December 16, 2013
Volume XLVI, Issue 5
New Speakers at CONNECTING TO THE CLOUD at CES
The DCIA will present CONNECTING TO THE CLOUD (CTTC), a Conference within the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), on Wednesday January 8th in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV. The CCA is handling sponsorships.
CTTC at CES will highlight the very latest advancements in cloud-based solutions that are now revolutionizing the consumer electronics (CE) sector or — as ABI Research's Sam Rosen referenced that category at CLOUD COMPUTING WEST — the "cloud electronics (CE) sector."
At 1:00 PM, an opening panel presented by Verizon Digital Media Services and moderated by Daniel Dan Cryan, Senior Director of Digital Media, IHS / Screen Digest, will examine "Millennials, Online TV, and Gaming: Now and Tomorrow." What are the implications of the digital revolution in the way Millennials discover, access, and consume video, music, and gaming content online? Hear it first-hand from young voices representing leading companies in the digital, social, and tech arenas.
At 1:45 PM, Robert Stevenson, Chief Business Officer & VP of Strategy, Gaikai, will further examine this issue in "Who's Connecting What to the Cloud?"
At 2:00 PM, Sam Rosen, Practice Director, TV & Video, Consumer Electronics, ABI Research, will address, "Where Are There Problems Connecting to the Cloud?"
Next, at 2:15 PM, Reza Rassool, Chief Technology Officer, Kwaai Oak, will further expose "Consumer Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content: Availability, Reliability, Scalability Issues."
The follow-on panel at 2:30 PM with Andy Gottlieb, VP, Product Management, Aryaka; Larry Freedman, Partner, Edwards Wildman Palmer; David Hassoun, Owner & Partner, RealEyes Media; Jay Gleason, Cloud Solutions Manager, Sprint; and Grant Kirkwood, Co-Founder, Unitas Global, will discuss "The Impact on Telecommunications Industries of Cloud Computing."
Then two sessions, starting at 3:00 PM will delve into "Telecommunications Industry Benefits of Cloud-Delivered Content: New Opportunities" with Doug Pasko, Principal Member of Technical Staff, Verizon Communications. And at 3:15 PM, "Telecommunications Industry Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content: Infrastructure Challenges" with Allan McLennan, President & Chief Analyst, PADEM Group.
The next panel, at 3:30 PM, will address "The Impact on Entertainment Industries of Cloud Computing" with Jay Migliaccio, Director of Cloud Platforms & Services, Aspera; Mike King, Dir. of Mktg. for Cloud, Content & Media, DataDirect Networks; Venkat Uppuluri, VP of Marketing, Gaian Solutions; Mike West, Chief Technology Officer, GenosTV; George Dolbier, CTO, Social & Interactive Media, IBM; Kurt Kyle, Media Industry Principal, SAP America; Adam Powers, and VP of Media Technology & Solutions, V2Solutions.
Two solo presentations, at 4:15 PM with Les Ottolenghi, Global CIO, Las Vegas Sands Corporation, and, at 4:30 PM, Saul Berman, Partner & Vice President, IBM Global Business Services, will highlight "Entertainment Industry Benefits of Cloud Computing: Cost Savings & Efficiency" and "Entertainment Industry Drawbacks of Cloud Computing: Disruption & Security" respectively.
Additional sessions, starting at 4:45 PM will introduce the subjects "Consumer Electronics Industry Benefits of Cloud-Based Services: New Revenue Streams" with Mikey Cohen, Architect & Principal Engineer, Netflix, and, at 5:00 PM, "Consumer Benefits of Cloud-Delivered Content: Ubiquity, Cost, Portability Improvements," with Joshua Danovitz, VP of Innovation, TiVo
The closing panel at 5:15 PM will draw on all the preceding sessions to more deeply analyze "The Impact on the Consumer Electronics Industry of Cloud Computing" with Melody Yuhn, CTO, CSS Corp.; Michael Elliott, Enterprise Cloud Evangelist, Dell; David Frerichs, President, Media Tuners; Thierry Lehartel, VP, Product Management, Rovi; Russ Hertzberg, VP, Technology Solutions, SoftServe; Guido Ciburski, CEO, Telecontrol; and Scott Vouri, VP of Marketing, Western Digital.
Top program topics will include case studies on how cloud-based solutions are now being deployed for fixed and mobile CE products — successes and challenges; the effects on consumers of having access to services in the cloud anytime from anywhere — along with related social networking trends.
Also featured will be what broadband network operators and mobile Internet access providers are doing to help manage — and spur — the migration to interoperable cloud services.
Some in traditional entertainment industries find this technology overwhelmingly threatening and disruptive — others see enormous new opportunities; and the value proposition for CE manufacturers will also continue to evolve substantially to providing cloud-based value-adding services — rather than conventional hardware features.
Please register now for CTTC at CES.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2014 (CCE:2014) is coming to Washington, DC on May 13th and 14th.
The DCIA is responsible for the agenda and speakers at this event. The CCA is handling exhibitions and sponsorships.
CCE:2014 will focus on three major sectors whose use of cloud-based technologies is revolutionizing business processes, increasing efficiency, and streamlining costs.
More than 100 thought-leaders will have the opportunity to bring their industry knowledge, technological understanding, and strategic insight to our in-depth exploration of the ways cloud computing is impacting government, revolutionizing healthcare, and providing for the safe and secure functioning of the financial services sector.
Government's relationship to the cloud computing industry is a complex one. At CCE:2014 our focus will be on how local, state and federal governments can improve services and protect citizens with cloud-based tools.
The explosion of data, advances in security and reliability, the need for redundant storage, and putting it all to meaningful use present challenges to natural resource management, transportation and utility grid monitoring, public safety, law enforcement, and emergency responsiveness.
The government at all levels has been mandated to move into the cloud, and billions are being allocated to these purposes.
We will provide a forum for public-sector adopters and private-sector providers alike to discuss their views of how the cloud is transforming the way government performs its essential functions.
With deepening ties to the government in an increasing number of ways, there is perhaps no financial sector that is larger — and at the same time, more fragmented and technologically disconnected — than the American healthcare industry.
This sector — more than any other — has both the resources and the imperative to benefit from adopting cloud-based solutions to help it become more efficient, collaborative, and interactively connected.
Managing private patient records, collecting clinical research data, and big-data imaging are just three of the many healthcare functions for which the cloud is not only uniquely suited — it is urgently needed.
Speakers representing hospitals, clinics, multi-physician practices and more will be welcome to present their perspectives, along with providers of cloud-based solutions that serve every part of the healthcare ecosystem.
International financial transactions and currency exchange; domestic banking and insurance services; as well as timely and efficient investment decision-making are also being impacted by cloud computing.
The cloud is becoming the most advanced platform for an industry that makes up over one-fourth of our economy.
How are banks, insurance companies, and private equity and hedge fund investors making use of cloud-computing?
Business and technology leaders from the financial services industry will be joined by executives and innovators from cloud-computing solutions providers to examine the ways in which the cloud is being put to use by the global financial services industry.
The conference will open on Tuesday morning with a continental breakfast followed by keynote addresses on the "The State of Cloud Computing Adoption for Government, Healthcare, and Financial Services (gCLOUD, hCLOUD, and fCLOUD)."
Next we'll explore "Leading Industry Trends and the Emergence of Standards Impacting gGLOUD, hCLOUD, and fCLOUD Use Cases."
After a mid-morning networking break, our focus will advance to "Common Regulatory Frameworks and Pending Legislation Affecting the gGLOUD, hCLOUD, and fCLOUD Sectors," and then "Outstanding Obstacles and Issues Still to be Overcome for Continued Advancement."
After the conference luncheon, followed by dessert and coffee service in the exhibit hall, we'll examine current developments in "gGLOUD, hCLOUD, and fCLOUD Service Models, Deployment Models, Architectures, and Management."
Then, following a mid-afternoon networking break, we'll address "Data Storage, Software Applications, Workflow Processes, and Implementation Strategies."
At day's end, we'll enjoy an evening networking reception.
On Wednesday morning, after a continental breakfast in the exhibit hall, we'll take a closer look at "Vendor Criteria, Task Prioritization, Performance Metrics, and Economics."
Our mid-morning networking break will be followed by "Application Development/Programming Challenges/Opportunities for gGLOUD, hCLOUD, and fCLOUDs."
We will close the conference with "Final Considerations for Selecting, Deploying, and Evaluating Cloud Solutions."
Please click here for more information or to apply for a speaking slot on any of our topics. Share wisely, and take care.
Cloud Computing Will Continue Accelerated Growth
Excerpted from CloudTweaks Report by Elliot Martinez
Cloud computing is on the rise, with the worldwide market expected to rise from $111 billion last year to $131 billion in 2013. Gartner, one of the world's leading information technology (IT) research firms, indicates its growth will continue well into this decade. By 2016, it predicts the majority of new IT spending will be on cloud computing technologies. Read on to discover what's driving this growth.
American employees aren't just working within the confines of the office anymore. Since the turn of the century, the number of American employees working from home has risen by around 41 percent. Around 30 million Americans work from home at least once a week. That number's expected to grow by 63 percent over the next five years.
Even Americans who travel to the office typically work outside its walls. They're getting a jumpstart on work, with the average American checking working e-mails from 7:33 AM over breakfast or during their morning commute.
As flexible workplaces increase, businesses will become more reliant on the kind of virtual offices cloud computing can create. Hybrid devices allow employees to log on to their virtual office, no matter where they are, and be as productive as any other member of staff. These devices are compact and portable like traditional tablets, but the keyboards are ideal for composing e-mails or business documents on the go.
Studies show companies that use the Internet as a key business tool are twice as likely to grow as those who don't. It's no wonder then that more than half of American businesses have already adopted cloud computing technology.
We're seeing this growth across a range of industries, not just the IT field. For example, hospitals and doctors are discovering the potential of cloud computing for their businesses. In 2011, the global health care cloud computing market was worth just $1.8 billion. But more providers are realizing its potential for affordable data storage that can be readily shared with other healthcare providers. By 2017, it's expected that the worldwide healthcare cloud computing market will be worth $5.4 billion.
Growth will continue as more industries realize the unique ways that cloud computing can work for them.
Cloud computing will continue to grow as more businesses realize the ways it can help them succeed. Cloud computing gives companies greater access to advanced technological resources with far fewer costs than many firms realize.
Cloud computing enables companies to house data offsite, so they don't need to spend money on additional servers and storage solutions. Many small to medium firms also find it easier to essentially rent storage space rather than paying large fees upfront. Keeping data on the cloud also eliminates maintenance costs.
Companies can also run efficiently with fewer information technology staff, and ensure these employees are better utilized. Information can also be more readily shared amongst employees, which makes workplaces more productive.
Studies show all these factors see cloud computing promoting economic growth and competition across a range of industries.
Any innovation must evolve to continue experiencing rapid growth. The key to cloud computing's continued success is its willingness to evolve to better serve businesses. We're seeing that as tech-savvy companies move from a traditional cloud computing arrangement to hybrid cloud computing.
Gartner predicts the private cloud computing model will give way to the hybrid cloud during 2016. By the end of 2017, almost 50 percent of large companies will use hybrid cloud computing.
A hybrid cloud environment sees firms using both private and public cloud services. For example, a legal firm might use a public cloud service to store its archived data, as such services are affordable with limitless space. However, it might prefer to manage sensitive data, about current clients and cases for example, with a private cloud.
This approach limits the risk of security breaches while allowing businesses to take advantage of the benefits of public cloud services.
With massive growth and no sign of slowing down, cloud computing may prove to become one of the most important IT developments of the 21st century.
Cloud Computing: Four Trends for 2014
Excerpted from FormTek Report by Dick Weisinger
Werner Vogels, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer at Amazon, recently described to The Guardian the top four trends that he sees for Cloud Computing in 2014.
Cloud content will follow you wherever you go.
Data in the cloud means that content is device independent and available anywhere, whether from desktops and laptops, smartphones and tablets. "Regardless of which device we use, or the location, we have will access to our content and subscriptions."
Cloud analytics will increasingly measure and interact with the offline world.
Vogels alludes to a world that is slowly realizing the concept of the "Internet of Things". Machine-generated data, originating from scientific projects like the Mars rover and DNA sequencing are happening, but there's also closer-to-home data feeds coming from things like transportation vehicles and industrial and home-based sensors which are changing the way we live and perceive our lives.
Everyone will be able to publish to the cloud.
"In 2014 expect a great rise in organizations that are adding media capabilities to their offerings. Cloud-based services for pre- and post-production, as well as distribution, are readily available such that anyone can become an Internet broadcaster operating worldwide without any capital investment."
Vogels gives just a few examples of the many industries and organizations that have been able to broaden public exposure to their offerings by developing cloud-based content. Vogels mentions performing arts organizations, like the Berlin Philharmonic, and sports clubs, like LiverpoolTV.
Cloud data processing will increasingly reflect real-time information.
"We see almost every industry taking advantage of the cloud to radically improve the speed at which they can process their data. There has always been a close relationship between big data and cloud computing as it requires no limits in terms of compute and storage but by adding real-time processing capabilities, we will see a rise in data analytics that are able to produce results in real-time, radically changing the products companies can build."
Cloud to Play Increasing Role in Provision of Healthcare
Excerpted from Out-Law Report
Cloud computing will be play an increasingly important role in the provision of healthcare, Frost & Sullivan has predicted. It also said that use of mobile health (m-health) technologies would grow. Making use of IT infrastructure in the cloud could help healthcare providers lower costs and improve care for patients, they said.
"Implementing cloud computing technologies appropriately will help healthcare providers improve the quality of medical services and the efficiency of operations, share information across geographic locations and manage expenditures," Frost & Sullivan said. "The concept can be applied in a variety of ways, including data storage and data loss prevention, maintaining patient information records and authorized sharing of information."
"The advantages that cloud computing provides can change the dynamics of the healthcare informatics industry over time. The need for efficient sharing of information across locations in a synchronized manner will be a key driver for cloud computing in healthcare," it added.
The survey also provided evidence that the drugs market in the world will become more personalized, with drugs increasingly developed and commercialized on the strength of patient "biomarkers", Frost & Sullivan said.
The researchers also predicted further consolidation in the health care and life sciences industry and that new technology would emerge to allow medical devices to be integrated "into a connected platform" in a way which would "enhance the functionality of devices, reduce the man power burden and minimize errors" in health care.
They also said to expect 2014 and beyond to witness growth in the mobile health (m-health) market. Its predictions were based on a survey it conducted of 1,835 business executives based in more than 40 countries around the world.
"The penetration prospects of m-health technologies are significant in the following areas: wireless vital signs monitoring, location-aware telemonitoring systems and Bluetooth wireless technology-enabled health trackers," Frost & Sullivan said. "It is an exciting area of opportunity for healthcare growth and will provide innovative solutions for stakeholders, both providers and patients alike, across the spectrum."
"In addition, as more healthcare IT and patient monitoring tools are integrated, every hospital facility will eventually have to acquire a fully-enterprise wireless solution. The most innovative mobile healthcare solutions that best meet pressing healthcare needs will be adopted as the gold standard," it said.
At a recent event hosted by Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, a range of experts debated the potential impact of new mobile technology in healthcare. Technology and information law expert Matthew Godfrey-Faussett of Pinsent Masons said that uncertainty over who will pay for digital health services is a barrier to the success of the digital health market. However, he explained one business model that could emerge.
"Digital health can help mitigate the effects of chronic disease and allows for regular monitoring of patients from home," Godfrey-Faussett said. "The potential is there to encourage patients to submit data themselves on aspects of their health, and it allows the use of call backs and text prompts to help address issues identified and enable patients to manage problems from home."
"One potential funding model could involve specific digital health solutions being prescribed by doctors for a temporary period, say six months," he said. "This allows the NHS to foot an initial cost which, if the trial proves successful, could then be taken on by the user."
Mobile Consumers Will Disrupt Financial Services Market
Excerpted from FierceMobileIT Report by Fred Donovan
Mobile consumers will be the "disruptors" in the financial services market by increasing their use of purpose-built apps that provide focused value, while minimizing their interactions with their primary institution, predicts market research firm IDC.
At the same time, mobile payment adoption will be slow next year because providers are having trouble finding a "value proposition" that is attractive to both consumers and merchants.
In addition, financial firms will battle to dominate the third platform--cloud computing, big data, mobile and social networking--as they move from ad hoc to managed initiatives and new app mashups focused on customer acquisition, market intelligence and operations.
Overall, IT spending in financial services is forecast by IDC to exceed $430 billion in 2014 and to pass $500 billion by 2020.
Of the 2014 IT spending, $85 billion will go toward investment in risk management as firms "industrialize credit and market risks system, operational risk disciplines get renewed support and management learns to sell risk," says IDC.
"As the IT organization continues to struggle with when and where to invest in today's technology, financial institutions need to balance investing in innovation and providing value for the customer, with placating the regulators," explains Scott Lundstrom, Group Vice President and General Manager of IDC Financial Insights.
Big Data Analytics & Mobile Banking -- Two-Edged Swords
Excerpted from CIOL News Report
"If we were to assemble five years from now, we would identify two types of financial institutions, losers who became dinosaurs, as they were risk averse and exposed their assets and customers to cyber threats. And the winners, who would have embraced the new wave of IT and did it successfully. I would not be surprised if the giants of the financial industry emerged to be Google, Amazon, and PayPal who are ruling the virtual world today," commented Dr. Jim Noble, throwing a challenge to the audience while delivering the keynote address at a Summit on IT and Cyber Security focusing on the financial services sector.
The event, held on December 10th, was jointly organized by The Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and Wbf International Center Services (WICS).
The speakers from leading financial institutions and international IT and cybersecurity experts, cautioned the representatives of banks and financial servicing sector about the need for tightening security of their information systems, critical data, and cyberspace to save themselves from cybercriminals.
Dr. Noble who is also the advisor to Homeland Security in the US says, "Big banks earlier used to be fortresses with physical vaults, combination locks, heat sensors , etc. and now they are permeable membranes."
The recent innovations in information and communication technology like big data analytics, cloud computing, and mobile banking are like a two-edged sword-with unlimited possibilities for service delivery and customer satisfaction but at the same time exposing organizations to innumerable threats.
Sadly, the financial community is yet to take corrective measures in this respect even though the magnitude of the impending crisis is of a very large magnitude.
"Financial institutions might face threat from extremist groups in search of funds to purchase weapons of mass destruction from the black market," revealed Mr. Ajay Kumar, former CMD of Corporation Bank and added, "It is time for insurance companies to examine the prospect of offering insurance packages for cybergenerated losses."
Hanno Pevkur, Minister of Justice from Estonia, shed light how his country was targeted in 2007 and whereby the government machinery and the banking system had come to a standstill.
"Estonia is one good example of public-private partnership and even France emulated our system for setting up of a vigilant taskforce to prevent such incidents," he added.
It would be mutually beneficial if both public and private sectors work hand-in-hand to collaborate and share their experiences and expertise. For capacity building to overcome acute shortage of cybersecurity experts in India which would require 500 thousand experts in the next five years (according to the National Cyber Security Policy 2013 of GOI).
There was consensus among the experts that it is almost next to impossible to have 100 percent secure cyberspace as there is no encryption algorithm that cannot be broken.
As Albert Einstein had said, any complicated problem can be decomposed into smaller, individual components for solving it. So, taking a cue from this Dr. Noble commented, "Protect your family jewels (i.e.,your most valuable assets) from lurking cybercriminals."
The chairman of the organizing committee, Babulal Jain, announced that, encouraged by the enthusiastic response and positive feedback, it was decided to hold another cybersecurity summit in 2014. The venue, date and the focus areas would be announced in due course.
Tangled Data Protection Laws Threaten Cloud
Excerpted from Information Week Report by Wyatt Kash
As information technology (IT) leaders get more comfortable moving their data operations into the cloud, concerns are growing about conflicting international laws that govern data generated in one country and stored in another.
Policymakers around the world are fueling those concerns. Anxious to protect data privacy and security, they are advocating requirements to store certain types of data domestically, says Daniel Castro, a senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).
Those policies, however, are not only creating headaches for technology managers moving data across the globe, they're also bumping up against delicate free trade agreements that involve senior government officials well beyond the reach of the typical CIO's office.
"We're finding that companies are being caught in the middle [between conflicting privacy and security laws," said Castro. The economic stakes have grown so significant that the ITIF recommended this week that the US and its trade partners develop a "Geneva Convention" to address the conflicts and what appears to be a growing wave of "data nationalism."
"The notion that data must be stored domestically to ensure that it remains secure and private is false," says Castro. But, he warned, "Misunderstandings about the security and privacy of data are resulting in policies that negatively affect innovation, productivity, trade, and consumer welfare."
In an effort to clarify the current state of international data laws and help avert a movement toward more protectionist policies, the ITIF released a position paper on December 9th entitled "The False Promise of Data Nationalism." In it, Castro notes that exports of digitally enabled services from the US alone totaled $356 billion in 2011, a five-fold increase since 2007.
At the same time, Castro argues, economies of scale for storing and processing data in large cloud computing facilities make it increasingly impractical and more expensive to restrict data to smaller datacenters located in different countries.
However, over the past few months, Castro says he has observed leaders in variety of countries "talking about data from the perspective of where it's stored being integral to privacy and protection." Part of what's elevating policymakers' concerns, he says, are revelations about US government surveillance practices, following the leak of National Security Agency (NSA) documents.
At the heart of the legal debate over data protection is how countries apply different security standards to data and what data owners must do when certain types of data -- typically involving personally identifiable information -- are disclosed either inadvertently, voluntarily, or by government mandate.
Determining which laws govern the disclosure of data can be complicated. As Castro notes in his report, "Multiple countries may assert jurisdiction over data due to the nationalities of the individuals or organizations that own the data, the service providers storing the data, the individuals or organizations accessing the data or where the data is stored."
While the global data policy debate might appear to be of remote concern to federal agencies, whose data are routinely processed and stored in US-based facilities, it does affect the multi-national cloud service providers agencies rely upon, which bear the economic costs and legal uncertainties of international data laws.
Microsoft Executive Vice President and General Counsel Brad Smith has been barnstorming the globe, calling on governments, particularly in Europe, to establish greater uniformity in how cloud computing companies are regulated. The lack of uniformity makes it difficult to establish and execute contract terms and conditions with international customers.
"Governments must take steps to ensure that existing regulatory frameworks are suited to the cloud," he said in one of his earliest blog posts on the subject, nearly three years ago. Smith insists that cloud computing's potential to spur economic growth depends on governments getting involved in developing "more balanced and predictable rules governing cloud vendors" and facilitating easier movement of data across borders while maintaining legal protection for consumers.
From the ITIF's view, the need to resolve data handling rules goes beyond cloud computing and to the larger issue of international trade, which increasingly depends on the free movement of data around the world.
"What people don't realize is this isn't something technology companies can address by themselves," Castro says. "There's a tremendous economic impact if governments don't get involved in dealing with data protection laws -- or worse, take an isolationist's approach to Internet governance and trade."
Tech Giants Urge Reform of Government Surveillance
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Rich Scherr
Eight of the largest technology giants are calling for the world's governments to reform their Internet surveillance practices, with the goal of limiting their authority to collect user data, implementing checks and balances, and making the process transparent.
In an open letter, published on the website below as well as in newspaper ads, AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo laid out five core "principles" in their effort, which they are labeling "Reform Government Surveillance."
"We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. But this summer's revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide," reads the letter, addressed to President Obama and members of Congress.
"The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual — rights that are enshrined in our Constitution. This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It's time for a change." Read more.
Telefonica CFO Says Utilize Cloud & Focus on Innovation
Excerpted from CIO Report by Edward Qualtrough
Telefonica UK CFO Mark Evans said the company's current strategy is to utilize the cloud and shared services in order to drive innovation at the operator.
"We are investing less in hardware and leveraging the cloud so we can move at the pace of change and the customer," Evans said.
"Building, developing and owning our infrastructure is probably not the right strategy for us."
Evans said that the company's current goal was to minimize capital expenditure and investing in operating costs, which at the moment was offering a better opportunity to increase revenue and profits.
"IT has a big part to play in the investment of our business and isn't just about driving efficiencies," he said.
"And with sharing you don't need your own infrastructure, it allows you to be agile and move quickly."
Telefonica UK CIO Brendan O'Rourke said that to succeed in modern business it was necessary to become a digitally mature business.
Technology innovation is a key focus for Telefonica and Evans, who said that the organization was comfortable with failure.
"We don't have to do business cases with innovation," he said. "We want to trial things, and if we fail then we want to fail quickly and cheaply.
"If you've never failed you've probably never innovated enough either. As a CFO I'm happy to write off some money for the chance that in other scenarios they will be good investments down the line."
Verizon to Buy EdgeCast Content Delivery Network
Excerpted from Information Week Report by Charles Babcock
Verizon Digital Media Services is adding a major content delivery network (CDN) to its rich media capabilities.
Verizon is acquiring EdgeCast, one of the top three CDNs, to add to its portfolio of cloud and web services. The telecom company announced Monday that EdgeCast will move into Verizon's Digital Media Services unit when the deal is completed sometime in 2014. Terms were not disclosed.
EdgeCast provides content delivery expertise and a network of Internet content servers to Verizon Digital Media, which is interested in improving and extending video delivery. EdgeCast operates thousands of content servers in 30 Internet hubs around the world. Akamai, LimeLight, and Level 3 all offer competing CDN services.
EdgeCast has 6,000 content delivery accounts and serves a number of leading brands for global media delivery, including LinkedIn, JetBlue, EMI Music Publishing, and Kellogg's. EdgeCast ranked number one as the fastest growing Internet company in 2012 on the DeloitteTechnology Fast 500 list.
CDNs, such as Akamai, place content servers at widely distributed locations, then distribute their customers' content to those servers so that they may respond to queries from end users faster than if all were routed to a single, central site. They have not yet achieved a must-have status with many business users of the cloud, but they may well one day. Content delivery networks speed the delivery of complex, multimedia-type messages, and content to online shoppers and consumers.
Not all cloud service providers offer CDN service but Amazon's CloudFront, Google's PageSpeed Service, and Microsoft's Azure CDN are content delivery networks offered alongside those firms' IaaS and PaaS offerings.
Last May 22nd, EdgeCast launched its Transact CDN aimed at speeding up transactions for online retailers. In April 2012, it entered into an alliance with Dell to allow Dell to build a CDN based on EdgeCast's routing software.
Verizon Digital Media Services President Bob Toohey referred to the value of EdgeCast's network when he said his firm had acquired the company for its "strategically placed assets," which can be combined with Digital Media's video encoding and transmission systems. Together, they "improve our ability to deliver rich, reliable and quality digital media services," he said in the announcement.
Verizon's Digital Media unit focuses on site acceleration and content delivery for film studios, broadcasters, retailers, and enterprises seeking to minimize customer wait times.
By becoming part of Verizon, EdgeCast will elevate itself again and continue its rapid growth, claimed Alex Kaerzani, Chairman and CEO. The boards of both EdgeCast and Verizon have approved the deal.
Verizon became a cloud vendor through its Verizon Terremark Enterprise Cloud unit, and more recently, added Verizon Cloud based on a second generation cloud architecture.
Cloud Computing Is Latest Star at 20th Century Fox
Excerpted from IT World Report by Paolo Del Nibletto
The movie studio that brought you blockbuster hits such as "Rocky," "Star Wars," "Avatar," and "Home Alone" is now in the cloud.
What is surprising about this announcement is that 20th Century Fox studios has been in the cloud for just six months.
John Herbert, the CIO for 20th Century Fox, who described his company's journey to the cloud, was part of HP CEO Meg Whitman's keynote today.
The challenge for 20th Century Fox and the rest of the film industry is that the digital phenomenon is changing everything.
"Digital is now in every division of the business and today consumers have choice and a broad range of home entertainment," Herbert said.
Meanwhile in the highly competitive TV distribution business, where IT managers deliver content to thousands of broadcasters around the world, companies rapidly moving from a tape-based deliver system to a file-based system.
For Herbert, his team's strategy for moving 20th Century Fox to the cloud was to rethink the company's IT infrastructure in a digital way. He chose a converged cloud strategy and decided to partner with HP Enterprise Services. "The first step was to move away from non-standard, converged infrastructure to the cloud that can respond to the current business needs, while providing computing and storage to all the employees," Herbert said.
The results so far are hard to measure because it so early, but Herbert did provide one anecdote: The delivery of computing and storage resources for 20th Century Fox has gone down from weeks to minutes. The studio reduced its data center footprint by 70 per cent by deploying HP MoonShot servers.
Herbert said that MoonShot condensed 20th Century Fox's data center down to just a few racks and improved the digital supply chain.
HP MoonShot includes an enclosure along with ProLiant Moonshot servers that can target a specific workload. ProLiant MoonShot servers uses the Intel Atom S1,200 processor and supports Web hosting workloads and cost approximately $60,000 each.
HP calls MoonShot a "hyperscale" class of server that uses 89 per cent less energy and 80 per cent less space than traditional servers.
Long term, Herbert has been tasked to support the studio across 90 countries and 145 cities it does business in. 20th Century Fox is predominantly known for its movies, but it also produces TV shows such as "Glee," "How I Met Your Mother," "24," "The X-Files," and "The Simpsons."
The company also produces sports programming such as the Daytona 500 and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
The newly implemented converged cloud portfolio is an on-demand system with media in the cloud in a shared services model. It has enabled 20th Century Fox to be able to move 8 petabytes of content per year. According to Herbert, this new system balances costs and supports internal customers around the globe.
Herbert described 20th Century Fox's cloud journey by quoting a line from Tom Hanks from the 2000 movie "Cast Away:" "Tomorrow the sun will rise and who knows what the tide will bring in."
Sync 7 Times Faster than Dropbox, Hits 2 Million User Mark
Excerpted from IBNLive Report
Announced quite some time ago, BitTorrent's file synchronization app Sync is claimed to be seven times faster than the popular cloud-storage app Dropbox. Also, the company claims that doubling its user base in a month, the Sync tool has hit the 2 million user mark.
With BitTorrent's Sync, users can sync folders with huge files across as many devices as they can including PCs, tablets, and phones. According to the company, Sync never stores files on servers, so they stay safe from data breaches and prying eyes. BitTorrent Sync skips the cloud to deliver files at a faster speed. In other words, Sync shares files cross devices without any cloud caching.
"Today, Sync is moving over 20 gigabytes per person. And that's a pretty powerful thing. Dropbox's cloud-based platform stores less than 0.42 gigabytes per user," said the company in a blog.
BitTorrent, for the first time, had announced the service (in a pre-Alpha stage) back in January this year. It was only last month when the BitTorrent Sync Beta API was released. The company in November had over 1 million monthly active users.
You can download BitTorrent's Sync here.
What's a Bitcoin? Explaining the Internet's New "Currency"
Excerpted from AL Report by Alex Walsh
Money has always been an interesting topic for most readers, but this latest craze seems to be getting out of hand.
Bitcoins, it seems, are everywhere in the news.
At the Los Angeles Times: "Cashing in on the bitcoin boom." At Bloomberg, a "12 Days of Bitcoin" series. The New York Times is all over bitcoins, and the Washington Post has been writing about them for years now.
Basically, bitcoins are a type of virtual money. They can be used to purchase goods and services.
And they only exist online: when you trade dollars for bitcoins, you don't get a rectangular piece of paper to put in your wallet. Instead, you receive an encoded computer file, which tells the bitcoin computer network how many bitcoins you own.
But you don't have to read much about bitcoins to figure out that there's something strange going on with them. For one, they're frequently being used to buy illegal goods and services. And the apparent value of a bitcoin seems to be changing very rapidly — earlier this year, the dollar value of a bitcoin went from $260 to $63 in a flash.
So what's going on here? What is it about bitcoins that makes them so useful for buying illegal drugs, and why does it seem like people are making a profit just by owning a few?
As with so many things these days, the story behind bitcoins is all about computers. We need to take a quick detour here, away from transactions, and towards computer networking.
The key concept one needs to understand in order to understand bitcoins is the "peer-to-peer," or "P2P" network.
P2P networking first captured the public interest in the 1990s, when college students used Napster to download music from each other. As another example, the file sharing service BitTorrent is powered by a P2P network.
Most Internet-based services today rely on the client-server model. When you want to access, say, AL.com, your computer (the "client") sends a request to our server for permission to download our content. Millions of clients are able to contact one central server in order to access the site.
The iTunes Store runs on a client-server model: each individual consumer (client) buys music from Apple's central content hub (server). In contrast, Napster let music listeners connect to one another directly, so friends could download each others' music libraries using P2P network connections.
Likewise, the bitcoin system is powered by a peer-to-peer network. Instead of one central server keeping track of all purchases, buyers and sellers that use bitcoin connect to one another directly.
That makes bitcoin purchases essentially impossible to track — perfect for consumers looking to buy something anonymously.
At the same time, that lack of a central server also contributes to bitcoins' other newsworthy characteristic: huge swings in their value.
The US dollar has a central server — it's called the Federal Reserve. The Fed has tools it can use to help keep the value of a dollar relatively stable over time: it can either print dollars to prevent prices from falling, or take dollars out of the system to keep prices from rising too quickly.
Bitcoins aren't backed by a central bank. In fact, the global supply of bitcoins is controlled by a computer program. (There are about 12 million bitcoins in existence today.) That leaves their value vulnerable to quick changes in consumer demand. It's how the price of a bitcoin can change from $260 to $60 in a day.
So why would anyone buy a bitcoin? Some see actual value in bitcoins as a means for making anonymous purchases online (although unhappy governments will likely continue to challenge such activity). Others, like the Washington Post's Timothy Lee, see the bitcoin's "long-term potential" as a technological opportunity, rather than a new way to pay.
Bitcoin as an investment? Enter at your own risk. Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan — a polarizing figure to be sure, and a biased contributor in this arena — told Bloomberg, "You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of bitcoin is. I haven't been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can."
Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal puts it another way. "If I had to guess, I'd still guess that the price of a bitcoin is still much more likely to go to zero than to have any durable value out into the future," he says. "At this point, I have zero idea what a 'fair' price for bitcoin is."
Cloud Migration: Perfect New Year's Resolution for Your Business
Excerpted from Paradyne Report
Cloud migration is the process of transitioning all or a part of your company's data, applications, and services from on-site premises to the cloud. This allows information to be accessed over the Internet on an in-demand basis.
While cloud migration can present the organization with some potential challenges such as documentation and system audits, hosting, scalability, and security concerns; cloud computing also enables your business to significantly reduce capital expenditures and operating costs.
Migrating to the cloud using a reputable cloud partner will help resolve most of these issues. Cloud partners help with migration to the cloud, making the transition simple for businesses and reducing risk.
As pointed out by a recent study from the Gartner institute the need for a cloud services brokerage increases as the demand for hybrid cloud systems in business increases. The brokerages or partners can help businesses deliver three key capabilities: Aggregation, Integration, and Customization.
The cloud encourages increased productivity and efficiencies in your business. This is because the cost can be drastically reduced through the sheer scalability the cloud has to offer businesses. It also reduces capital risk.
While risk taking in the past has required much in the way of hardware and software investment, the cloud allows you to build an application on a platform that is completely scalable from the smallest of instances to the largest.
Scalability is at the IT manager's fingertips, with the ability to scale up and down to suit business needs. Small companies can start up, and large business can roll out innovative new ventures, without prohibitive costs, delay or risk.
Cloud migration is now a top strategic priority for many businesses, harnessing the power of improved collaboration, communication and productivity of software that is easily accessible through the Internet for staff. In fact Office 365 is Microsoft's fastest growing product and this is expected to continue as more and more businesses choose to migrate to the cloud.
Coming Events of Interest
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 2014 – 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.
CLOSER 2014 - April 3rd-5th in Barcelona, Spain. The Fourth International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2014) sets out to explore the emerging area of cloud computing, inspired by recent advances in network technologies.
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.
Media Management in the Cloud — April 8th-9th in Las Vegas, NV. This two-day conference provides a senior management overview of how cloud-based solutions positively impact each stage of the content distribution chain, including production, delivery, and storage.
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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