February 21, 2011
Volume XXXIV, Issue 2
The Cloud Effect: TDG White-Paper Examines Cloudmass
Excerpted from The Diffusion Group Report by Colin Dixon
Can cloud resources be used to deliver quality, scalable and affordable over-the-top (OTT) Video?
As television joins the ranks of connected devices, consumers' expectations - and demand - for a quality experience are rising. Indeed, the grainy postage-stamp-sized videos of the past have given way to full HD sports and movies; yet delivering a stellar video experience from the web is far from a simple task.
For example, MLB.TV's promise to bring live HD quality games and multi-screen viewing to the baseball-loving masses has disappointed many subscribers. One frustrated web viewer put it this way: "MLB.TV has made beautiful promises, has taken my money, and has yet to deliver. Wouldn't you feel robbed, too?"
For content providers, failing to deliver viewers the high-quality experience they expect means watching customers turn to other sites or mediums for content. And lost viewers means lost revenue. An additional problem for content producers and aggregators is the cost of delivery.
For the largest providers of video on the Internet, delivery costs have declined dramatically - in some cases as low as a penny per gigabyte. But costs have remained stubbornly high for smaller providers - in the 40 to 50 cent per gigabyte range for the last two years.
This means the cost of delivering a one-hour HD show can be as much as $1. When the going rate for TV shows at Amazon Video on Demand (VoD) is $1.99, it's difficult to see how the small provider can make any money at all!
This paper will look at the environment for streaming video on the web today. We will examine how video is currently scaled and streamed from the web by existing content delivery networks (CDNs), as well as how these approaches impact video delivery costs and quality.
In addition, we will examine how Octoshape's Cloudmass solution attempts to address the shortcomings of the CDN approach by creating a mesh of computing resources to help contain costs and improve streaming quality.
Please click here for the full white-paper.
83.5% of Online Americans Watched Web Video in January
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
In January, 83.5% of the US Internet audience, or 171 million Americans, watched online video, according to a report from market research firm comScore.
A total of nearly 4.9 billion video viewing sessions were recorded last month; the duration of the average video was 5 minutes.
Google sites, driven by YouTube, were the top providers in January with 144.1 million unique viewers, followed by Vevo (51 million); Yahoo sites (48.7 million); Viacom Digital (48.1 million); and AOL (44.5 million).
The report also shows that Americans watched more than 4.3 billion video ads in January.
Hulu generated the greatest number of video ad impressions (1.1 billion), followed by ad network Tremor Media (503.7 million), Adap.tv (432 million) and Microsoft sites (415 million).
Video ads reached 45% of the total U.S. population an average of 32 times during the month.
CONTENT IN THE CLOUD Coming to NAB
Don't miss the CONTENT IN THE CLOUD Conference on Monday April 11th at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, NV.
Explore this rapidly emerging technology that promises to expand the possibilities for those looking to realize the full potential of digital post-production and distribution.
If IPTV or online delivery is in your current or future operating plans, you won't want to miss eight keynotes and four panel discussions focused on cloud-delivered content and its impact on consumers, television manufacturers, telecom industries and the media.
Please click here to view conference details.
What you will learn: cloud privacy, reliability and security issues; advanced capabilities, new features and cost advantages; the impact on consumer electronics and telecommunications; and the years ahead for cloud computing.
Session highlights include Vision for Content in the Cloud by Anne-Carole Nourisson, VP of Licensing, Vivendi Mobile Entertainment (VME); Benefits of Cloud-Delivered Content to the Consumer Electronics and Telecommunications Industries: Advanced Capabilities, New Features and Cost Advantages by Jonathan King, SVP, Business Development, Joyent; and Drawbacks of Cloud-Delivered Content to Broadcasters: Interoperability, Data Security and Quality of Service (QoS) by Scott Brown, GM US and VP Strategic Relations, Octoshape.
Please click here to view the entire schedule. To attend the CONTENT IN THE CLOUD Conference, register for one of these packages:
SMART Pass - Your SMARTest option! All sessions, your choice of one luncheon, exhibits and 200+ hours of recorded sessions in the 2011 Online Learning Center. Does not include access to PPW Certification, PPW One-day options or Master Class in 3D Filmmaking.
Conference Flex Pass - Attend sessions across nine conferences!
SPECIAL DCINFO READER OFFER: Use code TF26 to save $100 on one of the above education packages or FREE access to the exhibit floor!
Click here to see all packages and discounts.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 In The Cloud Effect: Can Cloud Resources Be Used to Deliver Quality, Scalable and Affordable OTT Video? Colin Dixon, Senior Partner Advisory, The Diffusion Group, explores an area that is critical to entertainment and media companies as well as broadband network operators, software developers, and Internet service providers (ISPs).
He also assesses the prospects of an exciting new solution called Cloudmass being brought to the marketplace by Octoshape.
"Consumers love web video. By every measure, consumers are looking to the Internet for their entertainment needs more and more. The average Internet video user watched 15.1 hours in October 2010, a 40% increase over the previous year. Increasingly, consumers are turning to the web first to find an episode of a favorite television show they missed, to get up-to-the-minute news updates, and to watch sports broadcasts that aren't carried on their local cable networks.
For content delivery networks (CDNs) - companies in the business of delivering streaming video to consumers - delivering a high-quality video experience is no easy task. Consider the unpredictable demand for a single TV show in a single day. Viewers varied from 5,000 to 70,000. This unpredictability means the CDN needs to have streaming capacity to cover the peak of 70,000 viewers, even though that full capacity will only be used for a short peak period during each day."
In order to understand the limitations of the approach employed by companies such as Akamai and Limelight Networks, in his white-paper, Colin first explores the fundamentals that drive costs in the CDN business model.
Then he outlines the new approach for handling variable demand - cloud computing. Companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are building computing centers attached to the Internet that are available on-demand for a variety of computing purposes.
As Colin demonstrates, traditional CDNs are currently constrained by the purported relationship between distance and quality. As a striking alternative to this approach, the Octoshape transport was not built bound by this constraint. Rather, Cloudmass can employ any centralized cloud resource to deliver consistent high quality streaming video either on-demand or for live events.
For live events, Cloudmass has the potential to reduce costs by using multicast streaming.
In unicast streaming, every client that wants to watch a live event gets their own individual stream. So if one person is watching an HD video of their local college basketball game on their connected TV, it would consume 3 mbps of bandwidth between the TV and the server.
If 10 of his neighbors are watching the same game at the same time, that would use 30 mbps. Even though all the people watching the game are in the same neighborhood, the server must send each person their own individual stream. This also means that streaming charges will be 10 times higher than streaming for one person.
In contrast to this, Cloudmass is a cloud-based content delivery service offering that provides instant and flexible global cloud streaming infrastructure, enables more aggressive pricing terms than any other streaming service in the market, provides the highest quality video experience, dynamically expands and contracts based on audience demand, and provides the largest scale content delivery infrastructure available.
It aggregates the resources of multiple cloud service providers to dynamically create instant capacity for video delivery over the Internet that is flawless every time.
Cloudmass was designed to perform in centralized, shared, cloud infrastructures due to its unique ability to deliver high-quality video globally without the traditional requirements of server or network infrastructure at the edge.
Capacity planning, negotiations, resource reservation and last-minute equipment deployment typical with fixed CDN operators is a thing of the past. Octoshape's customers get the big benefits, at a fraction of the cost of today's traditional infrastructure.
Cloudmass creates a breathing infrastructure that dynamically scales up - and down-as network conditions and audience demands fluctuate
Top applications for Cloudmass include live-streamed video events of any audience size and reach, top-shelf delivery of on-demand viewing opportunities, better delivery of IP-based TV services when used with Octoshape Multicast service, and use in addition to a fixed CDN as an 'insurance policy' for important events.
DCINFO readers can experience an Octoshape Multicast demo here.
To offer more insights into these breakthrough technologies, Octoshape's GM US and VP of Strategic Relations, Scott Brown, will deliver the final keynote address at the CONTENT IN THE CLOUD Conference at NAB on April 11th. Register for the NAB Show now with CODE TF26 to save $100. Share wisely and take care.
CDN Vs. Cloud Computing to be Debated in London
The DCIA is pleased to present to DCINFO readers with a debate on two of distributed computing's hottest topics, cloud computing and content delivery networks (CDN), which will be brought together in two detailed discussions at the CDN World Forum taking place on the 21st and 22nd of June at Olympia in London, England.
DCINFO readers are encouraged to plan now to attend this event at no charge.
With much being made about the impact cloud computing will continue to have on organizations across the world, CDNs are often left as an afterthought by many businesses.
However, at the CDN World Forum, two discussions, "Cloud Computing vs. CDNs- Grudge Match or Match Made in Heaven?' and "Cloud Computing - Is This 'CDN' or a Completely New Service," will focus on the effect cloud computing and CDNs could have on one another in the near future.
This event is co-located with the Cloud Computing World Forum, now in its third year and with over 2,500 attendees expected.
Bandwidth for US Broadband Subs Increased by 34% in 2010
It is no secret that broadband service is no longer seen as a luxury. In fact, in many US households, it is considered a necessity.
And in many of those households, the users' most important concern is the speed or available bandwidth of their broadband connection. US Internet service providers were successful in 2010 in increasing the amount of available bandwidth to their subscriber base.
Results from an annual survey of US broadband households show that downstream speeds increased an average of 34% in 2010, according to In-Stat.
"The survey also highlights that the majority of US broadband subscribers are generally satisfied with the current speed of their broadband service," says Mike Paxton, Principal Analyst.
"This response indicates that so far, broadband service providers are managing to stay ahead of the consumer demand curve for bandwidth." The new research by In-Stat reveals the following.
The average download speed for the broadband subscribers in the survey was 9.54 Mbps, up from 7.12 Mbps just twelve months earlier.
In comparison to the rapidly rising amounts of bandwidth available to broadband subscribers, between YE2009 and YE2010, the average price for broadband service increased by just 4%
38% of the survey respondents also had a mobile wireless broadband connection.
The average downstream speed across all access technologies increased by 71% over the course of the past two years. Cable modem and FTTH downstream speeds showed the greatest increases.
The appearance of newly competitive access technologies, such as mobile wireless broadband, acts as a driver for increasing overall broadband speeds.
The research, US Residential Broadband Service: Speed Continues to Rise, Pricing Holds Steady covers the US market for broadband speeds. It includes: an analysis of an In-Stat US consumer survey on broadband service; the type of broadband access technology (i.e., cable modem, DSL, FTTH, etc.) being used; respondents' service providers; the download and upload speeds of subscribers' broadband connections by broadband access technology, and by year for 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010; and how much consumers are paying for their broadband service.
For a free sample of the report and more information contact Elaine Potter at epotter@in-stat.com or at 480-483-4441. To purchase it online, please click here. This research is part of In-Stat's Multimedia Broadband Services service, which provides comprehensive analysis of the transformational shifts in digital entertainment networks and business models, including Internet video, interactive advertising, CDNs, and interactive program guides.
Kaltura Secures $20 Million in Funding and Lands Major Customers
Kaltura, developer of the first-and-only open source online video platform, has secured an additional $20 million in a round of financing led by new investors Nexus Venture Partners with participation from Intel Capital, existing investors .406 Ventures and Avalon Ventures, and technology lender Silicon Valley Bank.
Over the last 18 months Kaltura's open-source video management platform has rapidly grown to become the most widely adopted solution in the market, far eclipsing the combined publisher-base of all proprietary online video platforms such as Brightcove. Serving more than 100,000 publishers, Kaltura's products and services cater to companies across all sectors with focus on four verticals - media companies, enterprises, educational institutions, and service providers.
Users include Fox, Paramount, HBO, Warner Brothers, The Times of India, Best Buy, Texas Instruments, Coldwell Banker, MIT, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, NYU, Columbia University, and Siemens.
Organizations use Kaltura to enhance their websites, web-services, or web-platforms with advanced customized video, photo and audio functionalities with rich-media ingestion, encoding, management, publishing, delivery, distribution, engagement, monetization, and analysis.
The platform supports delivery to PCs, mobile devices, tablets, TVs, and other connected devices, with expertise in all related technologies, including Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. Kaltura's HTML5 Video library has become an industry standard, embraced by leaders such as Adobe and Wikipedia.
Kaltura sets itself apart from proprietary vendors by openly providing hundreds of APIs and the entire source code in order to enable customers, integrators, and developers to customize their own workflows and to develop their own distinct rich-media applications and plug-ins. The Kaltura Exchange is a vibrant marketplace that surfaces these applications along with ancillary products and services that are offered by third parties.
The platform and its Exchange are supported by a global developer community that already includes many thousands of registered members that help fuel an unparalleled pace of innovation. Kaltura offers the widest range of deployment options available. Customers can subscribe to Kaltura's commercial video platform as a hosted service (Kaltura's SaaS Platform), license Kaltura's commercial video management software for on-premise or cloud-based hosting, or use Kaltura's Community Edition, downloadable for free here under the AGPL License.
"Kaltura is disrupting the online video space in a similar way to how open-source Red Hat and MySQL have disrupted their fields of operating systems and databases," said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman & CEO.
"We are honored to have gained the support of Intel Capital and Nexus Venture Partners who have played an important role in the success of these two open-source giants. Kaltura's financial success and the premium investors that it attracts demonstrate once again that there is indeed no dissonance between doing good, and doing well."
Devon Copley, Managing Director at Kaltura, will be a featured speaker at the upcoming CONTENT IN THE CLOUD Conference at NAB.
Cloud Computing Company Active Network Plans $150 Million IPO
Excerpted from Wall Street Journal Report by Joan Solsman
Cloud-computing applications company Active Network plans to sell up to an estimated $150 million of common stock, raising money to repay debt.
The IPO plans add Active Network to a long list of companies seeking to tap demand for equities in order to retire or reduce their borrowings.
Active Network also said it may use proceeds from the offering to acquire complementary businesses.
The company makes cloud-computing applications that form online networks to connect activity or even organizers with potential participants. It said its applications power a broad range of activities, including reserving a campsite, signing up for a marathon, purchasing a hunting license or participating in a corporate conference.
Cloud computing gives users the ability access servers and data storage over the Internet.
Active Network's loss narrowed in the first three quarters of last year as revenue rose 16% to $218 million. Revenue also improved through the recession, rising in both 2008 and 2009.
The US IPO market has had an active start to the year. In 2010, IPOs gained momentum after two years of quiet activity, a trajectory many expect to continue in fits and starts this year.
NiFTy Receives Tibbetts Award
Network Foundation Technologies (NiFTy) has received a Tibbetts Award from the Small Business Administration (SBA) in recognition of its groundbreaking technology developments and economic impact in northern Louisiana.
The National Tibbetts Award is presented to organizations, individuals, and small firms whose achievements have been definably NiFTy Receives Tibbetts Award
Network Foundation Technologies (NiFTy) has received a Tibbetts Award from the Small Business Administration (SBA) in recognition of its groundbreaking technology developments and economic impact in northern Louisiana.
The National Tibbetts Award is presented to organizations, individuals, and small firms whose achievements have been aided by Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) stimulus. The award is named for Roland Tibbetts, who started the SBIR Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
NiFTy broadcasts online content via patented distribution technology that employs the collective computing capacity of its viewers to deliver streaming audio and video far more efficiently than conventional web broadcasters.
Marcus Morton, NiFTy's President and Co-Founder, accepted the award during a luncheon in Washington, DC this week and then joined fellow award recipients for a special reception at the White House.
Qualcomm, Co-Founder Dr. Irwin Jacobs gave the keynote address. Qualcomm, along with A123 Systems, Advanced Ceramics Research (BAE Systems), ATMI, iRobot, MARTEK, Symantec and Via Sat, were named to the Inaugural SBIR Hall of Fame class, representing the very best of the 30-year SBIR program.
"NiFTy has made great strides with the funding provided by SBIR through the NSF," Morton said. "The assistance given our business has made a critical difference in helping us achieve our vision of dramatically reducing the cost of online broadcasting."
To date NiFTy has been awarded nearly $1.2M in highly competitive SBIR NSF grants. Sean Greene, the SBA's Associate Administrator for Investment and Senior Adviser for Innovation, said this recognition of NiFTy's success is more than a technological achievement.
"This is a proud day not only for NiFTy but also for northern Louisiana," said Greene. "Companies like NiFTy represent the best in American ingenuity."
More than 45,000 patents have been granted to SBIR participants. NiFTy's patent portfolio consists of 14 total patents - eight awarded and six pending.
Founded in 2001, Ruston, LA based NiFTy is a name that is quickly becoming synonymous with the online broadcasting of large, live events to worldwide audiences. NiFTy's patented technology overcomes the scalability and cost bottlenecks associated with online broadcasting, enabling the company to bring large-scale, advertiser-supported, television-style broadcasting to the Internet for the very first time.
The Cloud Enters Public Consciousness through Super Bowl
Excerpted from CloudTweaks Report
Advertising is an integral part of our everyday lives, reflecting popular trends and shaping public opinion. From politics to economics, from sports to technology, advertising is ubiquitous, pervading almost all areas of human activity. And, if advertising be an art, its biggest canvas is the Super Bowl.
For several years now, the Super Bowl commercials have held pride of place in the American consumer psyche. These commercials are analyzed, praised and criticized long after the game is done and over with, simply because of their ability to influence consumer behavior throughout the year. In fact, there are dedicated measuring mechanisms like the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter and the website ADBOWL that track these commercials and rank them on their effects on the consumer.
The Super Bowl commercials represent the high point in every marketer's year, the opportunity to present what industries feel are important to their businesses. Not for nothing are the advertising slots the most expensive in the world. It has been reported that for the 2011 Super Bowl, companies were charge $3 million for a 30-second slot. Even with an economy in doldrums, the rates actually increased this year.
There's a reason for such a lengthy prelude. For the first time in Super Bowl advertising history, cloud computing featured in a commercial. Or rather, in two of them.
Salesforce.com's two commercials featuring animated representations of members of the pop group Black Eyed Peas represent a true acknowledgment of where cloud computing stands today, right at the brink of public consciousness. After years of pitching the technology to IT professionals, cloud computing has entered the mainstream, with the general consumer being educated on the benefits of being "on the cloud".
These new commercials were promoting a new service called Chatter.com, a sort of enhanced Facebook with the functionality of Google Docs. Chatter is pitched by its parent company, Salesforce.com, as a "free, private, and secure social network just for your business". In addition to being a private network, Chatter.com will allow users to upload documents, share them and work on them cooperatively, a la Google Docs.
What's more, Chatter.com can allow companies to integrate with Facebook and Twitter, with complete control. "You can't launch a new social network, public or private, without letting in the current perennials. Chatter features a Twitter and Facebook widget that can draw in feeds from both networks. You can limit the stream to only include messages or updates that pertain to your company or your project. And, like all other social networks, you can use Chatter seamlessly while on the go via your iPhone, BlackBerry or Android phone."
One of the commercials begins with an animated Will.i.am, frontman for the Black Eyed Peas, being asked his opinion about the "cloud." The screen then pans to an animated cloud, which Will.i.am calls "Chatty", and describes as, "I love this dude. He allows me and my team stay aligned so, like, we are all on the same page and stuff."
Truthfully speaking, the two commercials haven't won rave reviews, but the fact that they were part of the Super Bowl experience has truly brought "cloud computing" into the public consciousness. Whether Chatter.com brings in millions for Salesforce.com is a question still waiting to be answered, but the cloud computing community can be grateful to the company for furthering its cause. The day is not far when the other big boys in the cloud computing game like Amazon, IBM, and Oracle also start promoting their services on the overpriced Super Bowl slots.
Cloud Computing's Killer Applications
Excerpted from CNET News Report by James Urquhart
The year 2010 will probably be remembered at the year that cloud computing "shaped" itself into a tangible concept, at least among those of us who care. 2011, on the other hand, will likely be the year in which IT figures out how to actually use cloud concepts.
Of course there are success stories dating back two or more years, but what is happening so far in 2011 is a growing body of businesses, data, and applications that were born and cultivated in the cloud. Add to that the online and conference communities forming around cloud and new application categories and we are starting to get a clear picture of what the "killer applications" of cloud really are--at least as of today.
I want to step through the three that I think are the most impactful application categories for cloud and show some examples of why cloud enables these applications to exist:
Data Collection and Analytics
There is no doubt that one of the biggest revolutions enabled by the cloud is the ability to store and--perhaps more importantly--process large sets of data, either as very large scale fixed-length jobs or in real time. The economics are simple: without the large upfront capital expense, the total cost of using a large number of systems for the period of time it takes to process the data is significantly reduced; and "downtime" costs nothing more than the cost of storing the data.
I attended O'Reilly Media's Strata conference in Santa Clara, Calif., last week, which covered "big data" and the various applications of that concept to a variety of problems. I walked away extremely impressed. The innovations on display were mind-blowing. It really felt like a Web conference circa 1999, with talk of almost endless entrepreneurial opportunities for those with the right ideas.
I attended sessions on data journalism (which demonstrated how data analysis can be used to find key facts regarding the news of the day) and the application of data capture and analysis to government and academia. Both sessions demonstrated applications that amazed me, including several that used public data sets to give new insights into how we think and act as a society.
Personal data analysis was also on display, such as Strata start-up showcase winner Billguard, a service that will analyze your credit card bills for potentially abnormal activity by combining your statement data with other data sources and "wisdom of crowds" tools. Services like Billguard lead me to believe that consumers will benefit most from "big data" innovations.
The cloud has clearly changed the game for data and it looks like data may in turn may a central role in the future of cloud computing.
Online Commerce and Communities
This is probably the category that most followers of cloud computing would think of first when they think of killer applications for cloud computing. There is no doubt that cloud has changed the game for Web applications and services. Online services and communities are appearing at a dizzying pace today in large part due to the economics of cloud computing.
How is that, you might ask? Well, again, its because the cost of failure is so low in cloud. Want to try a new business idea, or play with a new online service concept? You have plenty of options for building, hosting, and scaling your concept, all of which are on a "pay-per-use" fee schedule--which ultimate means that if you fail, you stop paying and don't have sunk capital costs to offload or absorb.
This is why the Silicon Valley--and likely worldwide--venture capital community has so quickly changed the nature of financing for online start-ups. It is now almost impossible to get a VC firm to buy you a server. Rather, they'll tell you to use cloud services to build and test your business concept.
If your idea shows some signs of success, they'll then tell you to scale the business in the cloud--again, to avoid sunk capital costs. If at some point your business is wildly successful, and a private data center or fixed hosting agreement starts to make more sense, then your VC board members will probably be happy to tell you to take some of your own cash flow and do what you need to do.
The point is that services such as Google App Engine, Rackspace Cloud Files and Cloud Servers, Amazon Web Services, and a laundry list of others have made delivering new software and business concepts to the online market much, much easier, and the associated risks much, much cheaper.
Context Vs. Core
What may surprise many is the increasing adoption of cloud and hosted options for "context" systems (in the "core vs. context" paradigm introduced by Geoffrey Moore in his management books). In short, context systems are those that may or may not be mission critical, but add no real value to the distinct business that they support. Some examples of context systems include e-mail, telephony, and document management.
In my role at Cisco, I've seen an increasing number of customers declare goals to freeze or reduce the number of wholly-owned data centers that support their businesses, choosing instead to find online services to meet much of their needs. Where they all seem to be starting is those context systems, with vendors like Salesforce.com, Microsoft BPOS, and several smaller SaaS vendors benefiting.
So-called "core" functions--which are those functions that a business' competitors would find difficult to replicate--are taking much longer to move to the cloud. This isn't surprising, considering the sensitive nature of the data and code associated with these applications, as well as the investment made into existing systems by enterprises.
While I believe core systems will move to cloud models in the coming years, I suspect that legal, financial, and technical issues will make that a much slower transition than context applications. That said, familiarity with cloud through those context apps will probably accelerate the rate at which enterprises become comfortable with cloud models, so who knows.
The other "context" function greatly benefiting from the move to cloud models is storage. Backups, disaster recovery, object storage, content management, and many more storage-centric functions are moving to the cloud at a rapid rate. While security remains a consideration, the introduction of encryption and strong authentication technologies are rapidly expanding the market for storage services.
While I have no doubt that other forms of enterprise computing will move to the cloud over the coming year, these are the three categories that stand out for me. What about you? What do you see as the "killer apps" for cloud computing models?
A Non-Technical Perspective on Cloud Computing
Excerpted from Sys-Con Media Report by JP Morgenthal
It's not about what's different, it's about getting on board with the changes in the game or getting left behind.
People say, "What's so different about cloud computing?" "This is nothing more than managed hosting or mainframe computing redux." "What's old is new again."
What was it that Gordon Gekko said to Jake on the subway in "Wall St.: Money Never Sleeps?" Oh yeah, "A fisherman can always see another fisherman coming." Technically, cloud may be perceived as only incremental changes over what already exists, but those that argue that cloud is just hype have already missed the bigger picture - the game is always changing and this is the next major change.
In this case, the game has shifted from "the infrastructure and applications matter" to "data matters." The players driving the cloud revolution have initiated the path to commoditizing the rest of the computing universe and all you should care about is the data and the services that operate on that data.
Computing hardware was already heavily commoditized, but, up to a few years ago software was still the realm of the wizards. With the emergence of cloud computing delivery models - IaaS, PaaS & SaaS - consumers now have value-based vehicles to select from to support their various computing needs from do-it-yourself (DIY) to do-it-for-you (DIFY). This was a realization that just occurred to me in this past week; cloud computing brings IT into the realms of Pep Boys and Home Depot.
Those of us that come from engineering backgrounds often miss the subtle drivers that move the universe and may even question how these changes come about. Let's face it; you can't talk about this scenario without referencing VHS vs. Betamax. There are a group of engineers that have been employed by the market makers to bring about this revolution. I regard this move as the chess players moving the pawns on the board.
These market makers see a world that they could have a piece of if they could bring about the vision in their head, so they employ smart people to push the bounds of what can be done and raise the bar to new extremes.
Do you think the Amazon Web Services cloud is perfect? It's a work in progress. I guarantee if you check service levels within a large-scale deployment against current levels within well-staffed, well-managed data centers, you will see more failures in AWS then you have in the past five years in the data center; and that's okay because we're in the midst of the game changing.
I had a CEO in one my start-ups that used to say, "By the time we have 50 customers our first 5 customers are going to hate us and leave us." The reality of this is that that group, no matter how special you treat them because they were first are going to live through significant pain working with you through a game change.
What's really interesting about this change is the support from the public sector. What traditionally has been a laggard in information technology, in my opinion, is turning out to be one of the strongest driving forces behind this game change; this really turns the concept of market makers on its head.
After all, it's easy to comprehend where the game is going when Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, etc. are the market makers, but considering that U.S. Federal CIO is also part of that group means that the scale of the market driving the change is considerably larger than anything we're used to seeing.
While maybe not readily apparent, because market makers are primarily focused on the private sector, direction is most often not influenced by acquisition policy, congressional politicking, military and intelligence confidentiality requirements, or Presidential races.
The landscape of this market once filtered through the lenses of these and other factors will have grown significantly faster and offer a great deal more variation and value. More importantly, and we are seeing this happen already, it will be more open and transparent than past market changes.
So, technically speaking, it doesn't matter if cloud really offers a revolutionary change over what we already had because in the minds of the masses, the change is real and it's happening now. The question is, will you figure out your role in the changed game or believe the game change will fail leaving you unchanged?
Google Apps Boss Says Cloud Computing Is Your Destiny
Excerpted from The Register Report by Cade Metz
It was a Google ad. But not the kind you've come to expect. Last month, inside "The Economist," a magazine in the old fashioned, physical sense of the word, Google ran a four-page ad touting its own Google Apps suite, that all-web-all-the-time challenger to Microsoft Office. "Each day, over 3,000 businesses go Google," the ad read, hailing the more than three million outfits who have adopted the suite since its debut in 2007, and listing more than a dozen by name.
"We believe that 100% web is the future of the cloud computing model, and brings substantial benefits for companies that no other information technology (IT) model can provide in terms of simplicity, cost, security, flexibility, and pace of innovation," read a signed missive from David Girouard, the President of Google's Enterprise business. That "100% web is the future of cloud computing" bit isn't quite the tautology it might seem. It's a swipe at Microsoft's new Office, which famously straddles desktop and web.
Google's empire is built on web advertising. In 2010, 96% of its $29 billion in revenue came from online ads. But Google Apps is different. Google sells subscriptions to enterprises, applying its web know-how to a market traditionally controlled by a very different kind of software company. And it's actually using print ads - not to mention billboards - in an effort to shove its way past the likes of Microsoft and IBM.
Mountain View has purchased print ads trumpeting the Google Apps suite in other magazines, on other occasions, but the Economist ad - all four pages of it - is part of a renewed push. In November, Google actually sued the US Department of the Interior, claiming the government agency didn't give Google a fair chance to win the $49.3 million contract it awarded to Microsoft Office. And last month, it removed a clause from the Google Apps terms of service that allowed for scheduled downtime - an unprecedented move meant to show that the suite is more reliable than the traditional competition.
In a recent interview with "The Register," David Girouard acknowledged that the company has turned up the volume of late. "It's not that we haven't been promoting Google Apps all along," he said. "But we also have been cognizant that the product needed to mature. We've been in the market with our cloud apps for almost four years now, and the products are maturing and getting better, and I think that over the course of 2010, we got the confidence that these products really worked.
"Our renewal rates were extraordinarily high, and our customer satisfaction went up. You don't want to turn on too much of the gas, too much of the messaging, until you're really confident. Through the course of 2010, we really got it there."
He admitted the suite still has its flaws. He gave his own company a "B" on customer support, for instance, and he acknowledged there's an interface "trade-off" when you switch from a traditional desktop suite, meaning the interface can't quite match what you get from a local app. But he argued there are many areas where Google Apps is superior to the competition, citing not only limited downtime but security, and in an echo of that Economist ad, he was quick to point out that the suite is already in wide use.
"A lot of the world doesn't appreciate that this stuff is here for real," he said. "We're trying to make sure people see that the cloud - these cloud applications - aren't conceptual things of the future. It's happening at a large scale."
Please click here for the rest of this interview.
Coming Events of Interest
Digital Music Conference East - February 24th in New York, NY. The 11th Annual DMCE is the only event in the United States that brings together the top music, technology and policy leaders for high-level discussions and debate, intimate meetings and unrivaled networking.
paidContent 2011: The Next Decade in Digital - March 3rd in New York, NY. The DCIA is pleased to serve as media partner for this full-day conference. DCINFO readers receive a 15% discount on registration fees by using code DCIA2011. Register now.
Cloud Connect Conference - March 8th-10th in Santa Clara, CA. Learn about all the latest cloud computing innovations in the Cloud Connect Conference - designed to serve the needs of cloud customers and operators - where you will see the latest cloud technologies and platforms and identify opportunities in the cloud.
Media Summit New York - March 9th-10th in New York, NY. This event is the premier international conference on media, broadband, advertising, television, publishing, cable, mobile, radio, magazines, news & print media, and marketing.
NAB Show - April 9th-14th in Las Vegas, NV. For more than 85 years, the NAB Show has been the essential destination for "broader-casting" professionals who share a passion for bringing content to life on any platform - even if they have to invent it. From creation to consumption, this is the place where possibilities become realities.
CONTENT IN THE CLOUD at NAB - April 11th in Las Vegas, NV. What are the latest cloud computing offerings that will have the greatest impact on the broadcasting industry? How is cloud computing being harnessed to benefit the digital distribution of television programs, movies, music, and games?
1st International Conference on Cloud Computing - May 7th-9th in Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands. This first-ever event focuses on the emerging area of cloud computing, inspired by some latest advances that concern the infrastructure, operations, and available services through the global network.
Cloud Computing Asia - May 30th - June 2nd in Singapore. Cloud services are gaining popularity among information IT users, allowing them to access applications, platforms, storage and whole segments of infrastructure over a public or private network.CCA showcases cloud-computing products and services. Learn from top industry analysts, successful cloud customers, and cloud computing experts.
Cloud Expo 2011 - June 6th-9th in New York, NY. Cloud Expo is returning to New York with more than 7,000 delegates and over 200 sponsors and exhibitors. "Cloud" has become synonymous with "computing" and "software" in two short years. Cloud Expo is the new PC Expo, Comdex, and InternetWorld of our decade.
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