Volume LII, Issue 5

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In This Issue

Host in Ireland Joins DataCloud Europe

Excerpted from Press Announcement Host in Ireland, an industry-led collaborative initiative created to increase global awareness in hosting digital assets in Ireland, announced its participation in DataCloud Europe, which takes place in Monaco on June 3rd and 4th. DataCloud Europe is hosted by BroadGroup and co-sponsored by the DCIA. During a packed two-day program attended by 1,800 executives from more than 50 countries, DataCloud will focus on the radical impact of cloud on data centers, the way in which enterprise services are sourced and delivered and the continuing innovation in cooling and energy. The Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, and data center investment will also be featured among the range of topics in the content-rich program. “DataCloud Europe is the premier meeting place and forum for IT and cloud innovators, and we are delighted that Host in Ireland will be taking part,” said Philip Low, Managing Director at BroadGroup. “We are delighted to take part in the DataCloud Global Congress,” added Garry Connolly, President and Founder of Host in Ireland. “As data continues to become the oxygen for successful global businesses, customers increasingly assess data center and hosting locations based on a blend of policies, pedigree, people, power, and pipes (the 5 Ps)… Read More

Enterprise Apps World Co-Locates with Cloud World Forum

Excerpted from Press Announcement Enterprise Apps World (EAW) will take place on June 24th and 25th at Olympia Grand, London, England co-located with Cloud World Forum (CWF), hosted by Informa Telecoms & Media and co-sponsored by the DCIA. EAW offers two tracks: Enterprise Mobility Strategies and Enterprise App Development, side-by-side with the twelve CWF content tracks. At the forefront of the agenda are Internet of Things (IoT), Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), User Experience (UX), Monetizing Your Enterprise App, Machine-to-Machine (M2M), Mobile Device Management (MDM), Testing-as-a-Service (TaaS), and much more. CWF will have more than 8,000 attendees and over 300 speakers. EAW is where the entire app industry comes to learn about the latest developments and to find solutions to their enterprise’s challenges. Attend the conference sessions to understand what your potential buyers want to know. Plus, network with them through the event app and networking tool with your delegate pass. EAW will feature these inspirational speakers from multinational enterprises: Adidas’ Marc van der Heijden, Amazon App Store’s Simon Howard, Barclays’ Anastasia Semenova, DHL’s Zvezdan Schoppmann, Google’s Giles Peyton-Nicoll… Read More

DDN Sponsors 2015 Creative Storage Conference

Excerpted from Press Announcement The 2015 Creative Storage Conference (CSC 2015) announces Platinum Sponsor, Data Direct Networks (DDN). The Ninth Annual CSC hosted by the Entertainment Storage Alliance (ESA) and co-sponsored by the DCIA, will be held on June 30th in Culver City, CA. DDN is a supplier of advanced digital storage products supporting high performance storage as well as cloud-based object storage. A key target market for DDN is the media and entertainment market, making their product a great fit for the Creative Storage Conference. According to Tom Coughlin, Organizer and General Chairman of the Creative Storage Conference, “DDN has been a long time participant in the media and entertainment storage industry.” He continues, “They understand the requirements of digital storage products for the media and entertainment industry. They are a great addition to our 2015 Creative Storage sponsors and are pleased to have DDN as a Platinum Sponsor of the 2015 Creative Storage Conference.” This one-day conference brings together influential digital storage providers, equipment and software manufacturers and professional media and entertainment end users in one place to explore the conference theme of “Exabytes for Video… Read More

Report from DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty

Click Here for Video For those hoping for a frothy and free-wheeling Cinco de Mayo message, this will surely disappoint. But for those willing to consider a serious topic and take an open-minded approach, this communique could mark a turning point for an oft-maligned industry and provide an opportunity to act meaningfully to benefit all Internet users — and people in general. This week’s minor but festive holiday is observed to commemorate the Mexican army’s unlikely triumph over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. As Time Magazine remarked, “The Puebla victory came to symbolize unity and pride for what seemed like a Mexican David defeating a French Goliath.” It helped establish a much-needed sense of national unity and patriotism. In that spirit, we seek to commence an era of new industry accord and resolve for those engaged in improving the integrity, security, and value of the Internet for software development, broadband access, data storage, and content delivery; and for consumers and enterprise end-users of web-based services. For theirs is also a David vs. Goliath mission; and it is one of seriously increasing importance to be encouraged rather than disparaged. Unlawful attempts to justify digital infringement and disruption are now threatening far more than the economic insult inflicted by the pirating of music tracks or the hacking of company emails. With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) heralding such advances as connected automobiles and embedded medical devices, seeking to overturn the work of those charged with protecting these data systems can result not only in data loss, but also in serious physical injury or death. This week’s full report, which comprises an industry DRM Manifesto and Voluntary Code of Conduct, is now posted on the DCIA website. Share wisely, and take care.

ADRM Working Group Now Forming

Excerpted from DRM Manifesto Report At the request of member companies, the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) is establishing a new working group to drive advancement of digital rights management (DRM) technologies, solutions, and business practices. Given rapidly increasing consumer acceptance of remote data storage, mobile cloud services, Internet protocol television (IPTV), social networking, over-the-top (OTT) video, Internet of Things (IoT), and similar trends, there’s corresponding growth in the need for improvement in access control solutions to protect the integrity of high-value content and proprietary data, provide optimal usability, and protect the security and privacy of consumers and enterprise end-users. Industry participants confirm that the time is right for an initiative totally focused on the advancement of digital rights management (ADRM), The ADRM Working Group will create a conduit for processing, organizing, and focusing consumer feedback; a forum for providing legal oversight and influencing regulatory and legislative actions; and a platform for coordinating technical direction as these relate to access control in the digital ecosystem. Initially, the group will focus on completing its voluntary code of conduct, an initial draft of which is offered in the DRM Manifesto white-paper. DRM solutions providers and related companies are invited to participate. Contact adrm@dcia.info for more information… Read More

The Evolving State of Cyber-Threats

Excerpted from CIO Insights Report by Samuel Greengard Over the last few years, cyber-threats have become more sophisticated and persistent. Every day, there’s news of yet another breach or breakdown. What’s more, confronting the problem and mitigating risk has become more difficult. A new survey from QuinStreet Enterprise, “2015 Security Outlook: Meeting Today’s Evolving Cyber Threats,” examines the challenges. The survey of 387 business and information technology (IT) executives found, among other things, that cyber-attacks are becoming more targeted and increasingly sophisticated, most companies have experienced a damaging breach in the past year, and the majority of organizations have increased their security budget and adopted a more aggressive approach to thwart new risks. Since cyber-attacks are increasingly multi-pronged and use more sophisticated methods to create a breach — including social engineering — there’s also a growing focus on using the right combination of tools, technologies and methods — and integrating them more effectively. Here are some of the highlights from the research: 50% of respondents said that preventing cyber-attacks is the most important or a top three IT issue for their organization… Read More

Strong DRM Needed for OTT Battle

Excerpted from Advanced Television Report by Colin Mann Maintaining a high level of security is essential for pay-TV operators looking to take their share of the lucrative over-the-top (OTT) market, according to Tom Jahr, Conax’s Executive Vice President, Products and Partners. Addressing a conference session on “Lowering OTT Cost Barriers without Sacrificing Security,” Jahr told delegates that many operators struggle to make money in OTT, with high investment and operational costs, as well as stiff competition, for example Netflix, HBO, GO/NOW and Viaplay, particular challenges. “Many of the operators that approach Conax are frustrated with high investment cost and high operational costs when they are struggling with finding the actual cash in a new OTT service,” he advised. “Most operators are crunching numbers trying to figure out how to find profitability in OTT but we see that achieving a good return on potential OTT investments is not that easy.” Despite these challenges, Jahr noted that short-format content had proven that there is significant money to be made from OTT content — YouTube giant “Blame Society Production’s” channel has more than 110 million views, while American filmmaker Casey Neistat achieved five million views on his “Make It Count” film within 10 days of its release… Read More

PSSD Signs on Intertrust’s ExpressPlay Cloud DRM Service

Excerpted from Advanced Television Report German broadcasting powerhouse ProSiebenSat.1 Digital (PSSD) is starting to deploy Intertrust’s ExpressPlay cloud digital rights management (DRM) system to protect and manage content across multiple modern device platforms including iOS, Android, Chromecast, and Smart TV. Rapidly gaining worldwide adoption, Intertrust’s ExpressPlay is a cost-effective and future-proof, pay-as-you-go service that supports both the open standards-based Marlin DRM, and Microsoft PlayReady DRM technologies. By using ExpressPlay, broadcasters and service providers can hedge against technology and format changes by using a single multi-platform cloud DRM. As the DRM market changes to support different DRM systems on different platforms, ExpressPlay becomes the natural choice for service providers. “We are delighted to welcome ProSiebenSat.1 Digital to the ExpressPlay platform,” said Gilles Boccon-Gibod, SVP Technology and head of Intertrust’s Trusted Services Group. “We designed ExpressPlay to provide entertainment-industry approved multi-format content protection, making it an ideal choice for broadcasters and service providers around the world.” Marlin is an open, standards-based content protection technology. Developers can download the specifications at Marlin Community… Read More

ABOX42 Highlights Advanced Set-Tops

Excerpted from Digital TV Europe Report Germany-based set-top provider ABOX42 is using TV Connect to highlight the latest generation M40 Smart STB platform for IPTV, OTT and hybrid deployments. This latest model of the M-series product range supports HEVC/H.265 compression and is based on the latest chipset technology from Broadcom, supporting up to 4K video resolution. ABOX42 is also showcasing the latest version of OPX TV, its TV application and backend solution, now available for IPTV, OTT and hybrid DVB projects. OPX TV offers a variety of new features and functionalities, such as full HbbTV support, IP based or DVB based EPG and capability to run both IPTV, OTT and traditional DVB channels in a unified channel list. For content security, ABOX42 has added Expressplay, the DRM solution from Intertrust/Marlin to its portfolio of DRM and software-based conditional access systems, which enables operators to run different security systems for different applications or services side by side on the ABOX42 platform. The company says its ABOX42 Smart Platform and customized IPTV, OTT and hybrid smart set-top boxes (STBs), which it says can solve the most important key challenges facing TV operators by providing a combination of solid hardware foundation and software features to deliver what it describes as a unique TV proposition with least cost and effort… Read More

The Week Cloud Computing Took Over the World

Excerpted from Network World Report by Fredric Paul Earnings reports from Amazon and Microsoft conclusively confirm what we should have already known: cloud computing is on a rampage. Both companies announced big-time growth and revenue from their cloud operations. First, let’s talk Amazon, which for the first time broke out the numbers for its Amazon Web Services division, including “amounts earned from sales of compute, storage, database, and other AWS service offerings for startups, enterprises, government agencies, and academic institutions.” And those numbers were scorching! As Network World’s Brandon Butler pointed out:”Amazon Web Services collected $1.56 billion in revenue throughout the first quarter of 2015, with a profit of $265 million with a 17% margin. Revenue grew 49% between the first quarter of 2015 and the first quarter last year.” Wow! And that’s only the short-term story. In calendar 2014, AWS earned $4.64 billion in revenue, but in the 12 months ending March 31, AWS collected $5.16 billion in revenue. In the earnings call, CEO Jeff Bezos said, “Amazon Web Services is a $5 billion business and still growing fast — in fact it’s accelerating.” And that fits with the scale numbers that were reported recently… Read More

With Amazon atop the Cloud, Big Tech Rivals Give Chase

Excerpted From NY Times Report by David Streitfeld and Nick Wingfield Amazon unveiled the financial performance of its powerful growth engine for the first time on Thursday, and the numbers sure looked pretty — especially compared with big companies like Microsoft and Google that are chasing it. While Amazon is primarily known as an online retailer, its revenue and its stock market returns for years have been energized by an entirely different kind of commerce: renting processing power to start-ups and, increasingly, established businesses. Amazon helped popularize the field — known as cloud computing — and largely had it to itself for years, an enormous advantage in an industry where rivals usually watch one another closely. But the other tech powerhouses have since awoken to the fact that they were nowhere in a market that could soon be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Microsoft, Amazon’s crosstown rival, is especially committed to the challenge, and is in furious pursuit. At the moment, there is no contest: Amazon is dominant and might even be extending its lead. Its resources, however, are fewer than most of its competitors, who have tens of billions of dollars stashed away. And if there is one thing that cloud computing demands, it is heavy investment to set up enormous data centers around the globe… Read More

Verizon Bets on SDN Technology to Deliver Faster Services

Excerpted from TopTechNews Report by Jennifer LeClaire Looking to jump into the next generation of networking technology, Verizon is working with Cisco, Juniper Networks, Nokia Networks, and Alcatel-Lucent to deploy a software-defined network (SDN) architecture. Essentially, Verizon is laying the groundwork for operational efficiencies that will set the stage for faster delivery of new services and applications. SDNs make it possible for network admins to manage network services more dynamically and cost-effectively. It’s a perfect solution for high-bandwidth applications in the telecom industry. “This will become the foundation for innovative, new Verizon services and applications,” said John Chambers, Cisco Chairman & CEO. “Both companies share a vision to transform the entirety of the network architecture to achieve the speed and operational efficiency required to meet the needs of today, as well as capture the growth opportunities to monetize with the Internet of Everything over the next decade and beyond.” Verizon is not the first carrier to drive a software-centric architecture, but the company does have a history of staying on the cutting edge. This move should help Verizon keep up with the cloud-based competition. “Cloud technologies hold the promise for true innovation in our industry,” said Rajeev Suri, Nokia President & CEO… Read More

Telefonica: Unifying Cloud & Comms for Efficiency

Excerpted from Business Cloud News Report Telefonica is working to roll-out a wide range of internally and customer-focused cloud services on both its own UNICA and OpenStack platforms, but the company’s Global Cloud Director Juan Manuel Moreno said the challenges of shifting such a large company aren’t purely technical. Moreno, who was speaking at the Telco Cloud Forum in London Tuesday, said the company has been in the process of transforming its technology platforms and internal operations for some time. It’s no secret telcos like Telefonica have in recent years worked to strengthen their cloud capabilities in a bid to broaden their service portfolios and battle dwindling voice and data revenues — and to regain ground lost to more nimble OTT players. “We are reliant on the full ecosystem of providers of technology… using technology partners to build these new services. But it’s a challenge because these players are moving so quickly,” Moreno said. “One of the biggest challenges in this space is that everyone and everything is moving so quickly.” Much of what the company has done externally was intricately linked with its efforts to virtualize core elements of its own networks… Read More

Microsoft Targets $20 Billion Cloud Revenue by 2018

Excerpted from Tech News Today Report by Natalie James Microsoft is being quite optimistic about the adoption of its cloud-based services in the future; as it announced that it plans to earn revenues of $20 billion from this segment annually by 2018. To reach this level, the cloud computing segment will have to grow three times in the coming three years, as the current annualized revenues are $6.3 billion. The company estimates its revenues on an annualized basis, which are four times of the quarterly revenues. It also has plans to have a billion devices that are actively using Windows 10, by the same year. These targets were communicated by CEO Satya Nadella to a group of financial analysts during the company’s build developer conference held in San Francisco, CA. He said, “So we have an ambition to get to $20 billion of annualized run rate in the cloud in FY18. So that’s our target, and that’s what we’re going to pursue with the strategy I just laid out. And this, by the way, is about really the combination of what we today have in Office 365, Dynamics, EMS, and Azure.” Since he took over the position as CEO, Mr. Nadella has kept his focus on the cloud-based services, as he believes that they are going to be the most widely used platform in the coming times… Read More

How the IoT & Big Data Are Changing Our World

Excerpted from Smart Data Collective Report by Bernard Marr The Internet of Things (IoT) combined with Big Data is reaching further into our lives every day. And while some of these innovations are just super cool, others may need to get the kinks ironed out before they become part of our everyday lives. I just bought a new vacuum cleaner that will tell me how many calories I have burnt during cleaning or let me know how much energy I have saved… There are sensors you can buy to turn your home into a smart home, and when attached to apps, they can perform a command or send you a message when certain things happen, like turning on a light when it detects motion at the front door, or sending you a text message when the liquor cabinet is opened. One of the really cool new things I have come across is a smart yoga mat: sensors embedded in the mat will be able to provide feedback on your postures, score your practice, and even guide you through an at-home practice. The technology is ambitious — and only a prototype and concept at this point — but it shows how far the IoT and Big Data can take us… Read More

FCC’s Open Internet Order Challenged in 3rd Circuit

Excerpted from Multichannel News Report by John Eggerton Add Full Service Network, TruConnect Mobile, Sage Telecommunications, and Telescape Telecommunications — collectively they are filing one petition — to those challenging the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) new Network Neutrality order. That makes an even eight court challenges to the rules, but the latest — dated April 23rd — is important for where it is filed — the Third Circuit Full Service is based in Pennsylvania, which is in the Third Circuit. Currently among those eight court challenges are filings in the DC Circuit, where deal critics feels they have the best chance since that is the court that has twice rejected FCC Net Neutrality efforts — one in the Fifth, and now the Third — where regulation fans tend to file (most notably, the court that stayed the FCC’s deregulatory media ownership rules more than a decade ago). Full Service et al are not opposed to Title II. In fact, they argue that the FCC did not go far enough, and should have extended the reclassification to mandatory access. It is not a fan of Sec. 706 authority, however, arguing that it’s “illegal interpretation” gives the FCC unbounded authority to regulate the advanced telecommunications, or not relegate them, on a whim… Read More

Coming Events of Interest

Data Center and Cloud Awards — June 2nd in Monaco. Europe’s most prestigious awards for data center and cloud achievements will be announced at an evening ceremony prior to the opening of Europe’s ‘must-attend’ DataCloud Europe conference and exhibition.

DataCloud Europe — June 3rd-4th in Monaco. This is eighth annual European Congress & Exhibition focusing on data center and cloud computing, and is co-located with the DataCloud 2015 Awards.

Freescale Technology Forum — June 22nd-25th in Austin, TX. FTF, this year focusing on the Internet of Things (IoT), is the heart of discovery, imagination and innovation. Together we will strategize and design the next market-shifting products.

Cloud World Forum — June 24th-25th in London England. This marquee event is presented by Informa Telecoms & Media. Co-located with the seventh annual major international conference will be Enterprise Apps World.

Cloud Computing Boot Camp — July 30th in Washington, DC. Designed for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) and their counterparts in government agencies and healthcare organizations whose responsibilities include evaluating, purchasing, and implementing cloud-based solutions.

Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF) — December 6th-8th in Dubai, UAE. IoTWF is an exclusive event that brings together the best and brightest thinkers, practitioners, and innovators from business, government, and academia to accelerate the market adoption of the Internet of Things.

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