August 11, 2014
Volume XLIX, Issue 3
Cloud Revenue Jumps, Led by Microsoft and IBM
Excerpted from NY Times Report by Steve Lohr
The virtue of fear as a source of animating energy has long been recognized in the quicksilver tech industry. “Only the paranoid survive,” as Andrew S. Grove, Intel’s longtime leader, put it — a guiding principle that was also the title of his 1996 book on management.
The fear factor is clearly at work now in the fast-growing market for cloud computing. The latest quarterly reports from technology companies and market research show that two of the fastest movers in the emergent cloud business are the incumbent giants of traditional software, Microsoft and IBM. Their business is most at risk from the shift to computing delivered over the Internet from distant data centers, with the business model of a pay-for-use service rather than a product.
Microsoft’s cloud revenue jumped 164 percent in the second quarter, while IBM’s surged 86 percent, according to a report last week by the Synergy Research Group. Amazon is still way ahead, with $962 million in cloud revenue, compared with $370 million for Microsoft, and IBM’s $259 million, Synergy estimates. But Amazon’s growth rate, at 49 percent, was only slightly ahead of the torrid 45 percent pace of the cloud market as a whole.
While Amazon has been on a level of its own, Microsoft and IBM experienced extremely strong growth in businesses dedicated to cloud infrastructure services in the second quarter compared with the same period a year ago.
The progress by Microsoft and IBM was emphasized in the companies’ quarterly financial reports and conference calls with analysts. “It’s not just talk — they are backing it up with a lot of investment,” said John Dinsdale, an analyst at Synergy.
The so-called magic quadrant reports by Gartner, a technology research firm, are closely followed by tech suppliers and their corporate customers. The reports include assessments of tech companies’ strengths and weaknesses as well as a graphic plotting companies on two axes. Left-to-right placement in the graphic is based on “completeness of vision,” and bottom-to-top placement shows “ability to execute.” “Leaders” are in the upper-right quadrant of the graphic, while “niche players” are consigned to the lower left.
In Gartner’s report last year on basic cloud services, IBM was among the niche players (and in 2012, it wasn’t even included as a player at all). This year, helped by the acquisition of SoftLayer, a cloud start-up, and its own internal investment, it has moved sharply to the right, and higher, though it is not yet in the leaders area — the vision is strong, according to Gartner, but the execution still lags a bit.
Microsoft has moved up and to the right this year, into the leaders area. Last year, Gartner positioned Microsoft about where IBM is this year.
Amazon is still the star in Gartner’s chart of the cloud industry, some distance above Microsoft, the only other company in the leaders quadrant, among 15 companies Gartner included in the report.
Measurements in the cloud marketplace are tricky. Companies define their cloud businesses differently. And the big companies do not report their cloud revenue or profit separately, although they do occasionally make statements.
The research firm Gartner plotted the current landscape of companies offering cloud infrastructure services compared with last year. Notable among the shifts are moves by legacy technology companies. A $2 billion deal for SoftLayer in 2013 has helped IBM move from a position of needing to catch up to one of increasing leadership in the market. Microsoft, meanwhile, has been trying to turn itself around and has recently emphasized its cloud offerings, a strategy that is appearing to pay off. Last month, the company estimated that annual revenue from its cloud business would be $4.4 billion.
When Microsoft announced its quarterly results last month, it declared that its cloud revenue was running at a $4.4 billion annual rate. IBM said its cloud business was 50 percent higher so far this year, but did not supply a dollar figure. In its annual report, IBM said that its cloud revenue in 2013 was $4.4 billion. So this year would appear to be on track to be well north of $6 billion. Amazon’s cloud revenue, according to a recent estimate by Pacific Crest Securities, will reach $5 billion this year.
Yet the Microsoft and IBM numbers include things not in the Amazon estimates. Amazon’s cloud offers computing, storage and basic software tools used by engineers. But Microsoft and IBM add the software delivered to customers over the cloud, from spreadsheets to data-analysis applications. IBM’s revenue total, analysts say, also includes cloud-related services and even hardware used in setting up cloud computing environments that companies own themselves, so-called private clouds.
So comparing Microsoft and IBM’s cloud revenue to Amazon’s is not an apples-to-apples exercise. “For Microsoft, it is apples, oranges and pears,” said Lydia Leong, a Gartner analyst. “For IBM, it’s apples, oranges, pears, and the kitchen sink.”
Yet it is the business beyond basic cloud computing — beyond the apples, to continue the analogy — that is most strategic to Microsoft and IBM. They have to convert their lucrative traditional software products to cloud offerings, and both companies are doing that aggressively.
Microsoft and IBM may lose licensing revenue in the shift to the lower-cost cloud model, selling services rather than products. But if they don’t make the transition quickly, they will lose their most valuable asset — their long-term corporate customers.
The cloud business today represents a tiny slice of the overall information technology market, but it is where the market is headed. Microsoft and IBM are eager to make that transition, and so are their clients. “In the past year, we’re seeing customers take the incumbents with them into the cloud,” said Robert P. Mahowald, an analyst at IDC.
For tech suppliers, big changes in the models of computing delivery and economics can be brutal or beautiful. In the 1980s and 1990s, the shift away from mainframes and minicomputers to personal computers tethered to corporate servers — known as client-server computing — nearly killed IBM, and it made Microsoft the dominant company of that era.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) and Cloud Computing Association (CCA) are very pleased to welcome SAP to our all new co-hosted CLOUD DEVELOPERS SUMMIT & EXPO 2014 (CDSE:2014), featuring industry leaders Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft among many other cloud computing players.
CDSE:2014, which will take place in Austin, TX on October 1st and 2nd, is now accepting delegate registrations at early-bird rates.
SAP's keynote address, "Staying Ahead of the Game," by Scott Campbell, Senior Principal for Media, Sports & Entertainment at SAP America, will highlight the rapid innovation SAP provided to help the German soccer team gain a distinct advantage in the 2014 World Cup.
Scott Campbell brings over 25 years of operational and business leadership experience to SAP's Industry Value Engineering Practice in North America, which helps customers get the most from investments in SAP's platform by bringing benchmarking, best practices, and creative new approaches to innovation — such as using design-thinking and other solutions-oriented techniques.
Today, you can manage your entire business — customer relations, finance, human resources, procurement and much more — in the cloud with the most comprehensive cloud computing portfolio available on the market.
35 million business users already use the SAP Cloud, seamlessly integrating with their on-premise solutions and maximizing business agility.
Scott Campbell's keynote will outline — in a very practical way — how your company can leverage the cloud to stay ahead of the game.
SAP will also present two workshops, "Ariba — Join the World's Largest Sourcing Network" and "Developing Real-Time Data Solutions Using the SAP HANA Cloud Platform."
Mark Willner will provide the hands-on tutorial of Ariba.
As Principal Technical Solutions Consultant at Ariba, an SAP Company specializing in Source-to-Pay Applications, Mark Willner engages with prospective customers to demonstrate the integration of Ariba products to their ERPs (SAP, Oracle, etc.) or other back-end solutions and explain the architecture of Ariba's cloud solutions.
Find out how to join over one million suppliers that have registered and actively trade their products and services on the Ariba Network.
The workshop will also highlight integration scenarios between Ariba cloud solutions and customer ERP systems; featuring Ariba PO/Invoice Automation, Procure-to-Pay Solutions, and Upstream Procurement Solutions (sourcing, contracts, and supplier management).
This workshop will give developers an overview of what technologies can be leveraged to build these types of integrations and the software requirements necessary to build-out these solutions.
Account Executive for Big Data Solutions at SAP, Robby Richardson will conduct the SAP Workshop on real-time data solutions using the SAP HANA cloud platform.
As the in-memory Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering from SAP, HANA enables customers and developers to build, extend, and run applications in the cloud.
This workshop will provide an overview of the solutions and a selection of examples from the 1,500 developers and start-ups that are running their solutions on the world's fastest real-time data platform.
SAP's participation exemplifies the two major offerings of CDSE:2014:
During the business conference at CDSE:2014, highly focused strategic and technical keynotes, breakout panels, and Q&A sessions will thoroughly explore cloud computing solutions, and ample opportunities will be provided for one-on-one networking with the major players in this space.
At the co-located CDSE:2014 instructional workshops and special seminars facilitated by industry leading speakers and world-class technical trainers, attendees will, see, hear, learn and master critical skills in sessions devoted to the unique challenges and opportunities for developers, programmers, and solutions architects.
All aspects of cloud computing will be represented: storage, networking, applications, integration, and aggregation.
Examples of other sessions that show the depth and breadth of CDSE:2014 include "Mobile Cloud Architectures" by IBM's Sal Vella, "Tackling Big Data with Hadoop & Open Source" by Talend's Cedric Carbone, "Reducing IaaS Costs with Predictive Analytics" by QRhythm's Sergey Sherpluk, "Media & Entertainment Cloud Object Stores" by Aspera's Mike Flathers, "HIPAA in the Healthcare Cloud" by OnRamp's Chad Kissinger, and "Cloud Mining for Government Agencies" by TechLabs' Stephen Leibholz.
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.
If you'd like to speak at this major industry event, please contact me at the DCIA. .
Share wisely, and take care.
SAP Software Head Embarks on Cloud Shift
Excerpted from Bloomberg Businessweek Report by Aaron Ricadela
SAP SE's software chief may have one of the toughest jobs in the technology industry: dragging the IT operations of 45,000 businesses into the era of cloud computing.
Bernd Leukert, a 20-year company veteran, was promoted to the Executive Board after the departure of Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka in May. Now Leukert is breaking with his predecessor's focus on fighting Oracle in the database market, and is responding to customers of its market-leading enterprise software who want a clear path for moving their applications to cloud-based systems.
Leukert, 47, said in an interview at SAP's headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, "There's no debate anymore in the IT industry that the cloud will be the preferred consumption model," — referring to the shift toward delivering software via the Internet instead of installed on clients' servers. "A road map is something we owe the market."
SAP, projected to report $23 billion in sales this year, supplies a sophisticated palette of software — some 400 million lines of code — that lets companies such as BMW, Coca-Cola, and Exxon Mobil manage everything from sales and marketing to manufacturing and finance.
Dubbed the Business Suite, the product is entrenched in global companies' everyday operations and supplies more than 60 percent of SAP's operating profit, estimated at 5.7 billion euros this year, according to Wells Fargo Securities. SAP has 24.3 percent of the $25.4 billion market for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, to Oracle's 12.3 percent, according to research firm Gartner.
Excluding recurring revenue from support contracts, sales of on-premises software are falling as customers build fewer new applications that run on company-owned computers. Instead they're giving more business to cloud-computing providers such as Salesforce.com and Workday, which deliver software-as-a-service (SaaS) via the web, freeing users of the need to buy and maintain hardware and applications.
Chief Executive Officer Bill McDermott and former co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe have spent more than $15 billion since 2010 buying suppliers of web-delivered applications in areas including human resources and purchasing, as well as technologies such as database maker Sybase.
Leukert, responsible for 18,000 developers worldwide, said he plans to gradually merge the Business Suite with cloud applications.
For instance, SuccessFactors' Employee Central, an HR product for tracking workers' performance acquired by SAP in a $3.4 billion deal in 2012, will converge with SAP's traditional payroll system when customers move their HR software to the cloud, Leukert said.
As an interim step toward delivering its software as a web service, SAP plans to let businesses keep the customizations they've made to the Business Suite when they migrate to SAP hosting the software on its servers for them.
"This is a possible first step that helps companies transition to the cloud," Leukert said.
SAP isn't alone in trying to modernize mainstay computing products. Oracle, under CEO Larry Ellison, has been acquiring cloud-computing companies and in June released a version of its 12c database software which uses computer memory to process business transactions and analyze data using the same tools — similar to the idea behind SAP's HANA.
IBM in July struck a deal with Apple to support business customers' use of iPads and iPhones. Microsoft's new CEO Satya Nadella has invigorated its decades-old Windows and Office franchises by making them more adaptable for use on mobile devices and the web.
To be sure, SAP has the luxury of a little time. Companies have invested millions of dollars in its enterprise systems over the years and many aren't in a rush to change.
"Some ERP systems tend to be there for 15 or 20 years," said Chris Pang, a Gartner analyst. "A lot of organizations are not going to move their whole stack to the cloud."
Texas Tech & NIMBOXX Form Cloud Partnership
Excerpted from CloudWedge Report
Austin, TX based NIMBOXX describes itself as the "Atomic Unit of Software-Defined Data Centers." The phrase is more than just a slogan; this distinction has helped NIMBOXX separate itself from other software defined data center solutions. Texas Tech has taken notice of NIMBOXX and subsequently partnered up with the upstart cloud service. More specifically, KFYO reports that "NIMBOXX has joined the Texas Tech University Cloud and Autonomic Computing Center as an industry advisory board member."
Texas Tech's Cloud and Autonomic Computing Center is nationally recognized as being only one of five cloud based research centers that receive funding from the National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers Program. COIC's website shows that Dr. Alan Sill, Dr. Ravi Vadapalli and Dr. Yong Chen are the academic leaders of the Cloud and Autonomic Computing Center. Texas Tech and NIMBOXX will work on creating a more agile IaaS system that can support the world's largest organizations.
NIMBOXX founder Rocky Bullock mentions, "Though cloud computing is clearly experiencing growth, the lack of mature cloud standards is a critical industry inhibitor right now." In regards to the Texas Tech partnership, Bullock followed up by saying, "Having more pervasive standards would allow developers, vendors and users to focus on higher level capabilities and less on reinventing common features. We're proud to support the work of the CAC@TTU to develop and promote trusted and reliable cloud offerings that leverage our own deep experience in cloud, virtualization and systems management technologies."
NIMBOXX seems to be getting a lot of coverage from industry analysts as well. John Abbott, an analyst with 451 Research, comments on NIMBOXX by saying, "Second-wave converged infrastructure startups have learned from their older peers and refined their approach. One such is NIMBOXX, which has just come out of stealth mode and introduced its first products." Abbott continues by saying, "This new wave of companies is much more aware of the general push toward 'software-defined' platforms using modular, open software stacks to avoid hardware lock-in while still taking advantage of more efficient and dense system architectures."
Researchers Demo Elastic Cloud-to-Cloud Networking
Excerpted from GCN Report
Scientists announced a cloud-to-cloud networking technology that could one day lead to sub-second provisioning time.
The prototype was built with contributions and expertise from AT&T, IBM, and Applied Communication Sciences (ACS), and the work was performed under the auspices of the Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency's CORONET program, which focuses on rapid reconfiguration of terabit networks.
In response to the rapid advent of cloud-based services and an explosion in data center size and scope, cloud service providers have installed automatic, intelligent resource management systems within their data centers that can load balance both processor and storage resources, as well as perform massive transfers of data among multiple data centers.
"These shifts have driven the need to develop rapid and high rate bandwidth-on-demand in the wide area network," said Robert Doverspike, Executive Director of Network Evolution Research at AT&T Labs in the announcement. "By combining software defined networking (SDN) concepts with advanced, cost-efficient network routing in a realistic carrier network environment, we have successfully demonstrated how to address this need."
AT&T was responsible for developing the overall networking architecture for the concept, drawing on its experience in bandwidth-on-demand technologies and advanced routing. IBM provided the cloud platform and intelligent cloud data center orchestration technologies to support dynamic provisioning of cloud-to-cloud communications. ACS contributed its expertise in network management and innovation in optical-layer routing and signaling as part of the overall cloud networking architecture.
This prototype was built on OpenStack, elastically provisioning WAN connectivity and placing virtual machines between two clouds for load balancing virtual network functions. The use of flexible, on-demand bandwidth for cloud applications provides the potential for cost savings and efficiency for both cloud service providers and carriers.
"This technology not only represents a new ability to scale big data workloads and cloud computing resources in a single environment but the elastic bandwidth model removes the inefficiency in consumption versus cost for cloud-to-cloud connectivity," said Douglas Freimuth, IBM Research senior technical staff member and master inventor.
Next Gen P2P Wireless: Market Opps for P2P Direct Apps & Services
Excerpted from Digital Journal Report
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Next Generation Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Wireless: Developing Market Opportunities for P2P Direct Applications and Services" report to its offerings.
Standardization is on the horizon for LTE to operate in a P2P mode known as LTE Direct (LTE-D) that involves discovery and a mode of operation involving so-called "ambient awareness." This is expected to be a novelty at first but quickly evolve into a new ecosystem that is at once complementary and competitive to the current cellular ecosystem.
There are a number of additional technologies that may also be deployed that all provide the ability for devices to "discover" one another, although over different distances ranging from centimeters (Near Field Communications), meters (Bluetooth), 10s of meters (Wi-Fi), and some that vary (beacon technologies).
This research addresses the technology, companies, solutions, and market opportunities involving discovery, presence/detection, P2P communications, and related applications. The report evaluates the ecosystem, anticipated impacts, and future of Person-to-Person, Device-to-Device, communications.
BitTorrent Wants to Bleep Your Instant Messages
Excerpted from TechReport Article by Geoff Gasior
Want to send messages over the Internet without the NSA listening in on your conversations? The folks behind BitTorrent think they've come up with a solution: a distributed, encrypted messaging system called Bleep. Unlike traditional messaging apps, Bleep relies on a decentralized network of peers. There's no central server to store messages, metadata, or contact information. Even searching for other users is handled through the peer-to-peer swarm.
Bleep is based on the BitTorrent Chat experiment conducted last year. It uses an encrypted version of BitTorrent's DHT protocol that relies on public key encryption. Here's how it works:
With BitTorrent Chat, there aren't any "usernames" per se. You don't login in the classic sense. Instead, your identity is a cryptographic key pair. To everyone on the BitTorrent Chat network at large, you ARE your public key. This means that, if you want, you can use Chat without telling anyone who you are. Two users only need to exchange each other's public keys to be able to chat.
Using public key encryption provides us with a number of benefits. The most obvious is the ability to encrypt messages to your sender using your private key and their public key. But in public key encryption, if someone gains access to your private key, all of your past (and future) messages could be decrypted and read. In Chat, we are implementing forward secrecy. Every time you begin a conversation with one of your contacts, a temporary encryption key will be generated. Using each of your keypairs, this key will be generated for this one conversation and that conversation only, and then deleted forever.
A pre-alpha version of BitTorrent Bleep is currently being tested on a invite-only basis. Text and voice chat are both supported, but offline messages are not, at least in the current incarnation. The alpha is also Windows-only, though versions are planned for other platforms, including mobile operating systems.
Telefonica Leverages Broadcom Technology for Ultra HD IPTV Broadcasts
Broadcom Corporation, a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, today announced Telefonica, one of the top global telecommunications providers with operations in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, has chosen Broadcom's HEVC-enabled system-on-chip (SoC) technology to deliver Ultra High Definition (Ultra HD) IPTV broadcasts.
Telefonica is distributing Ultra HD content, including recent live broadcasts of select World Cup games, through its extensive fiber optical network and integration of Broadcom's BCM7445 and BCM7252 SoC devices for advanced compression and decoding. For more news, visit Broadcom's Newsroom.
At four times the image definition currently available to consumers, Ultra HD content requires more efficient bandwidth to deliver uninterrupted 4K, 60 frame-per-second transmissions. Broadcom's high efficiency video coding (HEVC)-enabled chipsets significantly speed the transmission of 4K content, allowing operators and users to receive Ultra HD content in half the time, at 50 percent of the bit rate previously required.
"Broadcom is committed to bringing the precise, live-action images enabled by 4kp60 Ultra HD to consumers around the world," said Dan Marotta, Broadcom Executive Vice President and General Manager, Broadband & Connectivity Group. "Collaborating with Telefonica allows us to take a significant step forward in delivering Ultra HD to their Vivo TV Fibra subscribers for an exceptional live-action TV viewing experience."
"As a global telecommunications provider with more than 300 million customers and the sixth largest mobile network provider in the world, Telefonica is highly focused on providing the most advanced features to our subscribers," Rafael Sgrott Martins, Video Director, Telefonica. "As Ultra HD continues to gain momentum in Latin America, North America, Europe and beyond, our collaboration with Broadcom will play an important part in delivering the picture quality needed for the immersive viewing experience that Ultra HD provides."
Verizon Cloud Adds Business Value with Quality of Service
Excerpted from Xen Project Blog by Sarah Conway
Both businesses and consumers rely on public clouds for a range of tasks and activities from collaboration and video streaming to Gmail and Netflix. New companies are born with just a dozen employees, a laptop and an Internet connection practically overnight. This is all thanks to cloud computing.
It's no surprise that in the next six years, almost 90 percent of new spending on Internet and communications technologies, a $5 trillion global business, will be on cloud-based technology, according to industry analyst firm IDC. Cloud applications will also account for 90 percent of total mobile data traffic by 2018, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2013—2018.
The benefits for users are almost too numerous to count, but most IT professionals agree that cloud computing epitomizes constant change. Its ability to provide ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of networks, servers, storage, and services whenever and wherever they are needed is creating both market opportunity and market upheaval.
To temper the turbulence, capitalize on the opportunities and best prepare for any number of cloud unknowns, several of the world's largest public providers including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, IBM/SoftLayer, and Verizon Terremark rely on Xen Project virtualization. Open source Xen Project software offers superior IT efficiencies, workload balancing, hyperscalability and tight security by running VMs on a cloud service.
While today the media is focusing on price wars and the possible commoditization of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), cloud providers like Verizon Terremark are innovating with novel Quality of Service agreements and new levels of automation. In his talk in Chicago at our Xen Project Developer Summit, Verizon Terremark's Don Slutz will present an overview of the Verizon Cloud architecture based on Xen.
"It's the core foundation of the Verizon Cloud, allowing our users to run any type or size workload they'd like to. Xen is critical to Verizon. Competing solutions were either too cost prohibitive or lacked the security controls that Xen has," Don said.
Verizon Terremark is a long-time advocate of open standards and is more actively involved than ever before in the open source ecosystem. Verizon sponsors and participates in Xen Project software, invests in CloudStack and most recently joined the Cloud Foundry Foundation, hoping to see the cloud market mature quickly and provide businesses with cloud-based offerings that address specific needs like performance, choice, cost and flexibility.
For the past three years, Don has worked on integrating and designing Xen for the Verizon Cloud architecture along with seven full-time engineers. Today, clients are fully deployed on Verizon's IaaS based on Xen. A focal point of his talk will be Verizon's Quality of Service (QoS) goals with CPU, memory, network and disk performance.
"Often clouds end up requiring far too much support personnel, which we are trying to rectify. With our QoS agreement, we allow users to set the performance parameters their business requires and guarantee that Verizon will back these up at all times. Instead of focusing on speed or load size, we'll guarantee certain CPU, memory, network or disk performance. This is really unique in the industry," he added.
In addition to delivering workload efficiency, security and cost savings to its cloud customers, Verizon is also giving back to the Xen Project community.
"We're working to make Verizon Cloud a high capacity service that allows people to move existing VMs easily onto it it," Don said. "Our goal is to add enough VMWare support so that a guest can be exported from VMWare and automatically run without any changes on Xen."
Verizon's VMWare code is currently in review and in the past year has contributed 40 change sets that totals 4,300 lines of code.
Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Deploys DataDirect Networks
With its zero-tolerance toward crime, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has deployed a state-of-the-art video surveillance and storage archive system with 5.5 petabytes of DataDirect Networks (DDN) SFA high-performance storage.
As the nation's third largest Sheriff's office, Maricopa County, which is located in Arizona and encompasses the Phoenix metropolitan area, has between 7,500 to 10,000 inmates in its jail system across six facilities where the ability to maintain the highest levels of visibility across the County's jail system to ensure the security and safety of inmates, correctional officers and staff is paramount.
Faced with an aging tape-based storage system, ongoing performance issues and a huge influx of data as a result of industry-wide adoption of HD digital SLR, Maricopa County teamed with Sierra Detention Systems to overhaul its physical security platform and keep pace with the scale, performance and density demands of its storage-intensive environment.
By combining high density and efficiency with massive capacity capabilities, DDN's SFA storage platform is ideal for deployments that require secure archiving and rapid access to Big Data such as IP CCTV, sensor and video surveillance systems. With DDN storage for the real-time data capture and video archive for more than 3,000 HD surveillance cameras, Maricopa County now captures and records 24/7 activity across all six sites concurrently, achieving high data availability, simplified storage administration and the ability to scale and manage as many as 30 petabytes of footage.
With DDN's high-performance storage, Maricopa County has created a powerful video archive that is 10 times faster than its predecessor, enabling law enforcement to capture thousands of incidents annually and retrieve up to 60 days of HD footage in seconds. Previously, it could take up to 60 days to retrieve a month's worth of data from the tape-based archive, which was unacceptably slow and error prone.
With its significantly upgraded jail-security system, Maricopa County has improved crime detection and intervention to significantly reduce the cost of litigation and save taxpayers' dollars.
Headed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known as "America's Toughest Sheriff," according to Maricopa County, the Sheriff's office has achieved 100 percent visibility across its county-wide jail system to deter crime and lead the way in complying with the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).
OTT Video Revenue Will Surpass DVD Revenue in 2019
Excerpted from Telecompetitor Report by Andrew Burger
The North American market for over-the-top (OTT) video, which includes subscription video-on-demand (VoD) services such as Netlfix and Hulu, will grow 21 percent in 2014, reaching $10.7 billion, according to new market research from Strategy Analytics. Overall, OTT video revenues are expected to nearly double between 2013 and 2019, to $18 billion.
Accounting for 48 percent of overall OTT video revenues, subscription VoD revenues alone will increase 26 percent across North America this year to total $5.1 billion, Strategy Analytics forecasts. Growth is forecast to continue, with North America OTT subscription video revenues increasing 116 percent to $8.8 billion between 2013 and 2019.
Revenues from retail OTT sales — downloading to own video — will grow 13 percent and reach $1.4 billion, 13 percent of overall revenue. Strategy Analytics expects retail OTT sales across the region will grow 58 percent from 2013-2019 to reach $1.9 billion.
OTT renting — streamed/temporary downloads — will grow 21 percent to reach $681 million, six percent of overall 2014 OTT video revenues. From 2013-2019, OTT video renting will grow at a 74 percent rate and total $980 million, Strategy Analytics says.
Forecast to increase at a 17 percent rate year over year to $3.6 billion, OTT advertising, such as video ads, will account for the remaining 33 percent, according to Strategy Analytics, forecasting that this will grow 109 percent between 2013 and 2019.
According to Strategy Analytics, the average North American broadband user will spend nearly $29 on OTT services this year. That would be up 18 percent from 2013. By 2019, the market research company expects this will increase 78 percent from 2013 to reach $43.51.
"It's amazing to think people spent almost half as much on Internet film/TV content last year, such a new industry, as they did on DVDs — a format that's been around for 20 years," Goodman continued. "By the end of this year there'll be about 54 million subscriptions to over-the-top video services such as Netflix, Hulu and MLB.com. In five years this will reach about 69 million — at which point OTT revenues will have overtaken DVDs."
Commenting on its latest North America OTT video market forecast, Strategy Analytics' Director, Digital Media Michael Goodman commented, "Subscription services are the lifeblood of the OTT video industry. An extensive library of TV shows and movies — with just enough blockbuster titles — at an affordable price has proved a compelling cocktail for consumers."
Among OTT competitors, Netflix is the clear winner, Goodman continued. "Barring a totally unexpected collapse, Netflix has won the battle for supremacy in this sector, accounting for about three-quarters of subscription video revenue in North America. With its momentum only growing, the other services, such as Hulu, HBO Go, YouTube and Amazon, are left to fight over the scraps."
Netflix Strikes Streaming-Traffic Deal with AT&T
Excerpted frok CNET Report by Dara Kerr
Following recent deals with Comcast and Verizon, Netflix confirmed Tuesday that it has also reached an agreement with AT&T to provide a direct connection from the video service to broadband customers. The hoped-for result is less buffering and faster streaming for Netflix customers.
"We reached an interconnect agreement with AT&T in May and since then have been working together to provision additional interconnect capacity to improve the viewing experience of our mutual subscribers," a Netflix spokesperson told CNET. "We're now beginning to turn up the connections, a process that should be complete in the coming days."
Tech news site Mashable first reported the deal, citing sources familiar with the negotiations.
The terms of the agreement were not revealed, but they're likely similar to those of a "paid peering" deal Netflix struck with Comcast in February. For that deal, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast to directly connect its content delivery network to home broadband users who subscribe to Netflix. The video service came to a similar deal with Verizon in April.
Netflix's deal with Comcast was made after a long dispute over whether Netflix would agree to pay Comcast for the direct connection. In recent months, the dispute appeared to be heating up, with suggestions that Comcast customers were seeing their connections to Netflix degraded.
Netflix's agreements with the Internet service providers come as the Federal Communications Commission has proposed new rules about how ISPs can control traffic on the Internet. Some consumer advocacy groups worry that such agreements may be a setback for Net neutrality, which aims to prevent broadband providers from blocking access or discriminating against Internet traffic traveling over their connections.
According to the FCC, Net Neutrality protections do not cover Netflix' interconnection arrangements with ISPs. That said, the government agency did say it is gathering more information on these peering deals as part of its overall effort to find out what's really happening on the Internet.
Ergen: In the Future, Most TV Viewing Won't Happen on TV
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Janko Roettgers
TV viewing is shifting from televisions to mobile devices, which is one reason why Dish plans to launch an Internet TV service by the end of this year.
Dish still wants to launch its Internet TV service by the end of this year, Chairman Charlie Ergen confirmed during the company's Q2 earnings call Wednesday. Ergen also said that he is looking at the online service as a key asset for a possible wireless future. Wireless and video "will go together pretty nicely," Ergen said.
Dish made some headlines this week when it announced a licensing deal with A+E Networks which includes the right to deliver A+E content as part its upcoming Internet TV service. Earlier this year, the company struck a similar agreement with Disney.
Ergen said that the new service could be a win-win proposition for both networks and Dish, but also cautioned that the real impact of an Internet TV service won't be known for some time. "We could be disruptive to the current ecosystem," he said, adding that the company is trying to move carefully into this space so that a new service won't necessarily compete with its own satellite TV service. Dish lost 44,000 subscribers in Q2, compared to 78,000 a year ago.
However, in the long run, Internet TV is all about wireless, Ergen said. People already watch a lot of video on mobile devices, he argued, and in the future, this type of use will increase even more, to the point where traditional TV may become the landline phone of the video business. "TV is gonna follow the phone business," he said, adding: "The majority of viewing is gonna be on a screen other than the way you are watching it today."
Dish has acquired some spectrum in the past to launch mobile services, but with the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile falling apart, it's also possible that the company could sell some of that spectrum again and potentially partner, or even merge, with a mobile carrier. Dish's executive team got tons of questions about spectrum and T-Mobile during Wednesday's call, but both Ergen and CEO Joe Clayton played their cards close to their chest. Ergen did say that Dish may be interested in T-Mobile, but also joked that he'd have to read this week's analyst reports first to know what to do next.
Regardless of Dish's potential wireless future, Ergen certainly isn't alone with his thoughts on video and mobile. AT&T is looking to acquire Dish's competitor DirecTV, and also recently launched
an online video joint venture dubbed Otter Media in cooperation with the Chernin Group. And Verizon acquired Intel's OnCue Internet TV venture earlier this year, but it looks like it has since scaled back its plans of actually launching a TV-like service in the immediate future.
Parks: Cloud DVR Sees Growing Interest, Legal Clarity
Excerpted from Telecompetitor Report by Bernie Arnason
The recent Aereo Supreme Court case, while not exactly positive for Aereo, may help drive cloud DVR adoption, according to Parks Associates' Research Analyst Glenn Hower. And with growing interest in the application, video service providers "…can experiment with these cloud services as strategies to build subscriber loyalty and increase revenues."
Recent Parks' research reveals that 45% of U.S. pay-TV subscribers find cloud DVR technology very appealing. Subscribers have particular interest in unlimited storage space and two-week catch-up services for video, according to the research findings. Currently 40% of pay-TV households have some form of DVR service, says Parks.
The Aereo ruling, which favored broadcasters over the upstart cloud video service provider, had the potential to disrupt cloud DVR services as well. But the court decision steered clear of that.
"The Aereo case left licensing for cloud DVR rights largely unaffected, allowing pay-TV providers to move forward with cloud DVR development and implementation," said Howerin a press release announcing the research findings. "For example, Comcast recently launched in Atlanta its X1 DVR service, which allows, among other capabilities, subscribers to access DVR recordings on their mobile devices. As content owners and providers experiment with cloud technology, the consumers reap the benefits through access to these innovative offerings."
Service providers have been somewhat reluctant to roll out cloud DVR services because of the content rights headaches it engenders, particularly here in the U.S. Cable MSO Cablevision prevailed in a high profile court case on this issue several years ago. The Aereo case seems to have upheld these earlier decisions again.
"Acquiring the rights for cloud DVR systems has been a complicated and arduous process," Hower said. "Many European providers have been extremely diligent in negotiating with content rights owners on cloud DVR, but in the U.S., there is a much greater reliance on statutory and case law. Companies are relying on legislatures and courts to decide the status of rights."
Aggressive Cloud Adopters Get Competitive Advantage
Excerpted from CloudTech Report by James Bourne
The latest cloudy research paper this time arrives courtesy of US telco Verizon, and shows that companies who have shown faith with the cloud early are getting a competitive advantage through increased business agility.
The research, of Harvard Business Review readers, categorized users into four different groups; enthusiasts, moderates, cautious and non-existent on cloud adoption, and showed a higher predilection for enthusiasts (35%) than any other group. 34% of respondents were moderates, while cautious (22%) and none (9%) trailed behind.
This is particularly interesting for one reason. Similar research from Quocirca and CA Technologies this time last year had three categories, of enthusiasts (22%), avoiders (23%), and blockers (3%). A middling category, where 35% of respondents sat, was for those who evaluated its usage before deciding — similar to the 'moderates' category in the recent Verizon study.
Around two thirds of respondents admitted they had gained at least some competitive advantage through adopting cloud. 30% their advantage had been "significant", compared to "some" (33%), "a little" (11%), and "none" (8%).
It's the usual plethora of statistics concerning cloud adoption, although this stat came as a surprise to CloudTech HQ. The most popular cloud deployment is private (41%) according to respondents, followed by hybrid (35%) and public (13%). This goes at odds with greater public cloud deployment, although a recent article from David Linthicum gives credence to the future of the private cloud as a point of control, or interfaces, into public clouds.
The Verizon report notes, correctly, the correlation between companies cautious about the cloud and private cloud uptake. Yet this also correlates with business value derived from cloud, according to the respondents. The biggest win was simplification of HR and CRM (37%), followed by better delivery of internal resources (33%), and greater ways for employee collaboration (31%).
"This research shows that cloud is not just taking a seat at the table; it's already delivering significant benefit and becoming the norm," wrote Siki Giunta, Verizon SVP cloud, data center and connected solutions in a preamble generously titled the 'sponsor's perspective.'
She added: "In those early days of cloud computing, the same concerns came up time and again: security, compliance, and loss of control. But years of hard work by governments, standards bodies, vendors, and enterprises themselves have improved transparency, data portability, integration, manageability, and performance."
Verizon, lest we forget, announced its own cloud platform in October, with various companies — Oracle for middleware, CloudBees to name two — signing up to partner. Despite its various problems with the FCC elsewhere, Verizon hopes that its long standing security and enterprise expertise enables customers to "cloud with confidence", in the words of the official site.
Find the full report here.
The Cloud is Already Getting Too Big — So What's Next?
We are facing an explosion of data and our current technologies will have trouble keeping pace over the next decade or so.
In response, HP will coordinate and advance four emergent technologies in parallel, to prevent the possibility that the rising data flow could flood conventional legacy technologies.
Watch this 3 minute video to see HP's solution.
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.
CloudComp 2014 — October 19th-21st in Guilin, China. The fifth annual international conference on cloud computing. The event is endorsed by the European Alliance for Innovation, a leading community-based organization devoted to the advancement of innovation in the field of ICT.
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.
GOTO Berlin 2014 Conference – November 5th–7th in Berlin, Germany. GOTO Berlin is the enterprise software development conference designed for team leads, architects, and project management and is organized "for developers by developers". New technology and trends in a non-vendor forum.
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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