August 4, 2014
Volume XLIX, Issue 2
Speaking Opportunities 10/1—10/2 in Austin, TX
The DCIA &CCA are closing the July recruitment period for cloud services and solutions providers to join with organizational end-users as speakers at our co-hosted CLOUD DEVELOPERS SUMMIT & EXPO 2014 (CDSE:2014).
In addition to the business strategy conference, on Wednesday October 1st and Thursday October 2nd, in Austin, TX, numerous co-located CDSE:2014 instructional workshops and special seminars will explore six categories of cloud adoption.
If you represent a company that offers cloud-based solutions for logistics, big data, or mobile, please contact me at your earliest convenience.
Likewise, if your organization offers cloud-based services for media and entertainment, healthcare and life sciences, or government and military, please get in touch as soon as possible.
We're finalizing the conference agenda and speakers list to be included in the promotional materials and conference program now. Call or e-mail DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty at your earliest convenience — TODAY IF AT ALL POSSIBLE — for more information.
To learn more about conducting an instructional workshop, exhibiting, or sponsoring CDSE:2014, contact Don Buford, Executive Director, or Hank Woji, VP Business Development, at the CCA.
Register now for CDSE:2014 to take advantage of early-bird rates.
BitTorrent Starts Testing New Messaging Platform Bleep
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Janko Roettgers
BitTorrent's new peer-to-peer (P2P) chat app is dubbed "Bleep," and Windows users can now line up to become part of an invite-only test.
BitTorrent is slowly starting to take the wraps off its upcoming P2P chat initiative: The company started an invite-only pre-alpha test of a new Windows chat client Bleep on Wednesday, and it also revealed that it plans to make the underlying P2P technology available to other chat apps and messaging service providers as well.
BitTorrent Senior Product Manager Jahee Lee explained the product name in a blog post this way:
"Why Bleep, you might ask? Well, basically, we never see your messages or metadata. As far as we're concerned, anything you say is 'bleep' to us."
BitTorrent's new Bleep chat client doesn't rely on any central servers to find and manage contacts. Instead, the company is using Distributed Hash Tables, also known as DHT, which are basically decentralized sets of data that can be queried by any connected client.
DHT have been in use by file sharing apps and other P2P-based clients for some time, but BitTorrent married the technology with SIP, a common standard for messaging and VoIP applications.
The result is not only a decentralized architecture for Bleep, but also one that could be used by other SIP-compatible clients as well.
"As long as the messaging application is using SIP it should be straight-forward, in theory, to switch over from a server-based client to our platform," explained BitTorrent's Director of Communications Christian Averill. The company hasn't set a timetable for integrating third-party services, but Averill said it is open to talk to companies interested in using its P2P technology for messaging.
So why would a messaging app providers switch from a proven server-based technology to BitTorrent's P2P approach — or why, for that matter, would users switch from their preferred chat app to Bleep?
The company touts the absence of a central server or directory as a safeguard against government wiretapping and other kind of snooping, and it also promises better security for the actual messages. BitTorrent's Senior Director of Product Development Farid Fadaie explained it this way on the company's engineering blog:
"We are using secure encryption protocols such as curve25519, ed25519 , salsa20, poly1305, and others. Links between nodes are encrypted. All communication is end to end encrypted. This should be the new normal in the post-Snowden era."
Bleep isn't the first attempt to decentralize chat. Skype used to be entirely P2P-based, but has been changed in recent years to rely on a hybrid architecture that makes use of hosted servers for directory and lookup functionality.
The Guardian reported last year that the NSA has the capability to collect audio and video data from Skype calls.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The Digital Due Process (DDP) coalition, in which the DCIA is a member, for more than two years has advocated reform of the seriously outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to protect data stored in the cloud.
Very significant progress has been made since late June when we marked the milestone of achieving a majority of the US House of Representatives to support HR 1852: The Email Privacy Act (EPA).
The EPA will require government agents to obtain warrants from a judge in order to force service providers to disclose private data they store in the cloud for their customers.
In fact, it's now conceivable that — with your help — we can surpass a two-thirds majority of co-sponsors for this measure (two-hundred ninety).
The bill was originally sponsored by Representatives Kevin Yoder (R-KS), Tom Graves (R-GA), and Jared Polis (D-CO) and would create a bright-line, warrant-for-content rule for electronic communications.
Since our last report on this, the following Republican Members of Congress have signed-on as co-sponsors to EPA: Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Mike Coffman (R-CO), Tom Cole (R-OK), Doug Collins (R-GA), David Jolly (R-FL), Steven Palazzo (R-MS), Peter Roskam (R-IL), Vance McAllister (R-LA), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Michael Turner (R-OH), and Todd Young (R-IN).
Meanwhile, our lead co-sponsors have also added these Democrats: Judy Chu (D-CA), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Chaka Fattah (D-PA), Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH), Ed Pastor (D-AZ), and Kurt Schrader (D-OR).
There continue to be proportionally more Republicans than Democrats, and we also need Members of the House Judiciary Committee to sign-on and encouragement of Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) to pass the bill out of Committee.
Now is the time for the full House to move swiftly to pass this common-sense reform that has huge bipartisan support.
Please make time on your schedule today to call, fax, or email your Congressional representative — targeting Democrats and Judiciary Committee Members in particular — and urge action.
The lone holdout on ECPA reform remains the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which wants new powers to obtain data directly from service providers.
The SEC's position is made untenable by the support for ECPA reform by criminal justice agencies, which should have greater powers than civil authorities.
At a recent House hearing, FBI Director James Comey said that amending ECPA to require a warrant "won't have any effect on our practice."
He went on to note specifically that concerns about the outdated nature of ECPA "make sense to me."
Effective law enforcement will not be hampered by a warrant requirement.
The SEC does not have the power to force its way into private offices to seize paper records from filing cabinets; it should not have the power to force its way into digital filing cabinets.
Members of Congress can show they take their constituents' privacy seriously — and that they can enact meaningful reform — by passing this bill.
As the SIIA has proclaimed, "At a time when there is little agreement in Washington, this stands out as a bipartisan priority to level the playing field for protection of electronic communications."
The Yoder-Graves-Polis bill gives Congress the rare opportunity to update digital communications privacy for the 21st century by providing the same amount of privacy to online as offline communications, as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.
Twenty-eight years is long enough to wait given the changes in digital technologies since the eighties, before the the World Wide Web was even invented.
If the House votes on the bill, it will pass, so now's the time. Share wisely and take care.
Another Example of Why ECPA Reform is a MUST!
Excerpted from International Business Times Report by Michael Learmonth
Microsoft must turn over email stored on an overseas server to comply with a US warrant, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
Microsoft had opposed the ruling, arguing that email stored in the cloud should have the same privacy protections as "paper letters sent by mail."
The ruling, issued by US District Judge Loretta A. Preska in Manhattan, will require Microsoft to turn over a users' email stored on its servers in Dublin, Ireland, related to a narcotics case.
Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in an op-ed published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal that the case "could well turn on who owns your email -- you or the company that stores it in the cloud."
The Redmond, WA company argued that email stored in the cloud is the property of the user, and thus the US government should only be able to obtain it through due process.
The US government has a warrant, "but under well-established case law, a search warrant cannot reach beyond US shores," Smith argued.
Preska ruled the location of the email was irrelevant because Microsoft controls it from the US.
The company is making the case that customers own the data stored on its servers, not Microsoft. "Microsoft believes the higher level of legal protection for personal conversations should be preserved for new forms of digital communication, such as emails or text and instant messaging," Smith said in the Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Microsoft vowed to appeal. "We will appeal promptly and continue to advocate that people's email deserves strong privacy protections in the U.S. and around the world," he said.
Microsoft's arguments were joined by other large tech companies, including Apple, Cisco Systems, Verizon Communications, and AT&T.
The ruling is the latest hit to the cloud computing industry, already contending with a trust gap exacerbated by leaked documents from former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. The leaks showed the extent to which US intelligence apparatus infiltrates large cloud storage providers, and several have reported slowing sales as a result.
Telefonica Charges into Digital TV with Purchase of Canal Plus Spain
Excerpted from Variety Report by John Hopewell
Faced with a contracting telco market in Europe, Spain's Telefonica did what seems logical: It bought the country's largest pay-TV operator. Now the telephone and Internet giant can settle into what seems like a growth market — content creation and delivery.
Completed this month, Telefonica's purchase of Distribuidora de Television Digital, the company behind pay TV giant Canal Plus Spain, represents the country's biggest media deal in years, a pact worth some $1.4 billion.
Telefonica's big moves may breathe some life back into Spain's media and entertainment sector, which shrunk 26% to $22.8 billion in sales over 2007-13, per a report from consulting firm Arthur D. Little.
The buy is also good news for Hollywood. Telefonica, like its rival Vodafone (which just paid $10 billion for Spanish cabler ONO) is likely to buy more foreign movies and TV series — as well as ramp up the creation of original content — to increase its pay TV subscriber base.
Under company President Cesar Alierta, Telefonica has grown into one of Europe's biggest telcos, with $78.9 billion in revenue and $26 billion in operating income last year.
Analysts see the logic in the DTS buy, citing the fact that Europe's telco sector will shrink 1.6% by 2016, according to the Arthur D. Little report.
"It does make sense for a company with Telefonica's position in telephony to add on a pay TV business," says Tim Westcott, principal analyst of TV at IHS Technology. Westcott cites the success of UK telco giant BT Group, which moved into TV to protect its leadership position as an Internet service provider, by buying multiple sports rights, such as the UEFA Champions League soccer, in a deal that kicks in next year.
With DTS, Telefonica gets Sunday night's big La Liga soccer match and first-run US series rights and output deals with most Hollywood studios, plus a subscriber base of 1.6 million, repping 40% of Spain's pay TV market.
Javier Borrachero, a telco analyst at Madrid's Kepler Cheuvreux, says that Telefonica is aggressively launching and deploying its fiber network to counter competition and grow its content delivery systems on the platforms it offers, using content from its DTS-Canal Plus purchase, with a target of building out to 7 million homes.
He adds: "Telefonica also needs to use its satellite delivery to fill in coverage gaps in (less populated parts of) Spain, where fiber network rollout makes little sense, before Vodafone has a competitive offer."
The big question is what additional content Telefonica will target.
Sports is a proven draw to subscribers. The company already has bought pay TV rights for Grand Prix motorcycle racing, Formula One and Spain's qualifying matches for the 2018 soccer World Cup.
Having lost out on rights to 2015-2017 Champions League soccer to a free-to-air/pay TV bid from Atresmedia and pay TV bouquet Gol TV (which is owned by multimedia giant Mediapro Group), Telefonica likely will be willing to pay a premium for rights to top Spanish soccer clubs such as Real Madrid and Barcelona, whose TV rights are available starting in 2015-16.
Telefonica Studios, through its Argentine TV net Telefe, already has proved successful in co-producing movies, backing such pics as Jose Juan Campanella's "The Secret in Their Eyes" and Damian Szifron's Cannes competition player "Wild Tales," both Sony Pictures Classics pickups. Still, access to sports programming likely will determine other needs.
"All Spanish telcos will need content. But Telefonica's demand for Hollywood product could depend on what exclusivity it can get with sports rights," says one analyst, noting that the more such rights Telefonica can secure, the less premium content it will need to fill out its schedule.
Verizon's Cloud Video Unit Connects with Comcast's thePlatform
Excerpted from Connect2MEWorld Report by Jeff Baumgartner
In a deal that pairs two seemingly unlikely partners, Verizon Digital Media Services (VDMS), the cloud video unit of Verizon Communications, and thePlatform, the online video publishing firm owned by Comcast, have struck a strategic alliance focused on the delivery of multiscreen video.
Under it, they've integrated VDMS's suite of video services with thePlatform's mxp video-management system that they will sell jointly as a unified multiscreen video publishing system that relies on a single adaptive streaming format and distribution system alongside an integrated workflow.
They said integrated system will cover features such as dynamic ad insertion, closed captioning and analytics, and enable customers to manage files and metadata, set business policies and enforce content viewing rights for deliver to Web sites and a variety of IP-connected devices, including smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles.
The pairing has already resulted in some collaborative work — on the authenticated TV Everywhere service for music channel Revolt TV, and for a recently relaunched version of Bellator.com, the site for the Bellator mixed martial arts league co-owned by Viacom.
"Our customers will benefit from thePlatform's industry-leading video management system and digital asset management capabilities," said Chris Carey, chief product officer of VDMS, which recently acquired EdgeCast Networks, a content delivery network (CDN) provider. "And thePlatform's customers will benefit from our game-changing single-format video acquisition and distribution service."
"We've worked with EdgeCast Networks for many years, and our customers have benefited from the world-class performance, availability, scalability and security that its delivery network provides," added Marty Roberts, co-CEO of thePlatform. "The combination of EdgeCast Networks with Verizon Digital Media Services video solutions complements our cloud-based online video platform. We're broadening our relationship with Verizon Digital Media Services to enable joint customers to create better tailored solutions, reduce operational complexity and expand their video businesses."
Verizon FiOS, Redbox Instant by Verizon and The Walt Disney Co. (for TV Everywhere apps such as Watch ABC) are among the companies on VDMS's customer roster.
thePlatform's customers include Comcast, A+E Networks, Bell Media, BT, Cablevision Systems, Cox Communications, E!, Engage Sports Media, the Golf Channel, Fox Sports, HIT Entertainment, Liberty Global, NBC Local Media, NBC Sports, Outdoor Channel, Oxygen, Rogers Communications, Shaw Media, and Time Warner Cable, among others. The partnership isn't exclusive. thePlatform, for example, announced a separate technology integration and joint sales pact with Adobe in April.
CIA's Amazon-Built Cloud Goes Live
Excerpted from Nextgov Report by Frank Konkel
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is now officially an Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud consumer.
Less than 10 months after a US Court of Federal Claims judge ended a public battle between AWS and IBM for the CIA's commercial cloud contract valued at up to $600 million, the AWS-built cloud for the intelligence community went online last week for the first time, according to a source familiar with the deal.
The cloud -- best thought of as a public cloud computing environment built on private premises -- is yet far from its peak operational capabilities when it will provide all 17 intelligence agencies unprecedented access to an untold number of computers for various on-demand computing, analytic, storage, collaboration, and other services.
The timing aligns with public comments made by CIA Chief Information Officer Douglas Wolfe in June, though neither the CIA nor Amazon would confirm the cloud has come online.
"Our goal is to make the IC cloud's commercial services available to customers beginning in summer 2014, and we are on target to meet it," a CIA spokesperson told Nextgov. "The services will be available to all intelligence community agencies."
Now available to intelligence agencies, the IC cloud is akin to a freight train beginning to accelerate down the tracks. The basic infrastructure is in place, but it will take time for intelligence agencies to identify applications, information and data to transition to the cloud platform.
In time, the cloud's full capabilities are expected to usher in a new era of intelligence sharing and cooperation even as the IC collects ever-greater amounts of data from sensors, satellites, surveillance efforts and other sources.
Importantly, the CIA believes the IC cloud will be as safe as -- or safer -- than security on its current data centers, having met IC standards that govern the handling of classified information. Each intelligence agency has a say in the accreditation process, according to intelligence officials. The AWS-built cloud launch essentially means the entire IC has vouched for its security.
"The IC always applies a rigorous process to determine the operational readiness of its IT systems and all of the intelligence agencies have an opportunity to participate in these procedures," a U.S. intelligence official told Nextgov.
The IC's use of cloud services was first outlined three years ago in the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise in an effort to reduce IT spending, harness innovation from the private sector and improve information sharing within the intelligence community.
The massive effort, led by the CIA and the National Security Agency, which built its own private cloud, culminated in a CIA contract awarded to AWS in February 2013 that was held up in court until October 2013 by competitor IBM.
The IC's decision to tap a commercial cloud provider allows it to only pay for services it uses as opposed to costly internal data centers. The IC will also benefit through private sector innovation. Amazon, for example, made 200 incremental improvements last year to its platform; the IC will be able to implement those kinds of improvements as it sees fit.
Amazon's Cloud Is Growing so Fast It's Scaring Shareholders
Excerpted from Wired Report by Robert McMillan
Amazon has pulled off a pretty amazing trick over the past decade. It's invented and then built a nearly $5 billion cloud computing business catering to fickle software developers and put the rest of the technology industry on the defensive. Big enterprise software companies such as IBM and HP and even Google are playing catchup, even as they acknowledge that cloud computing is the tech industry's future.
But what kind of a future is that to be? Yesterday Amazon said that while its cloud business grew by 90 percent last year, it was significantly less profitable. Amazon's AWS cloud business makes up the majority of a balance sheet item it labels as "other" (along with its credit card and advertising revenue) and that revenue from that line of business grew by 38 percent. Last quarter, revenue grew by 60 percent. In other words, Amazon is piling on customers faster than it's adding dollars to its bottom line.
The company's Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak, blamed the drop on "substantial" price reductions the company has made to products such as its core EC2, storage and database services. "They ranged from 28 percent to 51 percent depending on the service," he said on a conference call with analysts.
To a certain extent, Moore's Law and the growing economies of scale automatically build cost savings into Amazon's giant cloud. After all, if chipmakers deliver more and more transistors every two years, Amazon should be able to do more computing for less.
But it's facing increased competition from Google and Microsoft. And IBM and HP want in on the game too.
The thing is that even as Amazon's business matures to the size of a company like VMware, its worrying to investors to see profitability slipping. That's pretty much the meta-narrative of Amazon as a whole, though, which says it could lose as much as $810 million in the current quarter. The company is taking losses to invest in the future, and Amazon's 10 percent stock drop today shows that some investors are uncomfortable with that.
Not Amazon's management, though. "We love that business," Szkutak said, referring to AWS. "It's doing great and we're very pleased to have the opportunity to invest in it."
The question is, when will Szkutak have the opportunity to cash in? Surely the company's growing legion of AWS users hope that day never comes.
P2P and Procurement Applications
Excerpted from Spend Matters Report by Jason Busch
Earlier this month, Procurement Leaders (PL) published a blog post titled: Has The Cloud-Based Solutions Market Turned A Corner In 2014? Citing the case of a relationship between Accenture and SAP/Ariba to deliver "a new cloud-based solution designed to transform the delivery of procurement and finance and accounting (F&A) business services to its customers," PL then raises the question of whether "the hype around the cloud signaled a wider shift in the market."
For companies, solutions providers, and software companies, the question of cloud isn't binary. In other words, it's not a matter of "to host or not to host, that is the question." It's a complex issue. There is a range of vendors (including SAP/Ariba) selling solutions that can be configured in a hybrid manner in which data is stored and delivered through different applications in a virtualized manner.
And the various bits and bytes that end up hitting a users or supplier's screen can come from any server. Moreover, it is possible to tie installed software applications (e.g., an e-invoicing or accounts payable automation capability from OpenText or Basware) into a cloud network from just about any provider.
Any company debating whether cloud is right for them for transactional procurement systems including eProcurement and e-invoicing should not jump to conclusions. They should start first with developing a procurement information architecture (see related research briefs at the end of this post) that addresses topics such as data stewardship/security, data ownership, and rights (e.g., does a cloud provider have any rights to use or share my data or my supplier's data in the aggregate with others?).
And even if cloud is the right strategy, there are further questions on a global front. Many European companies don't want their data hosted or going through US servers.
We encourage our subscribers to contact us to discuss and address these types of questions. The cloud is not simple and can't be reduced to an "either/or" type of thinking — nor can one trust a single provider or solution aggregator such as Accenture to have the one solution model that fits the needs of everyone without significant "last mile" tailoring and configuration. Please, whatever you do, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.
The Cloud Isn't All that Perplexing
Excerpted from News-Press Report by Shea Conner St. Joseph
'The cloud' isn't as mysterious as people make it sound.
The R-rated comedy "Sex Tape" didn't quite connect with audiences the way the execs at Sony Pictures hoped it would, but one aspect of the movie did seem to resonate in these technologically confusing times: seemingly no one knows anything about "the cloud."
In the movie, which made its way to theaters on July 18, a husband (Jason Segel) and wife (Cameron Diaz) use their new iPad to record themselves doing, well, what the title implies. Afterwards, however, Mr. Segel's character not only forgets to delete the racy video, but accidentally uploads it to "the cloud" where it can be seen by their family, their friends and even the neighborhood mailman.
Ah, the cloud — that nefarious computer entity that takes your digital files, shares them with the world and sends lightning bolts down to earth.
Hijinx ensue as the couple goes on a frantic quest to recover all the iPads they handed out as Christmas gifts. It's a decent premise, but it also sent many theater-goers home wondering what the chances were that they could get caught in a 'cloudy' predicament.
"Slim to none," says Karim Lahlou, an electronics writer for Consumer Reports. "If you buy an iPad for another person, that doesn't mean all your pictures, videos and other personal content sync automatically to that iPad. The recipient of your gift would need to sign in with your Apple ID and have iCloud's My Photo Stream feature turned on for her to see your personal content."
iCloud and most other cloud storage systems aren't designed to stream movies — and they require login IDs and passwords — but that didn't stop the makers of "Sex Tape" from running away with a zany plot and reflecting a slice of society's perplexed knowledge of the cloud. As Segel's character says in the trailer: "Nobody understands the cloud! It's a mystery!"
According to Tyler Steele, a technician at Prolific Technologies in St. Joseph, that mystery has everything to do with the fact that cloud storage isn't as tangible as computer hardware or even a desktop icon.
"It's not something they can see and have on their desktop. It's not something they can control themselves," Mr. Steele says.
Let's clear up some of the mystery. Cloud computing means storing and accessing files and programs through the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive. It's that simple. Cloud storage is a great option for people whose computers, tablets or smart phones have little internal memory. Cloud storage programs like Dropbox also make it easier to share images, music files or videos with others.
PCMag.com states that businesses often muck up that simplicity because many of them use the cloud on entirely different levels. Some businesses choose to implement Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), where the company subscribes to an application it accesses over the Internet. There's also Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), in which a business can create its own custom applications for use by all in the company. And, of course, there's the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), in which digital giants like Amazon and Google provide a backbone that can be "rented out" by other companies. For example, Netflix uses the cloud services at Amazon to provide customers streaming content and other services.
The average laptop or iPhone user, however, will probably never have to work with such complex cloud applications. All they really have to worry about is keeping their login ID and password in a safe place.
"There are more highly advanced applications of the cloud, such as managing vast databases and sequencing genomes, but these are generally used by companies and research institutions — not your everyday sex-tape makers," Mr. Lahlou says.
Roundup of Free Online Cloud Computing Courses
Excerpted from Forbes Report by Louis Columbus
Amazon Web Services, Coursera, Google , MIT Courseware and Microsoft are accelerating the depth and variety of cloud computing courses, courseware and learning materials they are freely making available online.
Over the last six months since the last Roundup of Free Cloud Computing Online Courses, Amazon Web Services has added an additional series of free instructional videos, self-paced labs and selected free courses in the seven areas their AWS Training programs focus on.
Microsoft's Virtual Academy has grown to include more courses, training material and entire section of free downloadable books from Microsoft Press. Google's continual additions to the Developer Academy include online courses to learn more about Google AppEngine, Python App Engine and Google Cloud SQL.
Coursera and the University of Maryland, University of New Mexico and Vanderbilt University are all offering free courses on Android, mobile and web application development. MIT Courseware continues to add useful courses across the broad spectrum of subjects they cover. The dominant theme of all courses is a new focus on creating and launching a new cloud computing application during the course.
One of the best indicators of how serious a software company is about their developer evangelism strategy is how much they invest in free training, easily accessible knowledge, and work to break down learning barriers. Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft are each accelerating these areas quickly. Each are choosing to freely provide valuable training videos, books and content in the hope of attracting and educating more developers.
In addition to these extensive evangelism efforts, there are several excellent courses and educational programs available entirely online at various price points. You can find entire roundup of cloud computing online courses and programs here (in PDF) or here (in Microsoft Word).
Click here for a table showing the free courses.
Coursera & the University of New Mexico are partner to offer the free course Web Application Architectures starting next month. By the end of this course, students will be able to design, develop and deploy a modern web application. You can find more information about the course here.
DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media is offering a Cloud Computing Technologies Program where students will build their own cloud applications. Using Amazon Web Services, IBM, Microsoft and Salesforce cloud platforms, students will learn how to create and manage cloud-based applications. The eleven-week in-depth program in the principles, methods, and technologies of Cloud Computing. The program provides a broad understanding of the different leading Cloud Computing technologies.
Stanford University is offering CS309A — Cloud Computing one of the most sought-after online courses in this field, from September 23rd to December 16th, 2014. This class includes discussions with cloud computing industry leaders and CEOs who share their vision of the future of software-powered businesses. Previous guest speakers include Hamish Brewer, CEO, JDA Software, Godfrey Sulliva, CEO, Splunk, Human Shah, CEO, RMS, Rob Bearden, CEO, Hortonworks, Bill Ruh, VP & Corporate Officer, GE Global Software and Aaron Levie, CEO, Box. The course is taught by Timothy Chou, a widely recognized pioneer in cloud computing. He has been teaching introductory computer architecture at Stanford for 15 years. He has an extensive background in cloud computing and is a high energy, engaging speaker.
Cloud and Mobility: A Perfect Storm?
Excerpted from CB Insight Report by Chad Walter
We all know that both cloud and mobility are here to stay. Many look at these technologies as essentially being one and the same. Without the cloud, mobility just isn't sufficiently robust to meet our demanding technology requirements. Conversely, it's mobility which has compelled many technologies to move to the cloud. So, is this combination of cloud and mobility creating the perfect storm for security threats?
Personally, I don't think so, although I would concede, without reservation, to its adding to the storm front. There are other factors at play which serve to exacerbate the security conundrum.
For instance, we live in a society of immediate gratification — meaning we "need"what we "want"and we "need"it now. The IT community, specifically the IT security community, is under breakneck pressure to assimilate new tools, resources and data at a much faster pace than proper cloud and mobility safety nets can be developed and implemented.
Why is this happening? One primary reason is that there seems to be a disconnect within the fundamental strategy discussion. We're just not doing proper cause and effect; for instance, it's not uncommon that the IT security people aren't even invited to the strategy discussion.
After all, the security team would just slow things down and our sales representative going to Dubai next week needs to have connectivity on all his devices or he won't be able to close the big sale. This is the stuff cyber criminals prey on. It's an open path to data and now it's in the cloud, served up on a mobile silver platter. Yum, Yum.
What I'm saying is, yes, there's definitely a storm brewing, and yes, cloud and mobility are fanning the flames. But, you know what? That sales representative going to Dubai next week? How about we involve IT security to strategically determine what's needed and can we control, monitor and secure the data?
What's the risk? Is it worth taking? Don't wait to involve your IT security team until after something happens and then blame them for it happening in the first place.
In all fairness, it's important to point out that there are great innovations within both the cloud and mobility technology arenas which are making it easier to secure data. Hitting the market daily, we're seeing the release of new managed cloud email security products, fully encrypted smart devices and even new, more secure ways to communicate.
I put it to you that if the convergence of cloud and mobility is creating a perfect storm for security threats, it's also creating a perfect storm for security innovation.
Businesses Look to the Clouds
Excerpted from Winona Daily News Report by Chris Hubbuch
For businesses large and small, the answer to computing needs may be floating overhead.
Cloud computing — a system in which data and applications are stored on remote servers rather than local computers and accessed through the Internet — has been around for years, said Rod Holum, owner of Coulee Tech Link in Onalaska.
Your old Yahoo email account? Cloud computing.
These days it's so pervasive that businesses are using it without even realizing they are in the cloud.
"Every business is doing some form of cloud computing," said Kevin Duxbury, owner of Rivercrest Technologies in Holmen.
Cloud applications can handle communications as well as accounting, time clock, inventory and workflow management, and they are an increasingly attractive alternative to internally hosted software, which is expensive to set up and requires ongoing maintenance.
If data is stored locally, you need a backup and recovery system in place in case of fire, theft, or mechanical failure. Not so with the cloud.
The setup cost of a local email server could be $5,000 to $10,000, plus $250 a month for maintenance, Holum said. Google offers a basic hosting plan — with email, calendars and storage — for just $5 a month per user.
Besides the lower startup costs, cloud computing offers the ability to access information from multiple devices — computer, tablet, smart phone — practically anywhere in the world.
There are drawbacks, of course: your cloud applications are only as good as your Internet connection, and some companies may be uncomfortable with someone else storing their data.
Security depends on the service.
Google offers a number of free cloud storage options, but read the fine print: your data belongs to Google. And beware of fly-by-night operators. If your host goes out of business, your data could be gone.
For those who want to minimize data leakage, companies like Rivercrest and Coulee Tech Link provide custom cloud hosting services and can help steer businesses to reputable vendors.
Fog to Replace Cloud — Cisco Seeks Early Mover Advantage
Excerpted from Bidness Etc. Report by Larry Darrell
Cloud is slowly being replaced by fog in the world of data centers where the major player Cisco Systems is expected to benefit the most from the new technology.
Fog computing deals with storing, using and evaluating data right at 'the edge' of the data connection. Here 'the edge' refers to the point where the digital world ends and the real world begins; more specifically the end user device. The cloud is now getting replaced by the fog in the world of data centers with the efforts of major player CISCO Systems Inc. who is expected to benefit the most from the new technology.
Cloud Computing has been portrayed as solving a number of problems for organizations in terms of data storage and access reducing their cost.
However, there exists a hard reality with this technology. Transferring the data into and out of the cloud is harder than it seems due to the problem of bandwidth. High-speed wiring is a solution but in an environment of mass connectivity with mobile devices, the bandwidth is slow.
This limitation of wireless networks has made a number of organizations struggle in sending data back and forth to mobile devices. Companies want decisions to be taken as soon as the data is generated and need only the valuable and worthy information to reach to the global network.
For example, the sensor monitoring the water level in a field need not update the central system every second with the measurements; instead the device should monitor the water level independently and signal the system only when it goes below the minimum.
The geographical distribution of fog devices over various arenas that cover a number of management domains separates fog computing from the traditional data centers. Distributed endpoints at the edge network assist in connecting the cloud to the fog. This closed arrangement of geographical distributed devices gives various advantages which include quicker intelligence collection and better data analysis.
Fog computing will save storage space and will prevent irrelevant information to travel to the global network with lower latency. The decisions made at the edge of the network filter out the data received by those devices and allow only relevant information to flow back to the center and get processed. For example, the sensor on your wrist will measure your heartbeat every minute but will signal only the key deviations to the cloud.
Fog Computing can be applied in a number of areas where Internet of Things is present. It may become a key factor in the working of connected vehicles, smart grids (esp. Machine to Machine (M2M) handshakes), smart cities and obviously health care industry where fog computing can integrate and aggregate patients' data on a more localized level.
Fog Computing has the same market as cloud since organization want to reduce cost and have a central data center where they can store and access their data. Global IT expenditure is expected to reach to $2.1 trillion this year. Out of this, total cloud spending is expected to increase by 25% compared to last year and rise to over $100 billion. In 2014, around 51% of total IT work is expected to be done through cloud. With fog replacing cloud, it would not be surprising if this share of IT spending is shifted to fog.
Initially, cloud services were acquired by companies to cut operational costs and improve their efficiency. However, with the introduction of fog computing, companies will look for even more cost advantages in adopting fog computing in their operations.
Cisco Systems is a technology company which provides software solutions to its clients. Cisco earns its revenues from routers and switches, and the company has been facing problems in growing that business. Software defined networking (SDN), an upcoming trend, shifts control from hardware to software, which is damaging for Cisco because it has high margins as well as more than 60% market share in switches and routers. Now with the introduction of fog computing, CISCO aims to grow in the industry by investing in the new technology.
Cisco is to accelerate innovation in the Internet of Things by delivering IOx, which provides the ability to combine computation and communication on their rugged routers and other devices. Cisco believes that this turns the network into the fourth platform for computing (in addition to PCs, mobile and cloud), which will unleash new applications in manufacturing, transportation, smart cities and many other industries. Cisco's CEO, John Chambers, expects that by 2020, there would be connected devices to which he termed as a conservative estimate.
To avoid competition from Chinese companies in terms of revenues, Cisco is selling its routers to turn them into hubs for gathering data and making decisions about the collected data. Cisco Inc. wants their smart routers not to interact with cloud except, for example, 'to alert operators to an emergency on a sensor-laden rail car on which one these routers acts as the nerve center'.
Revenues for Cisco's Data Center Segment have been increasing since 2011, from $ 0.7 billion in to $2.1 billion in FY13. It shows that Cisco has the potential to keep making revenues from the sale of data centers where fog technology will take over cloud.
With market capitalization of $132.15 billion, CISCO is currently trading at a one year forward P/E multiple of 11.9x, while over the past years, the average P/E multiple has been 16x. Analysts expect the company to earn $2.04 per share in FY14 ending July, and to report total revenues of $47.05 billion.
Out of 38 analysts covering CISCO Systems, 10 of rate it a Buy while 12 analysts rate it a Hold. The 12-month price target of $27 represents a 4.5% return potential on the company's stock based on the current price.
Net Neutrality: Today's Debates Are Tip of Iceberg
Excerpted from eMarketer Report
Net Neutrality would seem to have little or nothing to do with the Internet of Everything, but that's only because current debates about "fast lanes" and "slow lanes" have centered around the delivery of video content, particularly streaming video from over-the-top (OTT) services like Netflix, which consume a lot of Internet bandwidth. Broadband service providers, which typically also offer TV and/or streaming video services of their own, have paid enormous sums to build bigger data pipes.
They regard OTT services as a threat in more ways than one: as a potential siphon of their customer base and a burden on networks for which the OTT services have not paid, according to a new eMarketer report, "Key Digital Trends for Midyear 2014: The Internet of Things, Net Neutrality, and Why Marketers Need to Care."
"In a world where not just conveniences but also essential services are channeled over the web, the free flow of data morphs from nicety into necessity. Framing the Net Neutrality debate solely in terms of maintaining low-cost streaming video overlooks the bigger picture. Today the issue is video streams, but tomorrow it will be about data streams in general," said Noah Elkin, executive editor at eMarketer.
Cheap streaming video available on demand is a nice-to-have, but when every function of one's life and work depends on data available on demand, it's a must-have.
In a not-so-distant, more-connected future, consumers will rely on fast, reliable delivery of data to power their homes and perhaps even direct their self-driving cars. Marketers will count on speed to buy and serve ad inventory; as with brokerage firms, the velocity of transactions will make a crucial difference in margins, fulfillment and success.
If the Internet of everything suddenly gets stuck in a slow lane, everyone will suffer. That is why decisions made today by regulators and precedents established between private companies have far-reaching implications.
The term "Net Neutrality," coined in 2003 by Columbia University professor Tim Wu, refers to a governing principle that all Internet traffic, regardless of source, content or type of data, be treated equally. Key stakeholders in the debate over Net Neutrality include governments, privately held broadband service providers and technology companies whose applications consume a large and growing share of Internet bandwidth.
Coming Events of Interest
International Conference on Internet and Distributed Computing Systems — September 22nd in Calabria, Italy. IDCS 2014 conference is the sixth in its series to promote research in diverse fields related to Internet and distributed computing systems. The emergence of web as a ubiquitous platform for innovations has laid the foundation for the rapid growth of the Internet.
CLOUD DEVELOPERS SUMMIT & EXPO 2014 — October 1st-2nd in Austin, TX. CDSE:2014 will feature co-located instructional workshops and conference sessions on six tracks facilitated by more than one-hundred industry leading speakers and world-class technical trainers.
International Conference on Cloud Computing Research & Innovation — October 29th-30th in Singapore. ICCRI:2014 covers a wide range of research interests and innovative applications in cloud computing and related topics. The unique mix of R&D, end-user, and industry audience members promises interesting discussion, networking, and business opportunities in translational research & development.
PDCAT 2014 — December 9th-11th in Hong Kong. The 16th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies (PDCAT 2014) is a major forum for scientists, engineers, and practitioners throughout the world to present their latest research, results, ideas, developments and applications in all areas of parallel and distributed computing.
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