Volume LIII, Issue 10

Posted on by Marty Lafferty

In This Issue

Cloud, Mobility, Big Data, and Speed

Excerpted from CloudTech Report by Ian Mayse

Successful businesses require the ability to change and increasingly to adapt quickly, to be agile to new approaches and technologies and be flexible to the needs of the business and customers.

We are at the wake of monumental change and how businesses service and engage with the customer and employee alike are under upward pressure from users and customers who are driving a higher expectation on their provider where brand loyalty can wane quicker than ever before.

Of the Fortune 500 firms in 1955, come 2015 89% of the list has changed, having either gone bankrupt, merged, or still existing but have fallen from the Fortune 500.

The Fortune 500 is fast becoming the Digital 500 with new world entrants fast displacing the legacy firms.

Unicorns like Salesforce, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Uber and the like are showing how business models are innovating and enabling disruption of the status quo more quickly than we have ever seen before.

In July 2015, six companies accounted for 53% of the Nasdaq’s $664 billion market value — Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix… Read More

NetApp’s New CEO Pushes Ahead with Data Fabric Strategy

Excerpted from ZDNet Report by Aimee Chanthadavong

It was just over eight weeks ago that NetApp appointed its Executive Vice President of Product Operations, George Kurian, to the top job following the departure of Tom Georgens from the Chief Executive Officer role.

The pressure now falls on Kurian to restore growth to the company, which hasn’t delivered revenue growth in the last six quarters, and profits have suffered.

Kurian reassured ZDNet that as the company’s portfolio undergoes a transition, earning results such as those previously reported are expected, but he remains optimistic that all the changes will deliver positive results — eventually.

“I would say all IT providers are grappling with the cloud. The implication of delivering IT is not just on us, but it’s certainly something everybody is dealing with, and you’ll see us making progress on that front,” he said.

In October last year, the company launched the cloud version of its ONTAP storage operating system as a way to simplify the movement of data from public to private clouds.

The launch was part of a larger push the company has been making with its Data Fabric strategy… Read More

DRM Could Be Making a Comeback in the Enterprise

Excerpted from CSO Report by Maria Korolov

Digital rights management (DRM) might be coming back to the enterprise, experts say, as long as usability issues don’t get in the way.

You might remember the technology from a decade or so ago.

Companies were worried about employees accidentally sending sensitive files to the wrong recipients — or to the right recipients, who then shared them with others without permission.

But it turned out that enterprises had much bigger security issues to worry about.

Employees or partners accidentally sending a document to the wrong person accounted for less than 1 percent of all security incidents, according to the most recent Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report.

Partners deliberately stealing data accounted for about half of 1 percent of incidents.

Meanwhile, according to a recent report from Frost & Sullivan, eDRM systems have historically been siloed by their abilities to handle different file formats, were difficult to use, and expensive to deploy and customize… Read More

Report from DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty

Click Here for Video

Of course the cloud means business, right?

But just like every new trend in business, it takes a while for vendors to solidify their services, for partners to understand how to sell those services, and for end-users to actually demand the services.

For the cloud, that time is now.

Partners can expand what they sell while delighting end-users by offering services they know are affordable, rock solid, and business-ready.

Cloud Partners 2015 will show you how to enable scale, impact, and action based on the services you deliver through your cloud practice.

But what does that really mean?

Scale, impact, and action exemplify how the cloud means business in today’s market.

That’s why you’ll see these three action words as key themes throughout the event.

Keynote speakers, educational programming, the show floor, and networking events will all touch on how scale, impact, and action relate to the cloud.

Cloud-based solutions enable an unprecedented opportunity to provide services that scale with the needs of your customers — growing and shrinking as needed.

The impact roadmap of new and existing cloud solutions is the best way to determine where and how they should be applied to your cloud practice.

Customers are demanding action — they want to understand alternatives to on-premise solutions and how these can affect their operational rather than capital budgets.

Cloud Partners 2015 is your chance to learn strategic approaches to meet and satisfy customer demand for cloud solutions.

Join us in Boston, MA from September 16th through 18th for a great event. Share wisely, and take care.

NetApp ONTAP Now Works with Docker

Excerpted from ClusterHQ Report by Michael Ferranti

Today, we are very excited to announce that NetApp has joined the ClusterHQ storage partner network, enabling its popular storage system clustered Data ONTAP to work as the storage backend for Flocker.

Flocker gives operations teams the tools they need to manage stateful micro-services built using Docker containers. When using containers natively, a container’s data does not move with it when the container moves to a new server.

Used alongside tools like the Docker Engine, Docker Swarm or Apache Mesos, or by itself, Flocker enables containers and data to move together between hosts in a cluster, an operational requirement for running stateful services like databases in containers.

As one of the undisputed leaders in enterprise storage, adding NetApp support to Flocker is a big deal because it greatly expands the number of applications that can be containerized.

We’re very excited to have NetApp join the ClusterHQ storage partner network. We asked our friends at NetApp to tell our readers a little bit about their solution. Here is what they said:

NetApp clustered Data ONTAP provides enterprise grade, unified scale-out storage for all applications… Read More

Q&A Part I: Hughes Hubbard’s Elizabeth Prewitt

Excerpted from Global Competition Review Report by Yasmine Harik

GCR caught up last week with former Department of Justice (DoJ) standout and current Hughes Hubbard & Reed partner Elizabeth Prewitt.

A longtime antitrust enthusiast, Prewitt spent 16 years at the DoJ antitrust division and served as Assistant Chief of its Manhattan office before entering private practice.

Prewitt was on the front lines of the DoJ’s Libor and Forex investigations, and later took her talents to Brussels for a brief stint at DG Comp.

Q. As somebody who was pivotal to the DoJ’s investigation of Libor and Forex manipulation by the world’s largest banks, what is your reaction to how those settlements have unfolded?

A.While I cannot comment on those matters specifically given my role at Justice, I can add to the chorus of commentators observing that the landscape for financial institutions in terms of antitrust risk has changed fundamentally.

The antitrust division’s criminal enforcement program moved into the financial industry starting with the municipal bond investigation… Read More

Verimatrix Broadens Reach in Global Revenue Security

Excerpted from Sys-Con Media Report

Verimatrix, the specialist in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-network, multi-screen digital TV services around the globe, will illustrate its broad reach and enhanced value of a globally interconnected revenue security platform at IBC 2015, September 11th—14th, 2015 at the RAI Convention Center.

During the event, the company will showcase its innovative Verspective Intelligence Center, a cloud-based engine for system deployment, management, monitoring and analytics that optimizes solution performance and reduces operational expenses, introduce the new Verspective Analytics service, and unveil new strategic partnerships with leading video analytics solution providers.

At its booth, Verimatrix will also highlight how flexible software-centric security architectures can help progressive operators simplify the realities of a complex, multi-network, multi-device, multi-DRM environment.

The company’s experts will illustrate how detailed operations and subscriber behavior data can help pay-TV operators improve the quality of experience for their customers. Several demonstrations support these efforts, including:

Verspective Analytics – a new suite of services that leverages the inherent power in globally interconnected instances of VCAS… Read More

Mobile Devices Biggest Cybersecurity Threat to Enterprise

Excerpted from Network World Report by Zeus Kerravala

Earlier this month, Check Point Software released its 2015 security report which found that mobile devices have become the biggest threat for today’s enterprises.

Cybersecurity has so many facets that it’s very challenging for IT departments to understand where to focus their energy, so surveys like this help.

The survey revealed something that I think many businesses have turned a bit of a blind eye to, and that’s the impact of mobile devices, primarily due to the wide acceptance of bring-your-own-device (BYOD).

The last Network Purchase Intention Study by ZK Research showed that 82% of businesses now have some kind of BYOD plan in place.

Even heavily regulated industries like healthcare and financial services are putting BYOD programs in place because of pressure from the lines of business.

Years ago, CEOs and managers didn’t want consumer devices in the workplace as they were considered a distraction… Read More

Have Russia and China Signed Cyber-Nonaggression Pact?

Excerpted from The Diplomat Report by Elaine Korzak

On May 8, 2015, the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China signed a bilateral agreement on cooperation in the field of international information security.

The treaty, which some have dubbed a nonaggression pact for cyber-space, details cooperative measures both governments pledge to undertake, including exchange of information and increased scientific and academic cooperation.

With this, Russia and China continue to advance their vision of “information security,” a view of security concerns in cyberspace that is markedly different from Western approaches of cybersecurity.

Many observers have characterized the agreement as a largely political move at a time of heightened tensions with the United States and Europe.

The alignment of Russia and China is seen as a response to growing Western pressure. Accordingly, Russia’s pivot to the East follows Western sanctions over its actions in Ukraine.

However, a closer look reveals that the agreement follows a longstanding series of diplomatic initiatives launched by both countries… Read More

How Africa Can Benefit from the Data Revolution

Excerpted from The Guardian Report by Neil Lawrence

The UN has estimated that across the world more people have access to mobile phones than to toilets.

It is of course distressing to imagine what this means for many people’s exposure to disease and access to clean water, but the choice of mobile phone for the comparative statistic actually offers a great deal of hope.

The mobile phone is part of a phenomenon where a new infrastructure is emerging, one that could bring the economic changes that enable those toilets to be built.

Our modern infrastructure is based on information.

Since the 1950s, investment in data storage and distribution by companies and countries has been massive.

Historically, data was centralized a single database.

Perhaps one for representing the health of a nation, and another database for monitoring social security.

However, the advent of the Internet is showing that many of our existing data systems are no longer fit for purpose… Read More

DISA Best Practices Guide for Commercial Cloud Buyers

Excerpted from Federal News Radio Report by Jared Serbu

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is taking an interesting approach as it transitions from its former role as the sole broker for the DoD commercial cloud market and into something more like a cloud sherpa for the rest of the military.

A few days ago, DISA released what it termed a best practices guide for DoD cloud mission owners.

Its appearance on the agency’s information assurance website is notable in that it’s a serious departure from the prescriptive security-related documents usually published there, a fact reinforced by the big red letters and bold fonts in the first few pages of the guide emphasizing that its content is NOT to be interpreted as official DoD policy, mentions of particular vendors are not endorsements of their services, etc.

The document is partially a Cloud 101 introduction for potential DoD buyers who haven’t seriously contemplated commercial cloud and partially a compilation of the lessons learned by other DoD IT officials who’ve actually migrated some of their systems to commercial cloud services.

Most of the technical details are well beyond the scope of the Reporter’s Notebook, but by way of high-level examples, DISA describes strategies to allocate .mil IP addresses to IT systems operating in commercial cloud environments… Read More

Google Brings Container Engine to Market

Excerpted from CIO Today Report by Jeff Cozza

After nine months in preview, Google has finally rolled out a commercial release of its container management service.

Called the Google Container Engine, the new service aims to provide enterprise clients with the ability to run their most complex workloads in the cloud.

Containers are a new type of virtualization technology that aim to streamline the process of running workloads in the cloud by allowing multiple isolated user-space instances.

Each instance, or container, appears to have all the characteristics of a normal server from the perspective of the end users.

The technique provides better security and helps limit the impact of one container’s activities on other containers.

Many applications take advantage of multiple containers.

A web application, for example, might have separate containers for its web server, cache, and database.

Google Container Engine is designed to manage Docker containers, a type of server virtualization designed for application deployment… Read More

Intel to Invest Heavily in Cloud-Computing Software

Excerpted from Economic Times Report by Quentin Hardyaug

Intel, the world’s biggest maker of computer chips, has seen its future.

There may not be room for some of Intel’s old friends in it. “A new world is coming, and it is inevitable,” said Diane Bryant, who runs Intel’s business in chips for industrial-size computing centers.

“Everyone has to act differently.” Intel’s venture arm is expected to announce on Monday that it will put $100 million toward software that is used in cloud computing, an increasingly popular method for making bigger and more efficient computing systems.

Intel will lead a $75 million equity investment in Mirantis, a little-known start-up specializing in open-source cloud software, and will spend another $25 million on bolstering its own resources for working with Mirantis-type products, according to several people familiar with the deal.

They declined to be identified in order to maintain relations with Intel and other companies.

Intel was part of a $10 million investment round in the company in 2013 and last year joined another group of Mirantis investors… Read More

Should You Follow Netflix to the Public Cloud?

Excerpted from Tech Republic Report by Nick Heath

Online video streaming service Netflix will complete its long journey to the public cloud this summer when it shuts down its final in-house data center.

When the data center closes, the hugely popular video on demand portal will rely entirely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure.

But just how feasible is it for other businesses to follow suit and move wholesale to the public cloud, and does such a step make sense for most firms?

Any company thinking of following Netflix should consider that the company is something of an anomaly.

“Netflix is not like any other company. They are what I would call typically a single application company, so they have one application which needs to scale enormously,” said Gregor Petri, Research VP and cloud computing specialist at analyst house Gartner.

“It’s an application that at some points of the day has hardly any users and at others has many, many millions of users… Read More

Why Cloud MSPs Are Software Companies

Excerpted from CloudTech Report by Jason Deck

When your infrastructure is code, the art of developing great software applications and building great infrastructure systems start to look similar.

Many of the best practices of software development — continuous integration, versioning, integration testing — are now the best practices of systems engineers.

In enterprises that have aggressively virtualized data centers or moved to the public cloud, servers, switches, and hypervisors are now strings and brackets in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).

The scripts that spin up a server (instance) or configure a network can be standardized, modified over time, and reused.

These scripts are essentially software applications that build infrastructure and are maintained much like a piece of software.

They are versioned in GitHub and engineers patch the scripts or containers, not the hardware, and test those scripts again and again on multiple projects until they are perfected.

Cloud managed service providers (MSPs) build up a library of automation scripts over time, but it is not a plug and play system… Read More

What Will the 2020 Data Center Look Like?

Excerpted from IT Brief Report by Shannon Williams

Business must ensure their data centers are future-proofed.

That’s the word from CenturyLink, which says new technology and trends such as Big Data, mobile devices, and the cloud are changing the way business is done.

“At CenturyLink, we think it’s possible to have foresight with the same amount of clarity that reflection provides so that businesses can plan their data centers for tomorrow,” says Stuart Mills, Regional Director, ANZ, CenturyLink.

“That’s why we’re making predictions about what the 2020 data center will look like.”

Mills says CenturyLink has made five predictions for the 2020 data center, and business should take note.

Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT) will transform the size and shape of the next wave of data centers, Mills says.

“Modular data centers will effectively couple hyperscale and hyperlocal environments in smaller spaces while improving power usage effectiveness (PUE),” he explains.

“They can easily be distributed around the globe and used for initial processing, avoiding logistical nightmares… Read More

Coming Events of Interest

Cloud Partners 2015 — September 16th-18th in Boston, MA. This Informa-hosted conference is totally focused on how the cloud can mean business for you. Learn how to enable scale, impact, and action based on cloud services.

The Internet of Things (IoT) Show — September 2nd-23rd in Singapore. The IoT Show will facilitate new collaborations and partnerships as well as generate new ideas and thinking. The IoT Show is about getting the prototypes out of the lab and into the market.

ADRM Working Group Meeting — September 24th via Global Videoconference. Contact the DCIA for information about joining the group and attending the meeting that will focus on interoperability among DRM platforms and simplifying DRM implementation.

New York Media Festival — October 6th-9th in New York, NY. NYME brings together 5,000 expected attendees including 1,500 senior digital, games, music, television, advertising and video leaders, brands, investors and start-ups. Networking, meetings and deal-making.

Digital Hollywood Fall — October 19th-22nd in Marina Del Rey, CA. The future of the entertainment industry. Digital Hollywood debuted in 1990 and has from its start been among the leading trade conferences in its field.

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

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

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

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