top (OTT) high-definition (HD) video acceleration technology, and Latin American broadband infrastructure provider Silica Networks have announced a partnership to roll-out video distribution and contribution services across Latin America for major broadcasters and cable companies in the region.
Under the partnership, Silica Networks and Octoshape will deploy a fully managed OTT platform that leverages the Octoshape suite of multicast-enabled video acceleration and distribution technologies in managed facilities across Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.
"As our mutual clients are moving swiftly into OTT video delivery, partnering with one of the leading IP infrastructure providers was an obvious choice," said Michael Koehn Milland, CEO of Octoshape.
"Our joint platform will not only facilitate a true TV platform for distribution, but will also provide an end-to-end system for broadcasters that want to ingest, distribute and contribute content over broadband."
At the same time, Sersat, a Silica sister company, will expand the satellite content services it offers to include Octoshape-powered, IP based TV contribution services using Silica fiber-optic infrastructure locally and Octoshape's cloud services network to enable TV contribution globally.
"We think that Octoshape is the most advanced, state-of-the-art technology to bring TV quality over Internet," said Horacio Martinez, CEO of Silica/Sersat parent Datco Group.
"We are overwhelmed by the possibilities that this technology enables, and are very enthusiastic about the potential that we will unlock to our customers in Latin America. Media, corporate customers and ISPs will have a positive change in their business models and will be able to expand their client base by offering new services to new customers across new geographies."
Intel's Vision of Open Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is an important evolution in IT services delivery for the enterprise as well as for telcos, hosting companies, government agencies, and others.
Some have fully embraced cloud computing to make IT more agile, efficient, and cost-effective in the delivery of services that support business growth. Others are in the early planning stages of cloud deployments.
And, while the tools, building blocks, and best practices for the cloud are maturing, challenges to deploying cloud solutions still remain — especially as companies look to expand from private to public and hybrid cloud deployments.
Intel brings a comprehensive set of innovative technology, industry leadership, and expertise to help address key challenges in cloud computing adoption to make it easier for companies to realize the full benefits of cloud more quickly.
Intel has a vision for open cloud computing that is federated, automated, and client-aware. Realizing this vision requires a cloud infrastructure that is highly efficient, scalable, and secure, and is built on a foundation of open, interoperable, and multi-vendor solutions.
This paper looks at Intel's open cloud computing vision and the company's contributions to ease adoption and enable more efficient, secure, and scalable clouds.
Please click here for the full report.
Madonna, Vice, BitTorrent Launch Partnership
Excerpted from Fast Company Report by Neal Ungerleider
This morning, Madonna announced her latest tech project: A 17-minute-long short film to be distributed via BitTorrent and Vice's Creators Project. The film, "secretprojectrevolution," is part of a larger, Vice-curated online arts platform called "Arts for Freedom."
Madonna said, "I hope my film and other submissions to 'Art for Freedom' will be a call to action and give people a place to voice their own creative expression to help fight oppression, intolerance, and complacency."
And we all know, after all, that we have no creative expression on the Internet if not for pop stars.
BitTorrent's Matt Mason told Fast Company that it was the organization's first partnership with Madonna, and that the singer "understands the decentralized nature" of the Internet.
Vice will curate submissions to "Arts for Freedom," and the BitTorrent "Bundle" of the movie will include an interview with Madonna conducted by Vice's Eddy Moretti.
Oracle's Next Cloud Moves
Excerpted from NY Times Report by Quentin Hardy
In a couple of days, Oracle is going to go all in on the cloud, with many new products and features, and a "the customer gets to choose" strategy for how rapidly its buyers make the biggest step in tech in over the last two decades.
"We won't force a binary call" between internal computer servers or software running in another company's cloud, said Mark V. Hurd, Oracle's co-president. If people want to keep applications behind their corporate firewall for now and migrate to the cloud later, he said, that is fine.
For a company that still counts on the "behind the firewall" software for most of its revenue, that long view that applications will go to the cloud is a big deal. It is also another sign from the big enterprise technology incumbents that times have changed.
On Sunday, Oracle will kick off its annual customer conference, with an expected attendance of 60,000 people, with a speech from its founder and chief executive, Lawrence J. Ellison. Mr. Hurd will speak on Monday.
Among the announcements: All of Oracle's applications have been streamlined to run within advanced in-memory computers. "In some cases, they are 100 times faster," Mr. Hurd said in an interview.
Software developers will also be able to use both databases and Java programming tools in the Oracle cloud. That means they will be able to develop new applications more cheaply and easily than in the past, when they had to work with local servers, then upload the software to the cloud.
This builds on a June announcement with Microsoft that Oracle software, Java, Oracle's database and its WebLogic server would all run on Microsoft's Azure cloud and on Microsoft's server virtualization software.
"We've changed a lot of things bringing business transformation to the cloud," said Mr. Hurd. "We've spend a lot on research and development."
There will also be updates and product releases from Taleo, a personnel-management, cloud-software company that Oracle bought; a new e-business suite of products; and better integration of communications and social media interactions from Eloqua and Acme Packet, two other Oracle acquisitions. Oracle will also discuss new versions and performance metrics in Exalytics, its data analytics product, and Endeca, a personalized retail application.
The bands Maroon 5 and The Black Keys will also perform on Wednesday, but don't expect much new there. This crowd likes the standards.
Many more spending and product announcements are likely, as Oracle presents its new face and raises its competitive game against pure cloud software companies like Salesforce.com and Workday, which not coincidentally announced an alliance on the eve of the Oracle show.
"We've invested in separate global business units" capable of moving companies to cloud software at different speeds, depending on geography, industry, and regulatory needs, Mr. Hurd said. "We're still in the early innings of this stuff. Suites of capabilities will be important."
Like never before, though, the competition is coming at Oracle from even the smallest places, Mr. Hurd acknowledged. "Markets like Brazil have their own apps companies selling into the cloud," he said. "China has apps companies for midmarket companies." The largest companies in China still like the more expensive Oracle products, he said, both for reliability and the status of having a well-known provider.
They do for now, anyway.
Abacast Officially Launches Live Song-Skipping Feature
Excerpted from All Access Music Group Report
Abacast has released the beta version of its live-stream song skipping feature on Federated Media Top-40 Station WMEE in Ft. Wayne, IN, supporting desktop usage. The service enables audiences who are listening to live radio streams to skip songs that they don't want to hear.
When a listener chooses to skip a song that is currently being played, another song from the station's playlist will be played immediately and in its entirety for that listener.
Initial analysis of the beta usage to-date shows that, compared to non-skip-enabled stream, the session lengths with the skip feature are longer. Abascast plans on releasing more detailed metrics shortly after the skip feature is released into production in Q4 2013.
"The feedback on the skip feature from our user base has been extremely positive," said Federated Media Director of Interactive Media James Derby.
"We realize that sometimes listeners don't want to hear certain songs, and this new technology allows for more choice. We work hard attracting listeners to our brand — the skip feature enables them to avoid songs they don't want to hear and stay on our stream."
As part of the skip service, Program Directors (PDs) are provided with reports showing which songs are skipped and in what frequency and how long into the song each skip request occurred, which they can use to refine programming.
"The reporting system with this service contains the songs that are being skipped most frequently and provide our PDs with valuable insight into actual listening preferences, which we've incorporated directly into our programming," added Derby.
The Next Wave of News: P2P Livestreaming
Excerpted from GeekWire Report by Drew Meyers
Twitter enabled any person to reach anyone in the world directly with 140 characters of text. And, of course, you know it's now being used as a news source for millions of people throughout the world. News always breaks on Twitter before it breaks on television.
But WHY is the ability to reach the world directly in real time limited to text?
Why can't anyone in the world open an app on their smart phone, click one button — and INSTANTLY be streaming live to the world?
Why can't anyone open their phone, see a quick summary of all the people/brands they're following streaming right now — and tune into the one they want to consume in real time?
The massive opportunity I see is the ability to stream live to the world, direct from your mobile phone with the click of a button. Imagine a Twitter like platform, for live video.
Imagine a real time video feed of Syria with analysis from a local witnessing the events. Or Tahrir Square, Super Bowl, Mardi Gras, or any other major event of interest.
A whole new breed of reporters would emerge — the people AT the location when something is happening in real time. Traditional media could even tap into these sources so as not to have to send video equipment to the location.
It's not a technology issue. Major media brands such as CNN, ESPN, and NBC already stream news and content live online. There is Ustream and Google Hangouts On Air, which indeed can do the trick. But only uber geeks use those platforms (from my experience).
The reason such a real time peer-to-peer (P2P) video platform doesn't already exist is largely due to ease of use, along with the demand side of the equation. People aren't going to broadcast live, if no one is watching. The classic chicken-and-egg problem.
That said, I'm convinced a few influential people could kickstart such a platform. Someone such as Gary Vaynerchuk would draw quite an audience if he streamed 15 or 30 minutes every day or two. Or niche online media outlets such as GeekWire, for that matter. How about it Todd and John? Why not broadcast a 30 minute daily show, or weekly recap?
What's needed is a drop-dead simple way for anyone to record live to the world from a smart phone with one click. It needs to JUST WORK — without any hassle or crashing.
To start, you'd just enable people to share their broadcast link on Facebook or Twitter — but over time, a way to follow the people, or eventually brands, you were interested in — and have a quick and easy way to figure out when the people you care about are broadcasting.
In every single vertical, we are seeing a shift to P2P. I'm not sure when it will happen, but I'm convinced live streaming from your phone is the next phase of news.
Open Source to Fuel the Future of Gaming, Cloud Computing
Excerpted from GMA News Report
The future of gaming and cloud computing may not quite be with Microsoft or Apple software, but with free and open source software, the Linux Foundation has claimed.
Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, made this claim in his State of Linux speech at LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America in New Orleans.
"Linux is the default model for new areas of innovation," Zemlin said, adding companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are built on free and open source software.
He added this pattern is defining success in computing, including the major shifts toward cloud computing and a web-centric application model.
Zemlin also said Linux is leading the charge in the shift to cloud and web-scale computing, replacing Unix as the operating system for servers.
"Every IT trend is being developed on top of free and open source software. I can throw a dart and it hits a company being created on free and open source," he said.
Zemlin noted popular micro-blogging service Twitter uses open-source software at its core, with 10 to 15 percent of its engineering staff involved in Twitter-related open source projects.
On the other hand, gaming service Valve's co-founder Gabe Newell said he is convinced Linux "is the future of gaming."
Valve released its Steam web platform for Linux last February, but builds and runs all of its source code, animation and assets on Linux, Newell added.
He added gaming is shifting "from console platforms with price and access controlled by PC makers, to web-based free-to-play and massive multiplayer online games."
"Valve became convinced that Linux is the future of gaming," Newell said.
Valve now has 198 games ported to Linux, with developers working on contributions to other open-source projects.
The next step now is to reconcile the fragmentation of Linux, whose variants are scattered in mobile, living room and desktop devices.
Linux.com said engineers are working on a "grand unification" of these flavors.
Cloud Computing Innovation Needs New Mindset
Excerpted from Saudi Gazette Report
International market research and advisory company IDC projects total spending on cloud delivery in Saudi Arabia to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 49.7 percent until 2016.
Even though cloud adoption in the Kingdom is still in the initial stages, companies will increasingly consider migrating to cloud because of the efficiency and managed cost savings it provides.
These days, experts say that as consumer and business trends rapidly change direction, the ability to integrate new services into a business model quickly and on demand is imperative. Herein lies the true value of cloud computing.
Given rapid access to applications, data and advanced functionality, organizations can work within a cloud environment to develop and trial new cloud-based processes virtually on the go. An organization can measure the success or failure of newly integrated cloud-based services and processes in a relatively short time frame. Abdul Nasser Bangcola, Country Manager for Saudi Arabia at Interactive Intelligence, said that cloud will help all kinds of Saudi companies find new ways to conduct organizational operations and serve customers.
But to do so, businesses need to look beyond simply meeting current requirements, to actually innovating within the cloud. This requires an understanding of how cloud technologies and the business align, making IT leaders better qualified to advance strategies for cloud-oriented innovations.
Some organizations in Saudi Arabia have implemented what is known as a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to design their own applications as needed. The SOA model allows an organization to maintain software as easily managed modules, which IT teams and even users can combine to create new applications.
While an SOA can reside within the organization, the cloud is becoming the preferred location for SOA initiatives because of the flexibility it gives an organization to respond to change. But, perhaps, a better architectural model for innovating with cloud is a strategic enterprise architecture, or SEA.
Including an organization's business purpose and the enabling technology, a SEA reflects the organization both in its current state and future wanted states. Specifically, a SEA provides a blueprint of the business architecture and a technology architecture mapped to it. It lays out all business processes end-to-end, and incorporates customers and external partners.
For long-range planning, and for objectives such as cloud-based innovation, a SEA can clearly indicate where contradictions in purpose and redundancies in execution exist.
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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