Volume LIII, Issue 11

Posted on by Marty Lafferty

In This Issue

NYME to Take Over Manhattan this October

Excerpted from New York Media Festival Media Alert

New York Media Festival (NYME), a four-day event for the digital games, music, television, and video industries, will take place Tuesday October 6th through Friday October 9th with three days of conferences at the Museum of Jewish Heritage starting on October 7th.

The DCIA is partnering with event creators Digital Media Wire and Empiricly to produce a major industry NYME Webcast.

The Festival provides an intimate environment for deal-making, partnership building, and networking for executives, brands, investors, content creators, and technology start-ups.

Daily Tech-Media Crawl open-houses and networking parties will be held city-wide and hosted by Conde Nast, iHeartMedia, The Orchard, Arkadium, Dots, Loeb & Loeb, SoftLayer, Vindicia, the National Arts Club, and CityRealty, among others.

“We’re thrilled to bring the games, music, and video conferences together under one roof,” said Ned Sherman, NYME Co-Founder.

“This conference is designed with a purpose — to connect people across industries to ideate, create, and establish long-lasting partnerships… Read More

2016 Storage Visions Conference Deadlines

Excerpted from Entertainment Storage Alliance Partner Notification

The 2016 Storage Visions Conference is announcing its presentation and awards submission deadlines.

The conference theme “Storage for the Next 5,000 Years” was inspired by the Egyptian motifs at the Luxor Hotel.

The Storage Visions Conference is the premier event bringing together digital storage oriented people from diverse industries including consumer electronics, general business, healthcare, high-performance computing, and media and entertainment.

Organizational partners and media sponsors include the DCIA as well as Advantage Video, AVSystems, Broadcast Beat, Burn World, Channel Company Coughlin Associates, Davis Consulting Asia, Digital Production Buzz, Drive Trust Alliance, Flash Memory Summit, HDDFA, HomeToys, SCV IEEE Consumer Electronics Society, IT Central Station, Media and Entertainment Tech, NexGen Cloud, Objective Analysis, Parks Associates, Postperspective, ProductionHUB, RDC, SATA-IO, SMPTE, SNIA, SSSI, and TechTarget.

Speaking submissions are now being accepted through September 14th.

The deadline for Storage Visions Visionary Awards submissions is November 14th… Read More

Cybersecurity a Top CFO Concern This Year

Excerpted from Business Insider Report by James Kosur

If you serve as a chief financial officer (CFO) in today’s rapidly changing environment, you are forced to confront a lot of variables that offer new challenges on a daily basis.

Whether you are battling to meet regulatory deadlines or attempting to hire the best talent available in a job seeker’s market, your role as the head of finance never ends.

Independent audit, tax, and advisory firm Grant Thornton recently surveyed 912 CFOs to determine which concerns weigh most heavily on their minds in 2015.

Here are the top six concerns among CFOs:

Economic Uncertainty – More than half (55%) of CFOs said they believe economic uncertainty will carry over for at least the next 12 months.

That finding was despite the fact that 49% of CFOs said they believe the economy will remain unchanged, and 43% said it would improve over the next year…

Cybersecurity – Some 44% of CFOs said the most significant concern for their organizations is cybersecurity risks… Read More

Report from DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty

Click Here for Video

The DCIA is pleased to join with Digital Media Wire and Empiricly in the launch of their exciting new event, the New York Media Festival (NYME), from October 6th through 9th in New York City.

Digital Media Wire provides strategic consulting and manages marketing campaigns for digital media brands, and owns and produces industry conferences.

The company also publishes daily newsletters and operates the popular www.dmwmedia.com news and community portal.

Empiricly is an events and media company focused on the cross-section of the innovation sector and the Millennial generation.

The company helped bring the developer hackathon movement to NYC, and also founded and produces the wildly popular #techdrinkup party.

The NY Media Festival will bring together leading companies in entertainment, media, and technology for riveting discussion and debate.

Conferences will include one-day programs on Games, Video, and Music, with a focus on brands, advertising, monetization, and distribution.

NYME will also assemble the world’s most innovative start-ups, creators, and developers at the Innovation Unconference.

The “unconference” will showcase big ideas driving the future of entertainment, media, and technology.

Start-ups can apply for free exhibition space for a limited time.

The DCIA will be producing a major webcast during the NY Media Festival featuring its key conference themes of games, video, music, and innovation.

Speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, and delegates are invited to participate with interviews or solo presentations in our on-site studio or at their exhibit booths.

Find out more about participating in the NYME Webcast by contacting Digital Media Wire CEO Ned Sherman at ned@digitalmediawire.com.

And by the way, the NY Media Festival doesn’t end when the sun goes down.

Evening and night-time entertainment will include VIP dinners and receptions, Tech-Media Crawl, live music, and after-parties; stating with a gala kick-off on October 6th.

Plan now to join us for this spectacular event: click here to speak at the event; click here to sponsor or exhibit; or click here to register now.

Share wisely, and take care.

Most Troublesome Amendments to Cybersecurity Bill

Excerpted from Washington Post Report by Karoun Demirjian

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington for a state visit next month.

As the White House moves toward taking unprecedented steps to counter cyber hacks with international sanctions, Congress is sitting on an information-sharing bill that proponents say could keep US networks safer from electronic attacks.

The Senate may soon begin considering cybersecurity legislation as the administration is preparing sanctions against Chinese firms and individuals over cyber-espionage.

The bipartisan cybersecurity bill’s brief August cameo on the Senate floor was muted under the shadow of the Iran deal, and, once lawmakers return to Washington, that debate and the looming threat of a government shutdown could easily push cybersecurity down the Senate calendar until October.

But Congress will be under pressure to act with concerns about cybersecurity only growing more intense.

Washington is reeling from recent large-scale hacks that have compromised the US government — most recently to the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) databases, a breach that exposed the personal details of over 22 million people — and foreign espionage outfits in China and Russia have already been sniffing out US intelligence operatives… Read More

Amazon, Cisco, Others Partner on Next-Gen Video Format

Excerpted from Techcrunch Report by Frederic Lardinois

Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix this week announced that they have formed a new open source alliance — the Alliance for Open Media — with the goal of developing the next generation of royalty-free video formats, codecs, and other related technologies.

It’s not often we see these rival companies come together to build a new technology, but the members argue that this kind of alliance is necessary to create a new interoperable video standard that will work across vendors and platforms.

While it goes unmentioned in the announcement, it’s also clear that none of the members involved in this alliance want to have to pay royalties to the likes of MPEG LA.

As Mozilla notes, part of the reason for forming this alliance is not just to share technology, but also to “run the kind of patent analysis necessary to build a next-generation royalty-free video codec.”

There is no dearth of royalty-free next-gen codec projects, of course. Mozilla has Daala, Cisco has Thor, and Google is working on VP9 and 10. It’s no surprise then that the Alliance’s first project is to create a new video codec specification that’s based on the previous work of its members… Read More

Amazon & Microsoft Ink $108 Million FAA Cloud Computing Deal

Excerpted from GeekWire Report by Taylor Soper

Amazon and Microsoft are reeling in some serious dough to help the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with its cloud computing needs.

IT consultant and systems integrator Computer Sciences Corporation just inked a $108 million contract with the FAA and will use both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure — two Seattle-based cloud rivals — to help “consolidate FAA data centers and migrate FAA data and systems to a hybrid cloud environment.”

The 10-year contract is initially valued at $108 million but could reach $1 billion over 10 years.

It’s a key government agency-related deal for both Microsoft and Amazon.

Business Insider notes that IBM was left out of the partnership, which is notable in part because the company has worked with the FAA in the past.

The FAA isn’t getting rid of its data centers altogether to run on AWS and Azure, although that’s increasingly becoming a thing huge companies like Netflix and Yamaha of America are doing — both of which are using AWS.

The FAA is just trying to shrink its data centers and use the two clouds as much as it can… Read More

Telefonica Chooses Juniper Networks for Mobile & Cloud

Excerpted from Business Wire Press Release

Juniper Networks, the industry leader in network innovation, and Telefonica, a leading service provider with more than 329 million customers worldwide, announced that Telefonica Spain has selected Juniper Networks MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers to build a next-generation metro network across Spain.

The new network will deliver fixed and mobile broadband services, including high-speed TV for residential users, as well as cloud services for businesses, all from a single IP network.

As a global telecoms leader, Telefonica continuously invests in new technology to provide its customers with world-class services. As Telefonica looked to the future, it recognized the need for a scalable, streamlined, and highly automated network that could enable rapid service delivery and tailored customer experiences at a competitive price.

After a comprehensive search, Telefonica selected the Juniper Networks MX Series 3D Universal Edge Router portfolio to consolidate its wholesale, residential and business services onto a single end-to-end IP infrastructure.

Powered by the programmable Junos Trio chipset and Junos operating system, the SDN-ready MX Series scales up to 80Tbps of system capacity, providing Telefonica with investment-protecting performance… Read More

NetApp: Partners Are Core Part of our Strategy

Excerpted from ARN Report by Julia Talevski

NetApp has highlighted that its partner ecosystem comprised of technology providers, system integrators (SIs), and service providers, forms a core part of its business strategy.

Recently appointed NetApp CEO, George Kurian, was in town meeting with customers and partners, along with NetApp Asia Pacific Senior Vice President and General Manager, Richard Scurfield.

Kurian said that partnering well with technology providers, SIs, and service providers is a core and fundamental part of its business strategy.

The vendor recently revealed its first quarter revenues for 2016 fiscal year standing at $1.34 billion. Its clustered Data ONTAP node shipments increased 114 per cent year-over-year and All Flash FAS units grew 137 per cent year-over-year.

“Our industry and our own portfolio is going through a transition,” Kurian said. “The fact that all IT providers are grappling with the cloud is not lost on us. You’ll see us making progress in our technology portfolio, customers adopting the data fabric strategy, and evolving our partner ecosystem to allow customers to take advantage of the cloud using our technology to manage their data.” Kurian said accelerating the adoption of its new portfolio of technology is at the heart of the changes… Read More

Aspera Celebrates Biggest Ever Presence at IBC

Excerpted from Aspera Media Alert

For Aspera, an IBM company and creator of technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed, IBC 2015 marks the company’s biggest ever presence at the show in the company’s 10-year history.

From its booth #7.B27, Aspera will showcase its complete portfolio of high-speed file transfer software and automation solutions for the broadcast and media industries, and highlight how industry-leading media technology companies and cloud service providers are continuing to directly integrate the Aspera FASP software platform.

Aspera’s booth will feature partner demonstrations from industry-leading media technology companies and cloud service providers that have directly integrated the Aspera FASP high-speed transfer platform into their solutions for digital asset management, content distribution, media management, and media processing to achieve fast, distance-neutral transfer of digital media content.

These include Akamai, Encoding.com, Media Netwerk, MediaSilo, root 6, and Scality.

Additionally, Aspera will showcase its complete portfolio of high-speed file transfer software, including its revolutionary new FASPStream transport technology for live and near-live data streaming… Read More

Key Challenges in DRM

Excerpted from Stanford University Abstract by Brian LaMacchia

The desires for robust digital rights management (DRM) systems are not new to the commercial world.

Indeed, industrial research, development, and deployment of systems with DRM aspects (most notably crude copy-control schemes) have a long history.

Yet, to date, the industry has not seen much commercial success from shipping these systems on top of platforms that support general-purpose computing.

There are many factors contributing to this lack of acceptance of current DRM systems, but I see three specific areas of work that are key adoption-blockers today and ripe for further academic and commercial research.

The lack of widely-available trustworthy computing devices, robust trust management engines, and a general-purpose rights expression/authorization language all hamper industrial development and deployment of DRM systems for digital content.

The most pressing concern today for the DRM industry is, by far, the lack of “trustworthy computing devices,” by which I mean computing devices whose behavior is defined, understood, and acceptable to all parties in a content transaction… Read More

Global Distributed Data Grid Market 2015-2019

Excerpted from PR Newswire Press Announcement

Distributed Data Grids are data storage software.

They represent a sub-segment of in-memory computing.

Data grids store data in the RAMs of a set of multiple servers distributed across various locations, which can be managed centrally.

Distributed data grids are versatile as they can store both structured as well as unstructured data.

Distributed data grids have several advantages over traditional forms of data storage as the software avoids traditional input/output bottlenecks encountered in relational database structures by using object-oriented designs.

The concept of using in-memory systems for storage and computing purposes is not new, but the technology has gained traction due to recent innovations in scale-out architecture and reduction in the prices of storage devices.

Enterprises are using distributed data grid software to deal with large volumes of data.

The data is distributed and stored in multiple servers, wherein each server operates in the active mode… Read More

Managing Big Data Integration & Security with Hadoop

Excerpted from Smart Data Collective Report by Jason Parms

The explosion of the World Wide Web (WWW) into our lives was like being given a gigantic toy chest with anything you would ever want to play with in there.

As the web grew from hundreds of pages, which could be manually indexed and queried, to millions of pages, with thousands being added every day, the challenge was to figure out how to find something specific when you wanted it.

Search engines like Yahoo and Google were the first to realize that in order to make the web into something usable and manageable, an automated process would have to be developed to deal with the Big Data — to store it and make sense of it, categorize it, and retrieve it on command.

The need for better, automated search engines was born.

This need was a driving force in the development of Hadoop, an open-source framework that enables storage of enormous amounts of data as well as running associated applications using a distributed network of associated computers to accomplish Big Data tasks.

The framework was originally part of a larger project put together by Mike Cafarella, a database management expert, and Doug Cutting… Read More

Why Agility Is Essential with Cloud Computing

Excerpted from MyTechBits Report by Keith Hearn

Cloud computing has become quite popular over the past decade among small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) as well as large scale enterprises.

There are thousand-and-one reasons why businesses, these days, opt for cloud computing.

Whether you are running a large enterprise and aiming to improve the services that you offer to your customers, or you own a small-scale start-up and struggling to make your business stand out among the crowd, cloud computing is the new age solution for every problem.

Unless and until you are able to run all the applications and websites smoothly, how will you be able to establish yourself as a promising business entity?

This is where cloud computing helps you best.

With a robust cloud computing environment, you can keep your business running 24X7, without any interruption.

If you are planning to invest in cloud computing services, you must know that agility is one of the most important features… Read More

Cloud Computing Is Revolutionizing New Careers

Excerpted from Tech.Co Report by Ronald Barba

According to a 2013 IT Services report by Gartner — which looked at the forecast for the state of cloud computing — it’s expected that adoption of the cloud will hit $250 billion by the year 2017, with the overall global IT services market expected to exceed $1.1 trillion.

A more recent report on the State of the Cloud — published this year by Bessemer Venture Partners — shows that the cloud computing market is actually growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8 percent, reaching $127.5 billion by 2018.

While the numbers vary, both predictions are founded on very real, tracked growth in cloud computing; apropos of this trend in the industry, it’s inevitable that an increasing proportion of today’s careers shift to adapt.

Before you rush off and try to find a job in cloud computing, it’s obviously necessary for you to know what cloud computing even entails.

With deep roots that can be traced all the way back to the 1950s, cloud computing involves the storing and accessing of programs and data over the Internet as opposed to via a computer hard drive… Read More

An Interactive History of Cloud Computing

Excerpted from B2C Report by Richard Thelwell

The term “cloud computing” may be commonly uttered in businesses all over the world, but its complex history is less well known.

This interactive timeline from Matillion charts the history of the cloud, and its future!

In 1947, researchers at the University of Manchester developed the “Manchester Baby,” the world’s first stored program computer.

With its limited functionality and its vast size (over 17 feet in length) the Manchester Baby is almost unrecognizable from the computers we know today, yet it played a pivotal role in their development.

Moving into the 1950s, the concept of “time sharing” came to prominence.

In 1955 there were a mere 250 computers in use around the world, and to derive the most benefit from these limited resources, they were rented out to users.

The concept of time sharing allocated users amounts of processing power… 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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