January 27, 2014
Volume XLVI, Issue 11
Why the Cloud Battle Is Already Won
Excerpted from Business2Community Report by Simon Withers
You don't need to be a business or technology expert to see that cloud computing is having a profound effect on some of our working practices. It's hard to overestimate the significance of this culture change: just as businesses needed to evolve by the introduction of the PC or the Internet, the cloud represents another decade defining shift of evolution.
Perhaps what is most interesting is that we're seeing business ambitions start to outstrip the technology and services on offer — cloud is still in its nascent phase but we're already visualizing increasingly ambitious ways to apply the services delivered by cloud computing technology. Practices such as remote working, accessing work data from any device and allowing access to real-time data streams are only possible with cloud computing technology. And now, with mobile web usage set to outstrip desktop use in 2014 it's clear that cloud adoption is more vital for businesses than ever before.
While this new era of remote working is ostensibly a benefit for organizations, with employees enjoying greater levels of productivity than previously, this new way of working requires a robust and flexible IT infrastructure that is underpinned with a strong secure, resilient foundation.
So what transformations can we expect to see now that cloud technology is becoming an IT essential (rather than a competitive edge)? For a start, the cloud has substantial implications for every organization's operational efficiency. The advantages of on-demand services have been talked up to the point of excess, but a reduction in IT maintenance costs, increased automation, rapid scalability, a simplified IT framework and the movement from CapEx to OpEx are all real benefits for any business. Put simply: a business can now run its entire infrastructure more efficiently and for a lower cost.
While each organization is on its own cloud journey the technology is already having a big impact on the role of IT within an organization. The nature of the cloud means IT departments can shift their focus, taking IT from being an unavoidable cost center to being an epicenter for value creation.
Through the cloud chief information officers (CIOs) can now drive value for the organization, developing innovative applications delivered within a software-as-a-service (SaaS) framework. Whether that's to support employees or external stakeholders (e.g., customers and partners), that will help open up previously untapped business opportunities. Cloud allows businesses to offer instant access to data and services for both employees and customers alike — something that has become increasingly essential in today's "always-on" society.
With organizations poised to invest significantly over the next three to five years in refreshing their IT infrastructure, there is an opportunity for senior IT decision-makers to set out their stall and demonstrate the tangible benefits IT can deliver to the organization.
Amid this revolutionary change, there are new challenges for the CIO in attempting to govern their organization's data flow. The increase in flexible working has transformed the CIO focus from attempting to control individual devices to monitoring how users are accessing the organization's data. CIOs can now manage their organization's entire infrastructure from a single, centralized location. This means growing a business becomes much simpler as end-users can be added to systems quickly, no matter what their location. With such minimal setup costs businesses can afford to be bolder when expanding into new markets.
The case for cloud is starting to now be won, business are no longer asking "why cloud?" but "how do I get there?" It's a pivotal era for IT and one where the most creative and innovative organizations, rather than their conservative counterparts, are going to thrive and emerge from this period of austerity stronger than ever.
Though for all the discussion of new working practices and innovative ways to drive value and revenue across the business, cloud adoption may come down to simple economics. Attempting to bury your head in the sand and writing cloud off as a fad is comparable to a business investing in typewriters rather than mobile devices.
Ultimately, cloud has come so far that you can now run entire business processes on a resilient platform that offers unprecedented levels of availability for your enterprise, at a fraction of the previous price.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Register now for CLOUD COMPUTING EAST (CCE:2014), a must-attend strategic summit in early May for business leaders and software developers presented by theDCIA&CCA in Washington, DC.
CCE:2014 will focus on three areas of vital interest: the gCLOUD (The Government Cloud), hCLOUD (The Healthcare Cloud), and fCLOUD (The Financial Services Cloud).
This important gathering of thought leaders and first movers will thoroughly examine the current state of adoption and the outstanding challenges affecting parties currently engaged in migrating to the cloud.
Plenary sessions will feature principal representatives of such industry leading organizations as Amazon Web Services, IBM, and Verizon providing delegates with a real insider's view of the latest issues in this space.
gCLOUD case studies will expose the truth about cloud computing and the public sector. What really happened when a local municipality tried to streamline operations by moving just a few basic functions to the cloud? Why was the FedRAMP experience of one major cloud provider with government bureaucracy such a total shocker?
gCLOUD speakers will include representatives of such organizations as ASG Software, Clear Government Solutions, DST, HP, IBM, Ipswich Public Library, NASA, The City of New York, QinetiQ-NA, SAP America, Tech Equity, Unitas Global, Verizon, Virtustream, and WSO2.
hCLOUD sessions will range from revelations of the astonishing experience of a medical imaging company new to this arena to a generous sharing of the deep wisdom from a patient-records-storing firm that was doing cloud computing before the name cloud was even coined.
hCLOUD speakers will include representatives of such organizations as AVOA, BP LOGIX, BrightLine, Dell, DICOM Grid, Level 3, NTP Software, Optum, ServerCentral, SYSNET Intl., and Vizix.
And fCLOUD keynotes and panels will uncover the real reasons banks and other financial institutions are now rushing to embrace the cloud after saying they'd never go near it.
fCLOUD speakers will include representatives of such organizations as BNY Mellon, Financial Force, Intuit, and Trilogy Global Advisors.
Other featured speakers will include authors, analysts, industry observers, and representatives of such organizations as ActiveState, Aspera, BUMI, CDAS, Edwards Wildman Palmer, Expedient, Juniper Networks, Kwaai Oak, M*Modal , Mobily, Numecent. The PADEM Group, Rackspace, SOA Software, Stratus Technologies, Trend Micro, V2Solutions, Veristor, Visionary Integration Professionals, and WikiPay,
The gCLOUD will examine the ways that local, state, and federal governments can improve services and protect citizens with cloud-based tools. It will also address liabilities and challenges that need to concern government agencies regarding cloud-based services, countering NSA-fallout gloom with energized and confident approaches that overcome concerns raised by the Snowden scandal.
The explosion of data, advances in security and reliability, and options for redundant storage; challenges to natural resource management, transportation, and utility grid monitoring; and the impact of cloud services on law enforcement and emergency responsiveness will be featured topics.
The hCLOUD will explore progress being made by the healthcare industry in adopting cloud-based solutions to become more efficient, collaborative, and interactively connected. It will also address legitimate concerns that healthcare organizations must address in implementing cloud-based services.
Managing private patient records; collecting clinical research data; big-data imaging, and remote patient monitoring will be covered.
The fCLOUD will discuss the ways that financial transactions and currency exchange, domestic banking and insurance services, as well as efficient investment decision-making are all being impacted by cloud computing. It will also address obstacles that need to be confronted by financial services organizations in migrating to the cloud.
International financial activities impacted by cloud computing; how banks and insurance companies are migrating to the cloud; and private equity and hedge fund investor use of cloud computing will be highlighted.
Speakers will include end-user organizations, public-sector thought-leaders, and private-sector cloud vendors, representatives of hospitals, clinics, multi-physician practices, and healthcare solutions providers, business and technology leaders from the financial services industry and executives and innovators from the cloud computing industry.
Please contact Don Buford, CEO, or Hank Woji, VP Business Development, at the CCA to learn more about attractive conference exhibition and sponsorship opportunities.
To review conference topics and apply to join the speaking faculty for this event, please click here. If you'd like to speak at this major industry event, please contact me, Marty Lafferty, CEO of the DCIA, at your earliest convenience. Share wisely, and take care.
Cloud Comes of Age
Excerpted from Information Age Report by Chloe Green
"Cloud Computing" has dominated the technology industry in recent years. Theories abound as to when the term was originally coined — one suggests its origins can be traced to a 1996 Compaq business plan — but the acceleration in hype over the last few years has spurred the kind of trending that Lady Gaga would be proud of.
Is it a fad, just a buzzword? While these questions have been debated, the reality is that our children are already enjoying life in an increasingly cloud-enabled world, gaming with 'friends' on different continents and backing up smartphones online via services like Apple iCloud; major enterprises have been extolling cloud's virtues; and IT departments everywhere have been working away to achieve some of the promised technical and financial benefits of cloud solutions.
If it was tempting to see this as a technology conversation two or three years ago, now is the moment to jump back in.
Let me be clear: cloud computing will have as big an impact on business as factory production lines had during the industrial revolution. It's a revolution in the way computing services are delivered and will have an irreversible impact on the way virtually every industry is run.
Technologists will be familiar with the three flavors of cloud, but management teams may still be trying to get their heads around it. The "public cloud" involves a service provider making resources such as software or data storage available over the Internet either on a free or pay-per-use model.
An example of this is Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and this can be a quick, cost-effective approach for projects where information is not commercially sensitive or heavily regulated (although the process of removing your data from these platforms — should you need to manage it in-house at a point in the future — is somewhat unclear; more on this in a future post).
A "private cloud" offers similar services but does so through a business' own infrastructure, made available online via secure remote access.
This is often needed for computing services that require higher performance, reliability, security and management controls. Lastly, as the name suggests, a "hybrid cloud" offers some combination of the two and enables a company to manage more sensitive or higher value information via a private cloud, and run other operations on a public cloud to benefit from greater flexibility and scale at a lower cost.
Cloud adoption is picking up pace: nearly half of EMEA decision makers think cloud architectures will overtake traditional ones in the next three years. We're seeing organizations adopt one or other variant of cloud computing as commercial pressures mount and business needs escalate in keeping with the rest of the digital universe — which anticipates storage of digital data to grow 300-fold between 2012 and 2020.
Despite the hype, cloud is already reshaping corporate computing and business leaders should consider where the greatest opportunity lies for their company. For example:
Scale: one of the key benefits of the cloud is scale. Most businesses have regular times of the year when the demand for computing resource leaps, including seasonal sales trends or the end of a quarter or financial year.
As cloud develops, limitations around processing power, storage capacity and eventually bandwidth become less significant and it is easier for a business to 'switch' on additional computing. Corporate leaders can now plan ahead and decide which departments may need rapid access to scalable computing power which will boost productivity.
Mobility: the personal benefits of mobile working are widely accepted but cloud also opens up operational benefits. If staff are able to access systems through the cloud from wherever they are, without being limited by the processing power of a mobile device, then companies can rethink working practices.
For example, does the company still need to spend as much on office space if teams can work effectively by combining mobile and cloud? Does the company need to invest as much in physical IT, as the cloud makes it possible for staff to use less expensive client devices but still access corporate systems and data?
Disruptive innovation: Cloud is redefining agility and accessibility in the enterprise: where it would once have taken six months or more to launch a new application, the cloud means business leaders can turn on a dime, rolling-out new applications within hours.
The IT-controlled and IT-limited paradigm of old has given way to a new world order that is business-controlled and self-provisioned, albeit where governance remains an open issue. Equally disruptive is the combination of the cloud and more extensive, readily available structured data from within an organization — as well as unstructured data available online — which has the potential to create a wealth of valuable new business insight.
Cloud is evolving from being solely the domain of the CIO to a topic for the entire management team. In a sense, many of the talking points around cloud migration — the questions of writing down legacy investment, of shifting operational practice, of evaluating risk in a new context — are similar to those taken by a business that's evaluating diversification or entry into a new market.
Make no mistake — yesterday's cloud hype has become today's reality. New companies starting up today are building their entire IT infrastructures using cloud tools, and businesses that don't have an IT department today are unlikely to employ one in the future.
For most mid-sized and large businesses which have legacy infrastructure — or for organizations in regulated sectors — a balanced and realistic approach which tailors the different 'flavors' of cloud to a particular organization will be vital.
Cloud Powers the Internet of Things
Excerpted from E-Commerce Times Report by Jeffrey Kaplan
A widening array of technology and software vendors are getting on the Internet of Things (IoT) bandwagon. Cisco Systems is championing the "Internet of Everything." Salesforce.com is promoting the "Internet of the Customer." Verizon is shifting its mobility marketing efforts from selling commodity mobile phones to supplying a broader set of connected products that can power the wired household.
The IoT is a key driver of accelerated growth of cloud-based alternatives to traditional on-premises systems and software, and as the new year begins to unfold, it is gaining momentum.
The idea of the IoT evolved from the more narrowly focused concept of machine-to-machine communications, which has been floating around for a while and is now getting more attention in a variety of industries. The most obvious example of M2M deployments is within the transportation industry, where companies increasingly are placing sensors on various vehicles to monitor their movement and improve their logistical efficiency, thus reducing costs and increasing profitability.
The IoT idea envisions a wider universe of connected devices and services that enable businesses and consumers to better understand and control their behavior so as to optimize their corporate performance and quality of life, respectively.
The popularization of the more futuristic IoT concept was on display at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where major tech companies, ranging from Cisco Systems to Verizon, boasted about their IoT capabilities.
The current poster child for the deployment of IoT to complex business challenges is GE. It has launched a company-wide initiative to build the "industrial Internet," with the goal of embedding sensors into everything from aircraft engines to household appliances to better monitor, measure and manage their use, so that GE can better design and support them.
Of course, fulfilling the promise of the IoT depends on capturing lots of data, creating the ultimate Big Data challenge and opportunity.
A widening array of technology and software vendors are getting on the IoT bandwagon, offering products and services that promise to capture data that will enable businesses to improve their operations and individuals to better their quality of life.
None of this would be possible without the cloud.
The universal accessibility and economies of scale of today's cloud services make them a perfect platform for IoT deployments. Today's rapidly expanding assortment of software-as-a-service (SaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings has made it possible for businesses to harvest Big Data. In the same way, these on-demand resources are making it possible to connect devices and collate the data they are generating to support escalating corporate and consumer demands.
Proponents of the IoT's potential have plenty of challenges to overcome before they can fulfill their promises. Bandwidth issues still exist. Privacy and security concerns are greater than ever in response to last year's NSA revelations. Also, seamless integration will take a combination of specialized software, systems and skills.
Despite these challenges, I expect IoT vendors to roll out a continuous stream of customer success stories from early adopters, demonstrating the tangible and measurable benefits that can be derived from a growing number of cloud-based IoT products, services, and solutions.
Network Neutrality: 10 Reasons You Should Care About It
Excerpted from eCommerce Report by Don Reisinger
Much has been written, blogged, and said about the federal appeals court's January 14th decision that struck down the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) "network neutrality" policy, which was aimed at ensuring that Internet service providers (ISPs) don't prioritize customers' Web bandwidth or traffic volumes.
The decision effectively allows service providers to manage web traffic as they see fit.
This means that web service providers that generate big traffic volumes could be paying higher prices or face bandwidth restrictions.
It's been said this might particularly impact companies such as Netflix or other video content providers who broadcast huge data streams.
Although concern over network neutrality has been around for years, it's one of the least-understood aspects of the Internet industry.
The term, tossed around in Congressional hearings and on tech blogs, is hardly understood by average consumers, who naturally expect that they will have unfettered access to web content at reasonable cost.
But if the FCC doesn't find a way to legally sustain the network neutrality concept, web users may find that they will be paying whatever the market will bear for web content.
And if ISPs attempt to increase the cost for service providers to access the web, it's entirely possible those end users will get hit by those very same providers with higher access fees. This slide show covers what network neutrality is and why it matters, identifies the key players, and looks at why everyone has a vested interest in it.
Immediate Change to ISPs' Data Policies Unlikely Post-Ruling
Excerpted from Communications Daily Report by Jonathan Make
Telco and cable ISPs are unlikely to change broadband data policies because of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruling last week that struck down most FCC net neutrality rules, said industry officials and observers in interviews. They said large telco and cable ISPs have been vocal about not changing customer-facing policies following the ruling, and aren't likely to change other policies at least in the near term because of uncertainty about how the FCC will respond to the ruling.
Small and mid-sized ISPs aren't likely to change data policies for broadband customers or OK preferential traffic arrangements with websites because of the ruling, said their associations.
ISPs "aren't going to make immediate changes because they first want to see what the FCC is going to do," said Cathy Sloan, Vice President-Government Affairs for the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA)), which is in favor of net neutrality. "You wouldn't want to commit to any new ways of doing business or new deals unless you were pretty sure that it made sense from both the regulatory and public relations standpoints."
CCIA members, which include ISPs and high-technology companies, "have to care what consumers think and they have to care what the media is going to say about what they're doing," she said. "I certainly haven't heard from any of our members that they're going to be doing anything different."
"For now, everyone is going to tread lightly for fear that if they don't, they risk inflaming a sensitive situation," said Moffett Nathanson analyst Craig Moffett. "No one wants to see FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler start to seriously entertain reclassification, so they don't want to provide any ammunition. Everyone's also waiting to see if he'll appeal the ruling."
The ISPs are also unlikely to "go out and start blocking anybody," said Stifel Nicolaus analyst David Kaut. "They all said they wouldn't, and it would be a real problem if they did. It's more about what they can do to reap further benefit from their broadband networks."
A Verizon spokesman referred us to the telco's original statement on its case against the FCC, saying it "speaks for itself — nothing is changing for consumers." Verizon said in its original statement that the ruling "will not change consumers' ability to access and use the Internet as they do now."
AT&T also referred us to its original statement on the ruling. A Sprint spokeswoman said the carrier "has always supported an open Internet for its customers, and the developers and device manufacturers with which it partners, and we do not anticipate changing that support because of the court's ruling."
The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) doesn't "expect to see some huge overnight change," said General Counsel David Sohn. "The real risk is a more gradual evolution towards a less open Internet, that carriers will start experimenting with different types of arrangements that are not the same as what the Internet's open tradition has been." Stopping gradual change at the start is important, because CDT believes it will be "a lot harder for policymakers to reverse that after the fact," he said.
The larger ISPs may be waiting to change policies until a later date if the FCC lacks net neutrality rules and once heightened scrutiny after the court decision recedes from public consciousness, said National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) General Counsel Jessica Gonzalez.
Citing the decision, Gonzalez said that at oral argument Verizon said it would explore preferential-traffic deals absent FCC net neutrality rules. "It's in their business interest" to pursue such arrangements, she said of Verizon. "ISPs would be smart to play it cool" and "abide by net neutrality and not piss anyone off, until they're in the clear again, and make these kinds of deals that Verizon alluded to in the oral argument" in September at the DC Circuit, she said.
Small and mid-sized operators and telcos don't have enough leverage with major web companies to sign deals to have websites pay them for faster transmission speeds or other preferential arrangements, to get content to ISP customers better than other traffic, said their associations.
Blocking or slowing con-tent delivery to ISP customers also seems unlikely, said executives at the American Cable Association (ACA), Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance (ITTA), National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NCTA), and USTelecom, which declined to comment for this story, said when the DC Circuit decision was released that their members, which had supported Internet openness, will continue to do so.
Some web players want to test preferential traffic arrangements with ISPs, while others favor FCC reclassification of broadband as a Title II common-carrier service, said CEO Marty Lafferty of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), with members including Amazon Web Services, BitTorrent, DataDirect Networks, Telefonica, and Verizon.
The tests some DCIA Members want would include ISPs offering web providers the option to pay for more reliable and faster service, he said. "We are far from having a consensus view" at the DCIA, said Lafferty: "We have parties at both extremes," with some favoring reclassification and others preferring paid preferential traffic pacts.
FCC reclassification is unlikely, ISP associations have said.
The Internet Association backs "enforceable rules that ensure an open Internet, free from government control or discriminatory, anticompetitive actions by gatekeepers," said CEO Michael Beckerman in a written statement. He said the group will work with the FCC and on Capitol Hill "to protect Internet freedom, foster innovation and economic growth, and empower users." Amazon, Google, Netflix, and Yahoo, among the association's members, other Internet companies, and the association had no comment for this story.
However ISPs treat traffic, "it's very important to all stakeholders, and we can see this going in a lot of directions," said Lafferty of possible broadband provider behavior post-Verizon v. FCC. DCIA Members that want reclassification include start-ups with investors concerned about a lack of rules, he said.
"The one guiding principle that we believe can gain traction among our Members" is that Internet traffic delivery and content should be separately owned, which "resolves conflict of interest issues and related concerns that have cropped-up again recently," said Lafferty: "This idea doesn't get rejected out of hand" when it's brought up, and "some people see that as a relief."
The DC Circuit ruling gives ISPs "more flexibility with respect to their arrangements with edge providers," said Micah Caldwell, Vice President-Regulatory Affairs for mid-sized telco association Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance (ITTA)."It's expected that any steps they take will be consistent with consumer demand," she said of any traffic arrangements ISPs may eventually pursue.
She personally doesn't expect blocking of ISP subscriber access to any website or slowing of traffic that lacks deals with content providers, although faster speeds for sites with deals could happen. "It all comes down to what consumers want, and doing things that make the Internet experience better for them as well," said Caldwell. ITTA members include CenturyLink and Frontier Communications, both of which declined to comment. Windstream is "still reviewing the ruling, so it would be premature to speculate," a spokesman said.
One reason to expect the ISP status quo for now is that "people are really hot" about net neutrality "and the FCC is watching them closely," said Gonzalez of NHMC, which backs Title II reclassification."Notwithstanding the flowery embrace and PR of most of the ISPs that I've seen" of Internet openness, "we know what their true intentions are when they're really pressed in court," she said. That there were net neutrality violations after the FCC's 2005 guidelines to ISPs means more violations are possible now, said Gonzalez.
Media Institute President Patrick Maines said statements from the National Cable Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and Verizon that "from the consumer's perspective, things will go on as they did before the Circuit Court's decision" are "entirely believable." He cited "the mutuality of interests between the networks and the ISPs, and the history that was made between them even before the net neutrality regulations were enacted."
Telcos have "long operated in a manner consistent" with FCC "Internet freedoms," said USTelecom CEO Walter McCormick. "Nothing about today's decision changes that."
The cable industry "has always embraced the principles of an open Internet and the Court decision will not change that," said NCTA CEO Michael Powell. "Neither the adoption" of the 2010 net neutrality order, "nor its partial repeal, has led or will lead to significant changes in how ISPs manage their networks," he said.
NTCA (as opposed to NCTA) members, "all small businesses serving very small markets," have "limited market power" to change broadband policies and sign deals with websites, said Michael Romano, Senior Vice President-Policy. Such telcos "would be hard pressed to have a lot of bargaining power with some of the big application providers of the world," he said.
A small number of customers using a lot of bandwidth is an issue NTCA members face, with some of the telcos technically able to bill broadband subscribers for how much data they consume but not having started to do so, said Romano. Big US telcos now may look to change their "business practices," as did AT&T with its Sponsored Data plan for wireless, which began shortly before the DC Circuit ruling, he said.
"A number of members will watch to see how that plays out" in the wider telecom industry, Romano said, saying he expects NTCA members "to continue to do business as they do today, because it's the best experience for their customers."
ACA members never considered charging websites for preferential treatment, and have faced what they contend is discrimination by websites wanting to charge them for access by customers for content such as ESPN, said Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman.
"In their businesses, they're the payers, not the payees — they're the ones being discriminated against," he said of ACA members. "They're more concerned about the edge providers charging them fees in order for their customers to access websites."
Smaller operators aren't "sitting and thinking of how they are going to somehow change their business practices as a result" of the court decision, he said. "I don't think Silicon Valley has anything to worry about when it comes to a small cable provider providing service in rural America."
The "real battleground" is shifting from net neutrality to the application of usage-based pricing models, Moffett said. Wheeler has indicated a willingness to let the wireless carriers experiment with new pricing models like tiered data plans and AT&T's Sponsored Data plan, he said.
"The real question now is whether there will be a significant hue and cry if carriers start to move in the direction of usage-based pricing and whether some ISPs will decide that usage-based pricing on its face is anti-competitive," Moffett said.
The DC Circuit ruling means "there is nothing standing in the way now" for wireline telcos to adopt tiered data or other usage-based plans, Kaut said. "Of course, they're going to be careful that these don't have what the FCC perceives to be an anti-competitive or anti-consumer effect, since that could stoke the fire for the FCC to react."
It will also be interesting to see how programs like AT&T's Sponsored Data plan "goes over in terms of all the companies whose data doesn't get the fast lane," Sloan said.
Verizon Buys Intel's OnCue TV Division
Excerpted from Broadband TV News Report by Robert Briel
Verizon will acquire Intel Media, a business division dedicated to the development of Cloud TV products and services, for an undisclosed sum.
Verizon will purchase intellectual property rights and other assets that enable Intel's OnCue Cloud TV platform. Verizon will also make employment offers to substantially all of the approximately 350-person Intel unit, which will continue to be based in Santa Clara and be led by its current management team.
Once the transaction is closed, Verizon expects to integrate IP-based TV services with FiOS video to further differentiate FiOS from traditional cable TV offerings and to reduce ongoing deployment costs. FiOS customers are also expected to benefit from search and discovery, interactivity and cross-screen ease of use — integrated with the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network.
Lowell McAdam, Chairman and CEO of Verizon, said: "The OnCue platform and team will help Verizon bring next-generation video services to audiences who increasingly expect to view content when, where and how they want it. Verizon already has extensive video content relationships, fixed and wireless delivery networks, and customer relationships in both the home and on mobile. This transaction provides us with the capabilities to build a powerful, capitally efficient engine for future growth and innovation. We will have the opportunity to enhance, expand, accelerate and integrate our delivery of video products and services to better serve audiences on a wide array of devices."
Erik Huggers, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel Media, said: "We're incredibly proud of what we've achieved. Intel provided us with the technological know-how and resources to develop products and services that will fundamentally change the way we experience TV, and now Verizon gives us access to the marketplace and the ability to scale. It's the next logical step, and we're excited about the road ahead."
Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel Corporation, said: "Intel Media's over-the-top TV products are truly innovative and under Verizon's ownership have the potential to change how people interact with content. The critical factor in gaining efficient access to content is based on your ability to scale quickly in subscribers and end users, which is why selling these assets to Verizon makes perfect sense, with its millions of FiOS network and wireless customers. This sale also enables Intel to further align our focus and resources around advancing our broad computing product portfolio in segments ranging from the Internet-of-Things to data centers."
The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions and is expected to close early in the first quarter of 2014.
Verizon also published its Q4, 2013 results on Tuesday, January 21. In the quarter, Verizon added 126,000 net new FiOS Internet connections and 92,000 net new FiOS Video connections.
Verizon had a total of 6.1 million FiOS Internet and 5.3 million FiOS Video connections at year-end 2013, representing year-over-year increases of 11.9% and 11.3%, respectively. FiOS penetration (subscribers as a percentage of potential subscribers) continued to increase. FiOS Internet penetration was 39.5% at the end of fourth-quarter 2013, compared with 37.3% at the end of fourth-quarter 2012.
In the same periods, FiOS Video penetration was 35.0%, compared with 33.3%. The FiOS network passed 18.6 million premises by year-end 2013.
Access Your Music from All Your Devices with BitTorrent Sync
Excerpted from Hyperbot Report by Eliot Van Buskirk
Most who have been online for a while probably associate BitTorrent with the bit torrent file sharing protocol. BitTorrent, the company, which uses that protocol, has been in the legitimate content business for a while now — most recently with its music bundles, which let artists turn BitTorrent downloads into a distributed storefront or ad-supported music experience.
BitTorrent added an intriguing new product last year called BitTorrent Sync, which lets you share files between your devices, or with your friends, totally for free, with no data limits (try that with Dropbox).
Why should a music fan care about this? Because the BitTorrent Sync app can let them play any of their downloaded music, from any of their computers.
All you have to do is run a free app on your Mac or Windows PC, and pair it with all your other computers and the free app for Android or iOS. Over a million people have done this already. It's easy.
BitTorrent Sync basically turns your computer or computers into a music cloud server you can access from your iPhone, iPad, for your phone. Even if you use other apps for music, this could come in handy. In my case, the straw that broke the camel's distributed music collection, so to speak, was My Bloody Valentine's m b v album. I bought it in download form as soon as it came out, and I agree with the critics that it's a shocking return to form, and easily one of the top five albums of 2013. However, I have barely seen it since.
I don't really know where the downloads went, between my computers and the folders on those computers, and I have been either too busy or annoyed to find them, at least in time to set things up for the next time I want to hear it. This album is not on the music subscriptions either, so the only way I can listen to that album today is on YouTube.
Why did I buy it, if I apparently can't listen to it?
To avoid losing track of my downloads, I have done something you might consider doing, even if you pay for music subscriptions like I do. After testing it, I have resolved to install BitTorrent Sync on my phone, tablet, and all my computers, and will probably do the same on my next computers too.
Once all of my things are running this app, I will always be able to grab music downloads from any of my online computers, and download it right over the Internet, via BitTorrent, to any of my other computers, smartphones, and/or tablets, from anywhere. This makes downloaded music a little more worth buying, because it makes downloads act like cloud music.
When it occurred to me to write this article, I figured I'd walk you through, step by step. But why bother, when BitTorrent has great tutorials for Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS? It really can't be easier, so we're dispensing with the usual steps.
There are just a few things to know, as I see it:
You won't be able to get your files unless the computer that has them is running. It also has to be online.
On an iPhone, you'll be able to download music on your computers to local memory. However, in our experience anyway, you'll need to install a third-party music player. Apple's own music player app won't be able to see the file. I used CanOpener, and the freshly-downloaded files played just fine.
When you're pairing your folders, be sure to enter both the unique code you have to email to yourself (it's easy, just install the app and you'll see how to do this) and the folder on your computer in the dialog box that pops up.
You can also use BitTorrent Sync to send files of any size to other BitTorrent Sync users on any of their devices.
Bonus: The app can back up your iPhone's camera roll to your Mac or PC, all the time, for free. Just pick a folder.
If you're a developer, the BitTorrent Sync API can help you add the above features to your app.
Cloud Computing: A Powerful Tool for Cyber Attacks?
Excerpted from SiliconIndia Report
As cyber warfare against enterprises grows more brutal by the year, cloud computing technology is also at risk for cyber attacks such as malware and phishing, which have increased the demand for technologies to combat these threats.
With the movement of critical business data to cloud-based solutions such as Google, Microsoft Office 365, and Confluence, cybercriminals are now focusing their attacks more on data stored in the cloud.
Cloud storage tools like Dropbox have been subject to notable cyber threats, subsequently compromising the data stored on the cloud by users. The storage service can also be used as a tool by hackers to spread malware for the purposes of cyber attack and cyber espionage.
With this tactical shift, penetrating the data-rich cloud can be easier and more profitable than getting through the "castle walls" of an on-premise enterprise network.
While attackers may still infiltrate enterprise networks to target users, steal information, and compromise their systems, cloud-based attacks serve as an intermediate step to gain access to third-party cloud services instead of an internal data store.
Secure Cloud Computing: Why Layering Is the Best Approach
Excerpted from Channel Partners Report
Studies show that concerns about security, while declining, remain top of mind among organizations that either use or intend to use cloud computing.
As a result, discussion of a layered approach to cloud security has ramped up in recent months — among vendors in particular — as a single layer, such as network firewalls, proves insufficient.
With that in mind, improving a company's security posture will depend on the cloud service provider, making supplier selection critical: understand businesses' security concerns about migrating to cloud computing; identify the growing number and variety of cloud security threats and their countermeasures; and discover seven layers needed for secure cloud computing.
Click here to download the whitepaper.
DDN Appoints Molly Rector as CMO to Lead Global Market Expansion
DataDirect Networks (DDN) today announced the appointment of the company's first Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). With nearly 15 years of experience working in high-performance computing (HPC), Media and Entertainment, and Enterprise IT industries, Rector has joined the DDN team to expand the adoption of its strong product portfolio to new markets.
"Cloud, Media and Entertainment, and Enterprise IT environments are now grappling with the same massive compute and data management demands that HPC technology was designed to address," said Rector, "The DDN product line that has fulfilled the needs of several Nobel prize winners and the HPC market solves the needs of a much broader industry in 2014 and beyond due to massive data growth and demand for data analytics."
Rector's experience in HPC and the new markets DDN is focusing on will help to accelerate 2014 company growth and product adoption. Rector is a founding member and currently serves as Chairman of the Board for the Active Archive Alliance. She is also the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) Vice Chairman of the Board and the Analytics and Big Data committee Vice Chairman.
Alex Bouzari, CEO of DDN said, "I am delighted to welcome Molly to the DDN family as we engage more closely with our customers and partners to scale their businesses. She is a strategic, results-driven marketing leader with the unique credentials we were looking for in a CMO. Her success in enabling technology companies to integrate their marketing and sales efforts to achieve maximum results, while disrupting the competitive landscape and delivering a great customer experience is well regarded.
Karen Evans Proposes Cybersecurity Plan for Federal Cloud
Excerpted from ExecutiveGov Report by Elizabeth Leigh
Karen Evans, a former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official, has co-authored a white paper on the government's cybersecurity activities and cloud computing initiatives, FierceGovernmentIT reported Wednesday.
David Perera writes that the paper, entitled "Staying Safe in Cyberspace: Cloud Security on the Horizon," focuses on the implementation of stronger information technology controls to coordinate federal security programs with the use of cloud computing.
Evans, who served as OMB administrator for e-government and IT under President George W. Bush, and Julie Anderson of Civitas Group recommended measures such as: identity verification for cloud and mobile access using the federal identity cards; risk penetration testing as security requirement for cloud providers under FedRAMP; cloud log files for monitoring; and stricter metrics to measure effectiveness of security.
How FedRAMP Lifts All Cloud Ships
Excerpted from Information Week Report by Wyatt Kash
If you spend any time listening to what government IT executives are talking about in Washington these days — besides the NSA's data-collection practices and what everyone should have learned from HealthCare.gov — it's hard to ignore at least some discussion about secure cloud computing and a federal program called FedRAMP.
Talk to IT executives outside of Washington, however, and it's evident that discussions about FedRAMP and its impact on cloud service providers are reaching far beyond the Beltway and rippling through the boardrooms of IT services providers. As Amazon Web Services VP Teresa Carlson said in a recent interview: "Cloud companies won't be able to participate in any government procurement or award without being able to achieve the FedRAMP standards."
For those new to the discussion, FedRAMP is a program cooked up by a group of savvy bureaucrats who grasped the potential of cloud computing, but also understood that, without help in overcoming the government's own red tape, federal agencies faced a long road to cloud adoption. The reason stems from the fact that every federal agency must assess and certify the security risks of its IT systems. Cloud computing added a new layer of complexity to the government's security requirements and procurement contracts.
How FedRAMP — the Federal Risk Authorization and Management Program — succeeded in greasing the policy skids for agencies and creating a set of baseline security standards now gaining attention from cloud computing providers, and even some of their commercial customers, is the subject of an InformationWeek Government Special Report released this week.
Ron Ross, one of FedRAMP's architects from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, believes FedRAMP is important to agencies and cloud computing service providers for a couple of reasons.
"It sets very clear expectations on what security controls are needed" to minimize an enterprise's IT security risks, Ross says. He points to FedRAMP's insistence on third-party assessment organizations to "validate that cloud service providers have implemented those controls. That's good for industry and it's good for federal agencies," he says.
Ross also sees a greater good in the way FedRAMP helps support cloud computing and offsets IT complexity. "The more we can address our complexity problem by moving as much IT as is appropriate to the cloud, the more that frees up our remaining resources. That's an important part of the equation in trying to lock down our critical infrastructure," he argues.
While federal agencies placed down payments on $17 billion worth of cloud computing projects this past fiscal year, FedRAMP officials know they must do more to attract a wider range of cloud services -- and to persuade agencies to use FedRAMP-certified services.
More also needs to be done to educate federal officials about the potential savings and false promises that come with cloud computing. That's one reason behind the announcement, made last week, by Congressmen Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA) that they and a group of industry supporters had agreed to launch the Cloud Computing Caucus Advisory Group, which they hope will enlighten the discussion on cloud computing.
But this much is clear: FedRAMP is a program more people will be talking about, and not just in Washington.
Coming Events of Interest
CCISA 2014 – February 12th–14th in Turin, Italy. The second international special session on Cloud Computing and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and its Applications within the 22nd Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed, and Network-Based Processing.
Cloud Computing Conference for DoD & Government - February 19th-21st in Washington, DC. This 5th annual CCCDG seeks to build on the success of last year's event and refine its scope by addressing the newest developments in cloud computing for the public sector.
Interop Las Vegas - March 31st to April 4th in Las Vegas, NV. The leading independent technology conference and expo series designed to inspire and inform the world's IT community. New in 2014: Cloud Connect Summit and the InformationWeek Conference.
CLOSER 2014 - April 3rd-5th in Barcelona, Spain. The Fourth International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2014) sets out to explore the emerging area of cloud computing, inspired by recent advances in network technologies.
NAB Show - April 5th-10th in Las Vegas, NV. From broadcasting to broader-casting, NAB Show has evolved over the last eight decades to continually lead this ever-changing industry. From creation to consumption, NAB Show has proudly served as the incubator for excellence — helping to breathe life into content everywhere.
Media Management in the Cloud — April 8th-9th in Las Vegas, NV. This two-day conference provides a senior management overview of how cloud-based solutions positively impact each stage of the content distribution chain, including production, delivery, and storage.
CLOUD COMPUTING EAST 2014 - May 13th-14th in Washington, DC. Three major conference tracks will zero in on the latest advances in the application of cloud-based solutions in three key economic sectors: government, healthcare, and financial services.
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