June 23, 2014
Volume XLVIII, Issue 8
Share Your Cloud Learning at CDSE:2014
The all newDCIA &CCA co-hosted CLOUD DEVELOPERS SUMMIT & EXPO 2014 (CDSE:2014) is shaping up to be a remarkable event for cloud-computing customers.
In addition to numerous hands-on instructional workshops and special seminars, on Wednesday October 1st and Thursday October 2nd, in Austin, TX, enterprise end-users from six sectors will take center-stage to share case-studies from their adoption of cloud-based business solutions.
If you represent a company that has adopted cloud computing for logistics, big data, or mobile, and has an interesting story to tell, please contact DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty at your earliest convenience.
Likewise, if your organization is based in media and entertainment, healthcare and life sciences, or government and military -- and has experiences to share based on your implementation of cloud computing, please get in touch as soon as possible.
If you are a cloud solutions provider, and would like to recommend your enterprise customers for one or more of these speaking roles -- possibly in a joint presentation session with you at this major industry event -- please call or email ASAP.
The CCA & DCIA are finalizing the conference agendaand speakers list to be included in the promotional materialsandconference program now.
Call or e-mail at your earliest convenience —THIS WEEK IF AT ALL POSSIBLE — for more information.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The DCIA is a member of the Digital Due Process (DDP) coalition, which for more than two years has advocated reform of the seriously outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to protect data stored in the cloud.
With the addition this week of two more Members of Congress to total 218, a majority of the US House of Representatives now supports HR 1852: The Email Privacy Act (EPA), which would require government agents to obtain warrants from a judge in order to force service providers to disclose private data they store in the cloud for their customers.
Now is the time for the full House to move swiftly to pass this common-sense reform that has huge bipartisan support. Please make time on your schedule today to call, fax, or email your Congressional representative and urge action.
With elections around the corner, Members of Congress can show they take their constituents' privacy seriously — and that they can enact meaningful reform — by passing this bill.
In a recent poll taken in seven diverse regions, 84% of voters supported ECPA reform and an overwhelming majority (72-77%) said they were more likely to support a candidate that supports ECPA reform, which factored into last week's high-profile primary upset of Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA).
Effective law enforcement will not be hampered by a warrant requirement. At a recent House hearing, FBI Director James Comey said that amending ECPA to require a warrant "won't have any effect on our practice." He said concerns about the outdated nature of ECPA "make sense to me."
The lone holdout on ECPA reform remains the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which wants new powers to obtain data directly from service providers. The SEC, a civil agency, should not have the same powers as criminal justice agencies. The SEC does not have the power to force its way into private offices to seize paper records from filing cabinets; it should not have the power to force its way into digital filing cabinets.
Here's what others are saying about HR 1852.
Google: "The ongoing campaign to update ECPA reached a significant milestone today. For the first time, a majority of Members in the US House of Representatives have gone on record to support bipartisan legislation (HR 1852) sponsored by Representatives Yoder (R-KS), Graves (R-GA), and Polis (D-CO) that would create a bright-line, warrant-for-content rule for electronic communications."
Politico: "Reps. Ron Desantis and Cedric Richmond signed on to the ECPA-reform measure as the bill's 217th and 218th co-sponsors — meaning a full majority of the House now backs the measure."
Reuters: "A bill to force government agencies to get warrants before they access the email of people under investigation advanced in the US House of Representatives on Wednesday after a majority of lawmakers signed on as co-sponsors."
SIIA: "At a time when there is little agreement in Washington, this stands out as a bipartisan priority to level the playing field for protection of electronic communications."
Chamber of Commerce: "We've witnessed an historic moment in Washington, DC. With 218 co-sponsors of HR 1852, there is now majority support in the House of Representatives for updating digital communications privacy for the 21st Century."
Direct Marketing Association: "The Yoder-Graves-Polis bill gives Congress the rare opportunity to guarantee the same amount of privacy to electronic communications as those offline. DMA urges House leadership to move expeditiously to pass HR 1852 out of the Committee and by the full House."
The Daily Caller: "If passed the bill would update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allows the government to access 180-day old electronic communications without a warrant. Those in favor of amending the act justify the update by citing the Fourth Amendment, which affords similar protection over physical documents, and requires the government to obtain a warrant for examination."
TechDirt: "Earlier this week, the main ECPA reform bill in the House, sponsored by Reps. Kevin Yoder and Jared Polis, hit a new milestone: it currently has 218 co-sponsors, meaning that more than half of the House now has their name on the bill. And yet, the bill is still stalled out, because House leadership has been scared off by the SEC and IRS. Hopefully, the House will finally move forward on this bill."
Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT):"All these numbers mean one thing: If the bill were brought to a vote, it would be guaranteed to pass. The House should now act swiftly to approve the bill. At a time of heightened public concern over privacy, ECPA reform is something Congress can accomplish this year. The math is simple: A majority is in favor of ECPA reform to prohibit the government from accessing email without a warrant. Now, it's time to pass the bill."
Slate: "If the House votes on the bill, it will pass, so now's the time. Twenty-eight years is long enough to wait, right? Especially since the state of digital privacy has changed, well, quite a bit since the '80s."
Internet Association: "Given the resounding support for clean ECPA reform, we urge Chairman Goodlatte, who has long supported this effort, to move swiftly to pass HR 1852 out of the House Judiciary Committee."
ACLU: "The law can finally take a giant leap in catching up with technology. The onus is now on the House and its leadership to explain why this bill isn't on the House floor and on its way to passage. They also should answer why we have yet to update an online privacy law that was passed before the World Wide Web was even invented."
Share wisely, and take care.
DataDirect Networks Aids Alternative Energy Research
To help the US Department of Energy (DoE) reduce dependence on foreign oil and accelerate discoveries to preserve the environment, the Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL), a national scientific user facility located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), has implemented DataDirect Networks' (DDN) high performance block and file storage solutions to provide a storage foundation for ongoing alternative energy research projects.
Over the years, scientific requirements have changed as computational models have grown in size and granularity. Faced with an increased need for more powerful, scalable computing and storage resources to support data-intensive climate modeling and environmental research that was straining its legacy supercomputer platform "Chinook", PNNL engaged in a technology refresh led by supercomputer manufacturer Atipa Technologies, while upgrading to DDNTM high-performance SFA 12K block storage platform and EXAScaler file storage appliance.
Funded by DoE's Office of Biological & Environmental Research, EMSL provides a high performance computing (HPC) capability optimized for molecular-level modeling and simulation through its molecular science computing (MSC) initiative.
More than 300 scientists from academia, industry, and government use the MSC capability annually to drive multiple free energy simulations and structural genomics, which are all processed and accessed through its new state-of-the-art supercomputer "Cascade".
Following a smooth migration to its new Atipa supercomputer and DDN storage system, PNNL's Cascade supercomputer delivers dramatic improvements in compute and storage power, handling up to 3.4 quadrillion calculations per second and 2.7 petabytes of usable storage.
With a faster, more efficient storage platform that delivers up to 75 GB/s, users can run simultaneous climate modeling and chemistry computation codes without worry over compute or storage performance bottlenecks.
TVB Chooses Octoshape to Monetize 2014 FIFA World Cup
TVB.COM, the wholly owned subsidiary of Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), has selected Octoshape's IP-based solution to deliver the 2014 FIFA World Cup coverage across fixed and wireless devices.
TVB.COM has expanded its relationship to include Octoshape's Dynamic Ad Insertion technology to more seamlessly and effectively advertise content, said Octoshape, an industry leader in cloud-based, over-the-top (OTT) stream acceleration and contribution technologies for broadcasters.
TVB.COM is focused on ensuring that its viewers will have a true broadcast-like experience when inserting personalized advertising into the live stream. "FIFA World Cup is one of the most watched sporting events on record," said Kenneth Wong, Chief Operating Officer of TVB.COM.
In addition to providing TVB accelerated stream distribution, the solution will offer the Hong-Kong-based broadcaster transparent distribution capacity expansion into the Microsoft Azure Cloud.
"TVB has been a long-standing and loyal customer," said Michael Koehn Milland, CEO at Octoshape. "Our ad-insertion technology and the flexibility to dynamically expand capacity to cloud operators were key elements of success for TVB. We look forward to supporting their efforts to bring the 2014 FIFA World Cup to all of their users."
Huawei Powers Phoenix TV Cloud Platform Launch
Huawei and broadcaster Phoenix TV have launched Phoenix TV's "2&7" distributed cloud data center platform in Beijing. The project is designed to enable the broadcaster to migrate its global operations to a cloud-based ICT platform.
The initiative, covering Phoenix TV's main centers in Beijing and Hong Kong (the "2" in the "2&7"), as well as its offices in Shanghai, Taipei, London, Paris, Washington DC and Los Angeles (the "7"), is expected to allow the broadcaster to address "omnimedia" as users behaviors change and they consume news and information on multiple screens, in extreme HD and on multiple platforms.
Phoenix TV plans to use its new cloud data center platform to accelerate its content production worldwide away from tape-based production to online, real-time availability.
Phoenix TV has completed its data centers in Beijing, Hong Kong and London.
By year-end 2014, Phoenix TV plans to build and integrate its six remaining regional data centers. The new architecture provided by Huawei is designed to help Phoenix TV logically manage physically dispersed data center resources in a unified manner, enabling Phoenix TV to deliver news on key events from around the world in five minutes.
BitTorrent Server-Less Chat App Allows Easy Sign-Ups
Excerpted from TheNextWeb Report by Emil Protalinski
BitTorrent today released an internal alpha of its server-less chat app. The company says a private alpha launch is still "right around the corner," but it decided to share some details about its approach to privacy as development progresses.
BitTorrent first unveiled its server-less chat app in September 2013. The company promised that it would be private, secure, and free.
Engineers working on the app have found that privacy means different things to different people. Ultimately, BitTorrent has concluded privacy is "the ability to express oneself freely with autonomy and to feel safe doing so. To not worry that the wrong friend will see a message that wasn't intended for them."
Since everyone has different needs, the app will allow users to sign up with an email address or a phone number. Those are both useful if you are importing contacts, but you will also have the option to sign up in "Incognito mode," which requires no such information at all.
Users communicating with a trusted source who prefer their communication to be device-to-device will be able to avoid hops through third-party servers, meaning far less of a chance of anything being intercepted. Decentralization is definitely a key differentiator: most messaging apps today that encrypt their content still decrypt it when it passes through the centralized server.
Yet device-to-device communication will be an option, and not the only delivery method the chat app will offer. In scenarios where your identity needs to be hidden from the person with whom you are communicating, there will be an additional setting for routing communications via a relay server to obscure metadata.
BitTorrent explains how this method will work:
It will function much like a VPN: the IP address will touch the relay server, but no metadata will be collected or stored. The content is encrypted from end-to-end and never exposed to a third party.
Furthermore, regardless of how the messages are sent, BitTorrent's chat app will always use its distributed network to minimize, and in many cases eliminate, the metadata that is created by other messaging solutions. If it works as promised, the app will likely be a hit.
Niche Providers Make a Splash in Cloud Computing Market
Excerpted from TechTarget Report by Paul Korzeniowski
Like the tired analogy, the cloud market is filled with big fish in a small -- but growing -- pond. Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft have made a splash in the cloud market and get most of the attention. However, under the surface there is another group of providers -- vertical market specialists that are also making waves.
"With cloud gaining acceptance, we are seeing a number of new solutions emerge that are geared to meeting the needs of specific companies," said Jillian Mirandi, Senior Analyst at Technology Business Research.
These niche cloud vendors are found in a number of industries, including in particular healthcare and financial services, where anything as a service (XaaS) options are trying to meet specific industry demands.
The potential for these vendors is great. Heavily regulated industries have specific issues that major cloud vendors often cannot tailor their offerings to. Smaller, vertical-specific cloud providers are getting the chance to make waves in these industries.
The number of these selections is expected to increase. In some cases, the niche suppliers build the services themselves from the ground up. In other cases, third parties, such as Veeva, take horizontal platforms (in this case, Salesforce.com) and tailor them to specific niches.
Salesforce.com estimates that approximately one-quarter of the new applications added to its AppExchange marketplace in 2013 had a vertical market focus. So, regardless of the means taken, small and medium size businesses (SMBs_ and enterprises with specific needs can expect to have more cloud options in the future.
The healthcare vertical has highly regulated and very specific needs. Some cloud service providers have stepped up to pinpoint the vertical's must-haves -- which the big three cloud providers struggle to do. Rather than offering a wide variety of services that would encompass any company's needs, the providers such as the ones below offer tailored services to meet just the needs of healthcare. It should come as no surprise that many of the offerings were built by industry veterans themselves.
In 1997, Jonathan Bush and Todd Park, two doctors running a birthing center, founded software company Athenahealth to streamline the healthcare industry's paper and payment processes via the cloud. Athenahealth offers cloud-based athenaClinicals, an electronic medical record management system; athenaCollector, an administrative application for medical billing; and athenaCommunicator, a doctor-to-patient information exchange system.
Health Catalyst was also formed by a group of healthcare industry veterans who built data analytics services for the industry. Understanding the issues that arise with highly regulated verticals, Health Catalyst has a plan that focuses on the governance issues that may arise with storing confidential information in the cloud.
Operating since 2009, CareCloud offers HIPAA-compliant cloud storage, so patient records can be stored safely in the cloud. The service includes electronic health records, so physicians can use the cloud to access patient information on demand.
Like healthcare, the financial industry is burdened with compliance, security and governance regulations. Wall Street firms and even smaller finance companies can be hesitant to move to the cloud despite its many benefits because of these regulations and a concern about losing control over the sensitive data. Similarly to the healthcare vertical, industry pros in finance have stepped up to offer finance-specific cloud services that understand the detailed needs of those in the industry, and they have found success competing with the major cloud providers across the globe.
For example, the Navatar Group partnered with Salesforce and developed cloud CRM and content management for capital markets, asset management firms and banks in more than 30 countries. The group was founded by Deloitte Consulting veterans, who aimed to allow finance companies to access the financial and efficiency benefits of cloud computing.
Though they may not fall under the compliance and security standards of highly regulated industries, other specific verticals are finding that cloud services tailored to their needs are more effective than major cloud providers' all-encompassing services. Companies in the retail, hospitality and other sectors are finding more options for niche cloud providers.
For example, Irvine, CA based The Retail Equation focuses on providing retail-specific cloud services, including retail transaction optimization services and its Verify Return Authorization cloud service, which uses statistical modeling and analytics to detect fraudulent and abusive behavior when returns are processed.
While the various vertical cloud computing market services can be helpful, they come with some potential downsides. Horizontal suppliers, such as Amazon Web Services, are able to drive costs down by offering generic services to corporations in many industries. The niche suppliers lack such volume, so their services tend to be higher priced than the services of the better-known cloud companies.
The small fish are also swimming among large sharks. Long term, they could either be swallowed up or put out of business by the bigger players. So, enterprises assume an element of risk when opting for the specialized services.
Channel Leaders List Top Hospitality Trends
Excerpted from Business Solutions Report by Trisha Leon
The hospitality industry is experiencing growth as the nation shows signs of economic recovery. Movement into the "third platform" with technology adoption including mobile, cloud computing, and Big Data, is part of this growth, and as a result there are increasing opportunities in the hospitality market for value-added resellers (VARs) and managed service providers (MSPs).
In addition to their responses to our Business Solutions Partner Program Insider 2014, industry leaders had this to say when asked which are the most significant opportunities and trends in hospitality:
Adnon Dow, Vice President of Global Mobility Solutions for SYNNEX Corporation, says, "The hospitality industry is increasingly finding more value in IT — from helping internal operations run more smoothly to providing convenience for guests. One of the biggest opportunities moving forward lies in infrastructure. Hotels are shifting to a model where data is collected via tablets — no more walking the hotel floor to relay information to management or the front desk."
He points out hotel management staff immediately know when a room is ready and guests are able to check-in, and in hotel restaurants, orders are sent to the kitchen via mobile devices and tables are turned over at a faster rate.
There is also great opportunity when you consider the number of business travelers constantly on the road. Despite the latest innovations in virtual meeting spaces, the Global Business Travel Association predicts a 7.2 percent increase in business travel spending in 2014.
"Each hotel room is considered an office for these travelers, and it's becoming an industry-wide standard for rooms to be equipped with everything they need to operate business as usual," says Dow.
Andre Nataf, Senior Business Development Manager at Digital Dining, says, "The biggest trends have to do with the mobile hybrid technology that allows restaurants to use tablet terminals as both fixed and mobile point-of-sale (POS) stations. The reliability and peripheral choice combined with their availability on feature rich mature products has given restaurants a way to better customer service and increase top line sales. This is becoming a game changer and now can no longer be discounted, it you are competing without mobility you are not winning right now."
Jared Isaacman, CEO of Harbortouch, says, "As new technologies emerge in the hospitality industry, particularly in the POS space, restaurant owners are looking to take advantage of these trends. Many restaurateurs have become increasingly interested in new features such as cloud-based reporting and POS management, integrated online ordering and reservations, mobile integration and advanced loyalty functions. By offering value-added technology to your customers, you can differentiate your offering and also increase customer retention."
Joan Morales, Director of Channel Marketing at Axcient, says, "Key trends we see in hospitality are related to mobile devices, service automation, remote access, and data protection. As more guests carry tablets and smartphones, providing services and an experience tailored for those devices will become increasingly important as a point of differentiation, allowing guests to register, check-in, check-out, and interact with the venue's multiple amenities and offerings."
"This will require a thorough planning and coordination of technology and services executives to agree on how to deliver that experience. Service automation is becoming a standard offering that is required for today's busy travelers to provide check-in/check-out and other amenities. Remote access infrastructure to provide Wi-Fi coverage is on the rise as guests request an 'always-on' experience. With the amount of data being gathered by hospitality companies on guests transactions, preferences, and services the need for data protection becomes even more pressing."
Terry Cruikshank, Senior Marketing Manager, industry marketing, OKI Data Americas, says, "Over the past few years, the restaurant hospitality industry is increasingly becoming mobile. Daily procedures now involve more electronic processes and mobile technologies such as smartphone apps and mobile websites. Finding solutions that streamline procedures like sending invoices or human resource documents to headquarters via scan-to-folder with multifunction devices, fleet management tools that track device status, and control printing related costs across all locations are important."
VARs and MSPs can provide services and solutions that help companies — by improving their infrastructure; selecting the right POS system; implementing management and automation software, integrating online ordering, reservations, and loyalty functions; and deploying mobile devices — and ultimately enhancing their clients' ability to provide excellent customer service.
Financial Services and Cloud Work Together
Excerpted from Datamation Report by David Linthicum
IT experts in financial services have long claimed that finance would never move to the cloud because of security concerns, as well as increased regulatory pressures that would result from such a move. Those opinions appear to be changing, at least according to Ovum research.
"The capital markets are set to increase investment in cloud services, continuing the trend of technology adoption in the industry, according to Ovum. New research from the global analysts indicates that due to improvements in cloud security and a wider variety of applications, investment in cloud, by both the buy side and the sell side, is set for further growth. The research highlights that although the capital markets aren't fully integrated with the cloud, this situation is set to change in the coming years."
Cloud services adoption in the capital markets has increased in the last few years. In the future, there will be an even faster uptake of cloud services. The process of migrating services to the cloud is often driven by cost constraints. Now there is also the need to prepare a platform for the sector's future evolution.
Currently, the buy side has more integration with cloud services. Order management systems (OMS) increasingly exist as hosted and managed services delivered by third parties, rather than in-house applications, although they are not yet wholly cloud services. Meanwhile, portfolio management systems (PMS) are now commonly hosted solely in the cloud, at least according to Ovum.
However, the use of cloud-based resources for the world of financial services should be carefully considered, in light of the core strategic objectives of the organization. This includes the existing and future business processes, the data management and data analytics strategy, as well as the regulatory and privacy issues that most firms must deal with on an international level.
Many of the benefits of cloud computing are well known. You can read about elasticity, scalability, and the ability to align usage to costs in most of the technology and business press on a daily basis. However, many reports fail to mention hidden and more valuable benefits. Here are a few that are less understood, which include benefits that are typically more important to the financial sectors:
Agility. Most companies understand that cloud computing provides better agility for businesses. However, many companies don't factor this into their ROI thinking when it comes to cloud computing. Agility through the use of cloud computing comes via the ability to move quickly into new markets, adapt core business processes around new business opportunities in a timely manner, and/or grow financial services companies through acquisition.
Avoid procurement roadblocks. When building systems in the world of financial services, you have to deal with budgetary issues to buy hardware, software, and even obtain space in the datacenter. Cloud computing allows you to wire around those issues and go directly to the provider for all the infrastructure resources required to operate a system.
Opportunity to improve. In many cases, the move to cloud computing means a system migration from one platform to another. Take the time to improve the code and database as the application moves to the cloud. Most migrations to cloud platforms will at least drive some platform-specific changes anyway. This is a common benefit for financial services firms that move to cloud computing.
Better security. There is a myth that public and private clouds are a hacker's dream, and that we should not move to the cloud due to security vulnerabilities. The reality is that, if financial services firms do just a bit of planning, most public or private cloud computing systems should provide better security than your applications and data currently enjoy. At the same time you upgrade security, you can install a data and service governance approach and system that will provide better managed and controlled IT infrastructure.
Regulated financial firms that spend any substantial time thinking about cloud computing implementation issues quickly recognize several key concerns that must be addressed before cloud computing becomes a viable solution. These concerns include: data privacy, data and systems security, business continuity and contingency planning, liability and risk management.
Overall, financial regulatory agencies have indicated that they will apply the same regulatory requirements and standards to cloud computing activities that apply to IT outsourcing activities in general. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) issued a joint interagency statement (Cloud Statement) on the use of outsourced cloud computing services by financial institutions, and the key risks associated with such services. "The statement discusses key risk considerations associated with outsourced cloud computing activities and identifies applicable risk mitigation considerations contained in the various booklets that comprise the FFIEC IT Examination Handbook."
Moreover, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) have been detailed about their expectations when a regulated banking organization chooses to outsource technology services to third-parties such as cloud providers. Federal securities regulators and most self-regulatory agencies have also issued guidance for regulated securities firms that is substantively similar, albeit less detailed. However, securities regulators have limited the authority of securities firms to outsource functions and services that would require registration or qualification of the cloud provider under the Federal Securities Laws.
In general, the banking agencies' major expectations of IT outsourcing activities include the following core elements: effective oversight and risk management of IT outsourcing arrangements, risk assessment and requirements, substantiated service provider selection, effective contract issues, and ongoing monitoring.
The use of cloud-based resources is still new for most financial services firms. However, the issues outlined in this article make the use of cloud-based resources in the financial services sector the clear direction for the future. Key business drivers include cost savings, time-to-market advantages, and the ability to change IT quickly around new business requirements.
While the data security and regulatory issues seemed like deal breakers just a few years ago, most firms have found them much easier to deal with than anticipated, and regulatory agencies are quickly adapting around the use of public cloud-based platforms. Indeed, many firms report more secure and more compliant systems through the use of public clouds, and this will only improve over time.
For now, the use of cloud computing in the financial services vertical seems like a forgone conclusion.
More Than 4-out-of-5 Healthcare Providers Use Cloud
Excerpted from CloudWedge Report by Natalie Lerner
Healthcare IT has been at the tip of the spear when it comes to cloud innovation. A study published by HIMSS Analytics confirms this trend. The healthcare focused analytics firm queried 150 hospital CIOs in efforts to gather data for this survey entitled: 2014 HIMSS Analytics Cloud Survey.
The 31 page report highlights the importance of cloud computing within the healthcare IT world. Due to data handling restrictions put in place by federal regulations such as HIPAA, healthcare IT departments were some of the earliest adopters of private and hybrid cloud. The report provides readers with insights into the role that cloud plays within the healthcare IT world. For example, the report states that 86% of respondents mentioned that they implement SaaS within their environments. Another 79.3% of respondents mentioned that they have a cloud based Disaster Recovery as a Service solution in place.
Unsurprisingly, when the respondents were asked about cloud service providers, the most important factors surrounding cloud service providers (CSPs) are willingness to enter into operating agreements, security measures that are in place, and compliance issues. About 2 of 3 respondents mentioned that business agreements were important in evaluating CSPs. 63.7% of respondents say that the internal and external security of the cloud were top factors and 60.5% of respondents mentioned that legal compliance was at the top of their cloud priority lists.
This report gives outsiders a look at the advances cloud has made within this specific technical niche. Healthcare IT continues to be one of the top cloud employers throughout the technical world and the data shown in this report confirms the direction of the industry. Kyle Murphy, PhD helped author this report and in a separate blog post on EHRIntelligence, he comments on cloud by saying, "The future of cloud services is positive, especially among those health care organizations that already use cloud services."
Murphy also went on to say, "Nearly all of the health care organizations presently using cloud services reported plans to expand use of cloud services in the future."
OnLive Is Giving Enterprise Cloud Services One More Try
Excerpted from Engadget Report by Sean Buckley
Stop us if this sounds familiar: after successfully launching a new videogame service, a growing cloud computing firm looks to the business sector to expand its customer base. Oh, you've heard this one?
That's because OnLive is retracing its steps, following up its CloudLift gaming service (announced back in March) with an enterprise-focused counterpart. Onlive's CloudLift Enterprise is built on the same promise as its older OnLive Desktop service: your work on any device at any time — but now it's offering its customers a bit more than a virtualized desktop.
Specifically, CloudLift enterprise is designed for graphic intensive applications -- things like drone piloting setups, military training simulators or applications for architecture and design. OnLive says it can deliver these applications to virtually any smartphone, tablet or laptop on any operating system over fairly slow connections, as low as 2Mbps.
OnLive told us that despite the potential growth the enterprise service represents, it's not designed to replace any business from its gaming division -- in fact, the company says it's well pleased with much CloudLift gaming has grown over the past few months.
"The game service will continue to be a driving force for the company," Onlive Executive chairman Mark Jung told us, explaining that its enterprise service leverages the same tech that drives its gaming services. "The development work that went into our game platform is the core technology at the center of the Enterprise PaaS solution."
Cloud Security Is Often an Excuse to Avoid Change
Excerpted from Light Reading Report by Mitch Wagner
While security fears about cloud computing are legitimate, they also serve as an excuse to avoid change, according to John Considine, CTO, Verizon Terremark. Security is a concern for enterprises contemplating the cloud, and some of that is valid, Considine said.
"But it's also being used very broadly as a reason not to do something," he said. "I have a lot of challenges when people say, 'Let me find all the reasons I can't do something.' "
Some enterprises fear the cloud is dangerous and should be avoided. And yet even the biggest banks, airlines, and retail operations have been doing IT hosting, managed services, and co-location for years. "Now that it's cloud, somehow it's a little more scary," Considine said.
Considine tries to change the conversation from security to risks. To protect physical security, Verizon Communications' data centers are surrounded by berms, with servers in cages watched over by armed guards, "so you're not worried about someone walking in there."
As for cyber intrusion, Verizon employs security software, certified staff, penetration testing, and other counter-measures.
Users are worried about losing control. But businesses are already using cloud for services such as document sharing, email, and CRM. "A lot of this stuff is already out there and you've actually built in processes and controls to manage it." Verizon provides security services, both by itself and with partners, to help customers secure data in the cloud better than they can on their own.
Enterprise IT faces a Catch-22 when it comes to innovation. On the one hand, IT is tasked with operations, which requires avoiding change to reduce risk, Considine told us. Email outages and other problems start people screaming and prove disastrous. "The whole company grinds to a halt, you lose millions of dollars a minute." So IT is best playing it safe.
On the other hand, with the consumerization of IT and other trends, IT is required to foster innovation and work faster, according to Considine.
The cloud can break the Catch-22 by solving connectivity and security issues, leaving space for IT to innovate, he said.
In the past, business units went around IT to deploy the cloud, a process called "shadow IT," Considine said. That continues to be done. "But the IT departments are now heavily involved in cloud computing. An easy way to gauge that is to look at how much hybrid cloud computing has moved to the forefront of the discussion."
Hybrid clouds started by combining on-premises resources with cloud applications. But it's more than that now, noted Considine. It's evolved to mean moving the data center to the cloud, and then multiple data centers in multiple clouds, including Salesforce.com and email providers. The cloud now combines co-location, managed services, and security.
As for Verizon's role: "We don't want to be necessarily the broker. We don't want to be the person who's somehow integrating all these things and providing the single pane of glass." Many companies are competing for that role. Instead, Verizon provides connectivity, including private networks, the Verizon MPLS network, and Secure Cloud Interconnect, connecting enterprise companies' data centers and offices with the Verizon cloud and other cloud providers, as well as managed services.
Verizon can also shield enterprises from technology and operational details.
What's next? "Enterprise for real," Considine said. The public cloud market is $10 billion to $15 billion, led by companies like Amazon. But $3.4 trillion was spent on IT in 2014. "What I would suggest is that we're at the very, very beginning of what's happening. We are working very hard to make it possible to run virtually anything in the cloud."
Apple Has Ceded the Cloud to Google, and Here's Why
Excerpted from Generator Research Report by Andrew Sheehy
About 12 months ago a crack opened up in the technology market landscape, with Apple on one side and Google on the other. As the year progressed, and as the two companies made a stream of product announcements, the crack widened.
Today, that initial crack has become a chasm.
On one side of the chasm Google is using its mastery of web software, massive data, and a growing competence in machine intelligence to create a new layer of value-added web services that will sit above those we use today.
On the other side is Apple which wants to become the world's leading premium consumer electronics brand: the recent acquisition of Beats Electronics, last week's announcement of plans to enter the healthcare and smart home markets, several high profile recent hires from the luxury goods sector, and the company's' hardware-centric revenue model demonstrates that Apple has a very different vision of the future to Google.
There are still, of course, some overlaps - Apple has Siri, which is a cloud-based service that uses machine learning. Apple also has Apple Maps and iCloud, both of which the company continues to develop and let's not forget that a broad and growing range of digital content, software and services elevate the company's hardware from merely excellent to indispensable, at least for many of Apple's 900 million hardware customers.
Meanwhile, Google still has a foot in the hardware space, as is clear from products like Glass, Chromebook, Nexus and Chromecast and ventures in the robotics and automotive fields.
But when viewed from a high level the difference between these two companies is far greater than what they have in common: but not only it is clear that Google and Apple are positioned on opposite sides of a chasm, they are working on very different battle plans.
It remains to be seen whether Apple's plan - which is based on developing premium-priced electronics and supporting services will ultimately be more effective than Google's plan - which is based on developing the very deep-level network intelligence that will take web services to a completely new level.
Click here for a chart that identifies just how different Google and Apple are.
Google and Apple now occupy two different parts of the market landscape which are so different and the terrain in each is so challenging that neither company can dominate both at the same time.
To continue the analogy, if Google has mastered desert warfare then Apple is unmatched when it comes to jungle warfare: the desert lies on one side of the chasm while the jungle is on the other.
Apple knows it cannot confront Google in the cloud and so it has decided to accelerate the growth of its consumer electronics businesses, where the main competition is coming from Samsung, LG and Huawei.
Apple has a far better chance of winning a battle with Samsung, LG and Huawei than it would if it decided to cross the chasm to take on Google on Google's terms, which I think would be a suicide mission.
To be clear, I'm not saying that Apple will withdraw from the cloud altogether, but its use of the cloud will be to enhance its own hardware products and ecosystems while minimizing its dependence of Google, where it can.
Why do I say that Apple has ceded the cloud to Google?
There is absolutely no way that Apple is going to develop deep-level search technologies. Nor is the company busy assembling the massive-scale data assets that are so important to Google's advertising business. As these data assets become richer and larger in scale, Google will increasingly need machine intelligence to make sense of it all — in order to provide more value to users and to advertisers.
Because Apple is not under anywhere near as much commercial pressure to develop technologies like these it has, in effect, ceded the cloud to Google.
As far as Google is concerned, there was no decision to make: there is absolutely no way that Google has what it takes to compete with Apple in the consumer electronics sector: Apple is simply in a different class: products like Chromecast, Google TV and Nexus are little more than toys compared with what Apple has delivered.
And so there we have it: two of the world's most valuable companies which are each staking their claim in two very different parts of the market: Apple wants to own the premium-priced consumer electronics market while Google is on a mission to own the cloud.
When it comes to revenue and market capitalization, Apple is presently comfortably ahead of Google:
But these two companies will be around for decades to come, and over that time period, a lot can change.
Looking into the far future I think Google has the best commercial prospects.
The reason is that the current trajectory of Google's software engineering efforts is heading towards machine consciousness which will change the world to an extent that will transcend all previous human inventions.
(I'd say many companies, including Google, already have achieved machine learning and machine intelligence and so the next stage is machine consciousness).
While Apple will continue to enjoy harvesting incremental revenues as it enters new consumer electronics markets with its branded, premium-priced strategy, Google is I'd say playing a long game and if the company can first achieve and then commercialize machine consciousness then everything will change.
As an analogy, the Internet is clearly having a profound effect on the structure and operation of the media and content industries. The Internet is also having a major impact on other industrial sectors, such as education, retail and communications and on government and defense as well.
But the scale of change that would result from machine consciousness would be far, far greater than what the Internet has catalyzed.
And so while Apple is currently way out in front when it comes to revenues and market capitalization, Google's strategic direction and R&D programs might at some point give birth to a technological beast that will recast the entire economy.
Coming Events of Interest
Silicon Valley Innovation Summit — July 29th-30th in Mountain View, CA.AlwaysOn's 12th annual SVIS is a two-day executive gathering that highlights the significant economic, political, and commercial trends affecting the global technology industries. SVIS features the most innovative companies, eminent technologists, influential investors, and journalists in keynote presentations, panel debates, and private company CEO showcases.
International Conference on Internet and Distributed Computing Systems — September 22nd in Calabria, Italy. IDCS 2014 conference is the sixth in its series to promote research in diverse fields related to Internet and distributed computing systems. The emergence of web as a ubiquitous platform for innovations has laid the foundation for the rapid growth of the Internet.
CLOUD DEVELOPERS SUMMIT & EXPO 2014 — October 1st-2nd in Austin, TX. CDSE:2014 will feature co-located instructional workshops and conference sessions on six tracks facilitated by more than one-hundred industry leading speakers and world-class technical trainers.
International Conference on Cloud Computing Research & Innovation — October 29th-30th in Singapore. ICCRI:2014 covers a wide range of research interests and innovative applications in cloud computing and related topics. The unique mix of R&D, end-user, and industry audience members promises interesting discussion, networking, and business opportunities in translational research & development.
PDCAT 2014 — December 9th-11th in Hong Kong. The 16th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies (PDCAT 2014) is a major forum for scientists, engineers, and practitioners throughout the world to present their latest research, results, ideas, developments and applications in all areas of parallel and distributed computing.
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