Volume LIV, Issue 8

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In This Issue

Venture Spending: Cloud Computing & Mobile Top Sectors

Excerpted from FormTek Report by Dick Weisinger

A recent survey by Deloitte of global venture capitalists asked what technologies they were most excited about and those which worry them.

Some of the findings of the report include: cloud computing remains the top technology investment sector, a distinction received for the third year in a row; interest in mobile technology was a very close second for investor interest, followed by the Internet of things (IoT).

Biopharmaceuticals and robotics have seen the biggest percentage gain in venture investment between 2014 and 2015; investors showed the least interest in renewable energies and hardware and semiconductors; and venture investment confidence is highest in US technology centers, like Silicon Valley, New York, and Boston.

Bobby Franklin, President and CEO of NVCA, said that “As the global hub of innovation, there is much for US venture investors to feel excited about.”

“Yet in spite of all there is to be confident about, US venture investors continue to believe US policymakers aren’t doing enough to enact policies that help strengthen the innovation ecosystem… Read More

Verizon’s Cloud App Gets Smarter

Excerpted from Verizon Wireless Blog by Albert Aydin

In today’s mobile and connected world, a cloud app needs to be more than just a place to store your photos and music.

It needs to be smart and have features that help make things easier for you.

A software update is now rolling out for the Verizon Cloud App which adds two new features.

“Let me show you this picture… it’s here somewhere. I’ll find it. You know what? I’ll send it to you later”.

A lot of us use our smartphones as our primary camera.

This is great, but can lead to huge galleries that are not very organized and a hassle to sift through.

The Verizon Cloud App, thanks to a collaboration with RealNetworks, can now automatically create “Smart Albums” and “Stories” to help keep you and your memories organized.

The app selects your best photos and videos and organizes them into different Smart Albums based on events and locations.

These albums can be easily shared and they are stored in the cloud, so you will be able to access them from anywhere… Read More

Telefonica Completes Proof of Concept

Excerpted from Press Announcement

Nuage Networks, the Alcatel-Lucent venture focused on software-defined networking (SDN) solutions, and Telefonica Business Solutions, a leading provider of a wide range of integrated communication solutions for the B2B market, today announced the successful completion of evaluation and testing surrounding service chaining of virtualized network functions (NFV) in a multi-vendor SDN environment.

This evaluation marks a big step for Telefonica Business Solutions toward automating delivery of value-added services and dramatically improving time to market in serving its enterprise customers.

Provisioning network and application services — such as firewalls and security gateways — can be among the most time-intensive and error-prone tasks when deploying applications.

Service chaining makes it possible to automatically insert physical or virtual network service appliances with the appropriate configurations and policies as part of cloud-based offerings.

Nuage Networks automates the complex networking and service insertion processes to enable Telefonica Business Solutions to adapt cloud services on demand. Nuage Networks and Telefonica Business Solutions executed the proof of concept evaluation… Read More

Report from DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty

Click Here for Video.

The DCIA is expanding our partnership with Informa Telecoms & Media to include Cloud Asia Forum.

Taking place on November 24th and 25th in Hong Kong, the sixth annual Cloud Asia Forum is the most comprehensive cloud computing event in Asia.

Coming from the producers of the Cloud World Series, this event is designed to answer all your questions about cloud computing, whether you work at a large or small enterprise, and show you the way to future-proof your business through cloud-based solutions and DevOps.

Since its inception in 2009, Cloud Asia Forum has grown to address an impressive array of topics centering on smarter product and service offerings.

A range of keynotes, interactive panel discussions, brainstorming breakouts, industry briefings, and more will offer expert views on how to engage with your target market through enterprise apps.

Learn how to apply and leverage Internet of Things (IoT) technology, taking into account the unique status of the Asian market.

Learn how to ensure a healthy return on investment (RoI) from Big Data infrastructure, tailoring data analytics to your business needs.

Join information technology (IT) DevOps teams working with leading cloud service providers and broadband network operators for valuable interaction at Cloud Asia Forum.

Distinguished IT experts will explain how to overcome security and privacy concerns and stop fearing hybrid and even public clouds.

Industry leaders will pinpoint how containers are bringing portability — as well as cost savings and process efficiency — to workloads and applications.

A wealth of opportunities are being brought forth by containerization, and you will have your questions answered about how virtualization can simplify your legacy systems.

Fast applications, agility, improved collaboration — all under one roof.

See how DevOps methodology will improve the operations of your organization.

Hear from pioneering broadband network operators about how they are transforming their businesses to become competitive cloud providers.

And gain valuable advice on go-to-market cloud strategies.

Cloud Asia Forum provides the perfect platform to discuss your challenges and exchange ideas. Share wisely, and take care.

4.6 Billion Consumers Will Access Cloud Services by 2020

Excerpted from ITWire Report by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

A new report looks at cloud computing over the next five years and predicts big numbers, but also asks if it is a race to the bottom.

Research guru Juniper has released its latest paid research report entitled Cloud Computing — Consumer Markets: Strategies & Forecasts 2015-2020, examining the highly competitive consumer cloud computing service landscape.

The newly updated research predicts 4.6 billion users by 2020, whereas the previous version of the report expected users would exceed 3.6 billion by 2018.

However 3.2 billion people are expected to be using cloud services in 2015, with cloud storage being, and will continue to be “the most popular subscription service.”

Juniper says, “Mobile devices continue to be sold with limited amounts of on-board storage, but for the majority of consumers, free storage options offered by service providers are likely to suffice.”

“Converting users to a premium, paid storage tier, will therefore remain a struggle.”

Juniper’s report makes mention of Microsoft’s surprising about-face on its offer of unlimited OneDrive storage… Read More

Amazon’s Cloud-Computing Business Growing Fast

Excerpted from Financial Express Report

Amazon’s cloud-computing business is growing fast, and by some estimates it could be worth over $160 billion if it was a standalone business.

According to a note by Deutsche Bank, Amazon Web Services is forecast to book $16 billion in revenue by 2017, and based on a 10x multiple, it would get a valuation of roughly $160 billion.

“We conclude that a 2017 revenue multiple of 10x seems fair for AWS, which given our 2017 AWS revenue estimate of $16 billion implies a valuation of $160 billion,” the note said.

The note derived the 10x multiple by comparing AWS to some of its peers in the enterprise space, like Salesforce, Workday, and Google, which had a median 2016 revenue multiple of 9x. It also factored in the fact that AWS is facing a massive market opportunity in the cloud-computing space, and that it’s growing at a faster clip than others, even though it’s already been almost 10 years since its launch.

“Measured by revenues, AWS is approximately 6x larger than its biggest rival Microsoft Azure and is arguably the greatest disruptive force in the entire enterprise technology market today,” the note said… Read More

New Priorities for Mobile Cloud Computing

Excerpted from The Stack Report by Martin Anderson

Establishing viable models and solutions for Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is like trying to paint a sunset in a car wash.

The environment, variables, requirements, capabilities… even the imperative motivations, all change so often as to make the field amongst the most ductile of academic and technological areas of cloud research.

In spite of this, a new paper, Analysis of the Energy-Performance Tradeoff for Delayed Mobile Offloading, emerges from the Institute for Computer Science at the University of Berlin, freshening up a subject that was so comprehensively addressed in the occasionally updated Mobile cloud computing: A survey, by Niroshinie Fernando et al. at Australia’s La Trobe University.

The Berlin paper reiterates the problem and the prognosis: there is demand to run more CPU-intensive applications on mobile devices without depleting the battery charge with all the extra compute cycles that the device has to run, or in general exceeding the capabilities of a ‘slimline’ mobile CPU array.

So much for the corporate IT department trying to facilitate remote procedure calls to a 4-gig database in a private cloud, the scientists on a field trip, the land surveyors and the hippy CGI artists who want to work under a tree… Read More

Collaboration and the Cloud

Excerpted from Cloud Tech Report by James Campanini

The emergence of the cloud has dramatically changed the way businesses operate and collaborate.

With trends such as flexible working and the gig or sharing economy on the rise, communication is now more important than ever to enable colleagues to keep in touch regardless of time zone or location.

Here are just a few of the ways the cloud can be utilized to ensure effective collaboration:

With the gig economy rising to prominence, an increasing number of professionals are choosing contract and short-term work over full-time.

This means, employees need the right technology to be able to communicate and work effectively from any location.

Tools such as Google Docs allow staff to access and edit documents online and cloud-based video conferencing provides employees with the ability to have face-to-face interaction even when working remotely.

Following the introduction of the UK government’s flexible working initiative, more workers are choosing to work flexibly to help improve their work-life balance. To maintain workplace productivity when out of the office, the cloud is essential… Read More

Presidential Candidates Not Talking Cybersecurity?

Excerpted from NBC News Report by Keith Wagstaff

Cybersecurity isn’t the sexiest topic on the campaign trail right now.

But controversial legislation, massive security breaches, and thorny relations with China could eventually push the issue into the media spotlight.

For now, most of the presidential hopefuls are staying mum on the issue, even as hackers keep making headlines.

“It’s a complex topic,” Steve Morgan, Founder and CEO of Cybersecurity Ventures, told NBC News.

“It’s like quicksand: Once they step into it, they’re going to sink. They just aren’t equipped to talk about it.”

None of the websites for the four potential candidates leading the polls — Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats, Donald Trump and Ben Carson for the Republicans — lists their positions on cybersecurity issues.

For voters who care about cybersecurity, it can be tough to figure out where the candidates stand. Some of them, however, have left clues in comments to the media and their voting records.

Bernie Sanders is one of the few candidates to take a definitive stance on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA)… Read More

Pentagon Must Get Better on Cyber Warfare

Excerpted from The Hill Report by Rebecca Kheel

The Pentagon does not yet move fast enough to deal with the speed at which cyber warfare moves, the department’s chief information officer said Thursday.

“I think the big difference in cyber that we’re having the react to is it moves faster than any other warfare,” Chief Information Officer Terry Halvorsen said.

“That’s a challenge. The things we do today in cyber probably won’t be the same things we do tomorrow.

“It’s accelerated change, and we’re generally not good at accelerated change,” he added.

Speaking to reporters at a roundtable hosted by The Christian Science Monitor, Halvorsen outlined ways his office is trying to fix that, doing everything from teaching employees basic security measures to partnering with the technology industry.

Some of the basics include identifying phishing websites, instituting two-step authentication and making sure servers are behind a firewall or other boundary.

Halvorsen created a “scorecard” to measure how well people do with these areas so the Pentagon can quantify cyber readiness… Read More

SharePoint Requires Security Layer in Cloud Age

Excerpted from ITWorld Canada Report by Gary Hilson

SharePoint isn’t going anywhere in the age of cloud-based collaboration and content management, and there continues to be a market for add-ins, including those to bolster security for the connected enterprise.

Metalogix is looking to make security smarter in ControlPoint 7, launched today, with additional embedded security intelligence to detect suspicious SharePoint user activity.

Steven Marsh, the company’s Senior Director of Product Marketing, said breaches to Microsoft’s content management and collaboration platform can have a wide-ranging impact as they can even affect employees who have left the organization by exposing stored personally identifiable information (PII).

SharePoint comes with built-in features to assign permissions and manage access to information, and there are a number of offerings that can layer additional security on top.

Marsh said MetaLogix has focused on taking an approach similar to that of financial institutions monitoring bank accounts and credit cards for potential fraud; unusual activity by an authorized user might hint that something is amiss, he said.

Many organizations have remote workers accessing SharePoint, such as traveling sales staff… Read More

Cloud Key to Future Cybersecurity

Excerpted from Computer Weekly Report by Warwick Ashford

Netflix, AirBnB, and Uber are all pointing the way to the cloud as the future, and that is also true for security, according to Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer (CTO) at security firm Qualys.

“Most enterprises are facing today’s cybersecurity challenges with IT architecture that was developed 25 years ago when IT had full control over computing,” he told the RSA Conference 2015 in Abu Dhabi.

However, he said, this has changed completely with the move to employees using their own consumer devices to access enterprise services, systems, and data.

“This leads to a much bigger attack surface, which we try to address by piling up security technology on security technology. In turn, this has led to a terribly over-loaded enterprise technology stack that is very brittle and bound to fail,” said Kandek.

He believes the way around the current “calamitous situation” is to move to a world where security is enabled by security agents in virtual datacenters, endpoints and apps that will be adapted and optimized for these environments.

“Think of these embedded security agents as the white blood cells in our bodies — they know about intruders and isolate threats,” he said… Read More

More Buyers Seek Cyber Cover

Excerpted from Risk and Insurance Report by Janet Aschkenasy

Cyber insurance is not just for retail organizations and healthcare companies any longer, the latest research shows.

This year, brokers have begun seeing some fairly dramatic increases in the percentage of manufacturing clients, and power and utility firms purchasing stand-alone cyber policies, according to a new report from Marsh.

The trend illustrates the fact that more clients are seeing the need to cover risks associated with their technology not working and doing damage to digital assets, said Bob Parisi, Marsh Senior Vice President and Technology Product Leader.

Take-up rates for cyber programs among existing Marsh clients in the power and utilities industry more than doubled from 9 percent to 19 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to Marsh’s midyear benchmarking report.

The report also found that manufacturing client purchasing cyber coverage rose from 6 percent to 11 percent.

In the past, Parisi said, client-facing companies in the retail, health care, and finance sectors had the lead in purchasing cyber insurance to protect the privacy of their customer data.

That is still the case, he noted: for instance, both new and existing Marsh healthcare clients were the largest purchasers of cyber coverage… Read More

Google Makes Symantec an Offer It Can’t Refuse

Excerpted from Ars Technica Report by Dan Goodin

Google has given Symantec an offer it can’t refuse: give a thorough accounting of its ailing certificate authority process or risk having the world’s most popular browser — Chrome — issue scary warnings when end users visit HTTPS-protected websites that use Symantec credentials.

The ultimatum, made in a blog post published Wednesday afternoon, came five weeks after Symantec fired an undisclosed number of employees caught issuing unauthorized transport layer security certificates.

The mis-issued certificates made it possible for the holders to impersonate HTTPS-protected Google webpages.

Symantec first said it improperly issued 23 test certificates for domains owned by Google, browser maker Opera, and three other unidentified organizations without the domain owners’ knowledge.

A few weeks later, after Google disputed the low number, Symantec revised that figure upward, saying it found an additional 164 certificates for 76 domains and 2,458 certificates for domains that had never been registered.

The mis-issued certificates represented a potentially critical threat to virtually the entire Internet population because they made it possible for the holders to cryptographically impersonate the affected sites and monitor communications… Read More

2nd Generation Hadoop: A Critical Platform

Excerpted from TechRepublic Report by Brian Taylor

“The second generation of Hadoop,” said WANdisco CEO David Richards, “is designed to support real-time applications, so it’s important we start thinking of Hadoop as an applications platform, not just a storage system.”

Consequently, as Hadoop infrastructure gets larger, Richards added that enterprises need to think carefully about service level agreements (SLAs) and continuous availability, and adjust to the new normal of their cloud applications being mission-critical.

WANdisco — which stands for Wide Area Network Distributed Computing — has locations in Sheffield, England and Silicon Valley.

The company provides “enterprise-ready, non-stop” solutions for enterprises operating distributed networks. Richards co-founded the firm in 2005.

In this Q&A, Richards also advised new startup teams on a best-of-both-worlds “hybrid” headquarters model — that is, having core ops in the Silicon Valley (which has its benefits, but it is also highly competitive), and locating other parts of the firm somewhere else. TechRepublic: What do enterprises most need to know about Hadoop adoption… Read More

DRM Market by Application, End-User, and Deployment

Excerpted from WhaTech Report

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard for digital content security.

It defines DRM as the chain of hardware and software services and technologies confining the use of digital content to authorized use and users, and managing any consequences of that use throughout the entire life cycle of the content.

DRM is one kind of content protection technology.

The DRM Alliance sets the standards of all the DRM solutions and services, in coordination with IEEE.

The global DRM market ecosystem encompasses industry players offering products, services, wireless equipment providers, third-party application vendors, and network integrators. Prominent players in the DRM market space are Adobe, AuthenTec, EMC Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle Corporation.

These companies play a critical role in implementing DRM solutions and address the need for a strong and secured network.

The global DRM market research report has considered major five types of applications which include mobile content, video on demand… Read More

Coming Events of Interest

2015 US Cyber Crime Conference — November 14th-20th in National Harbor, MD. This is the only event of its kind that provides both hands-on digital forensics training and an interactive forum for cyber professionals to network.

Cloud Asia Forum — November 24th-25th in Hong Kong. Now in its sixth year, this major highlight of the Cloud World Series sponsored by Informa Telecoms & Media is the most comprehensive cloud computing event in Asia.

Government Video Expo — December 1st-3rd in Washington, DC. Sponsored by NewBay Media, GVE 2015 will be the East Coast’s largest technology event designed for video, broadcast, and audio-video professionals.

Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF) — December 6th-8th in Dubai. 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.

CES — January 6th-9th in Las Vegas, NV. The world’s gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies. CES has served as the proving ground for innovators and breakthrough technologies for more than 40 years.

ADRM Working Group Meeting — January 28th via Global Videoconference. Contact the DCIA for information about joining the group and attending the meeting that will focus on interoperability among DRM platforms and simplifying DRM implementation.

Cloud and DevOps World Forum 2016 — June 21st-22nd in London, England. Now in its eighth year, C&DWF is firmly established as the leading content-led exhibition for the European Cloud and DevOps community and the premiere meeting place for CIOs.

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