In 2013 business will continue on the path of big data, bigger opportunities, and evolving their recipe of how to innovate in an environment of emerging risks. This is article one in a series about the future of cloud technology and the business of Big Data – and how to harness the risks of a data-driven world for growth and sustainability.
Since the very beginnings of trade and commerce, it has been a commonality that most information exchange between buyer and seller, customer and business, was treated as a discrete, confidential, and almost intimate affair. Trust was earned, not given.
Consider the not so distant history of the local American bank. Banks have been collecting personal information about their customers for decades, harkening back to consultations over a notepad, paper deposit slips, and hand-written applications. The reputations of applicant and banker, buyer and seller, were local reputations, with personal and professional references limited to the confines of the community and the reality of proximity.
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Campaigns Move to the Cloud
This election season marked a major shift from the traditional ground game of door-to-door get out the vote efforts to «Big Data politics» – in which algorithms are run in the cloud on databases of voter information to figure out who volunteers should target.
As captured in Rackspace’s 2012 election «Powered by the Cloud» infographic, nearly every digital component of the 2012 election utilized the cloud: from the smartphone campaign apps to the social media systems to the super-secret voter information files. The cloud industry was well equipped to handle the terabytes of data-crunching demanded of the multi-billion dollar campaigns. For example, over 80 million voters will use cloud-based networks and smartphone apps to access information critical to their voting decision, a 200% increase over 2008’s election.
WorkVoices Speaks Up at Cloud Expo Holland Pavilion
The Holland Pavilion has been one of the highlights of recent Cloud Expo shows, including the most recent conference and exhibition in Santa Clara, CA.
A group of entrepreneurial companies in the cloud and social media spaces were present at the show last week, including a Utrecht-based startup called WorkVoices, described as “the enterprise social network leveraging your business.”
I spoke with company co-founder Marc Koetsier about the company and its vision…
Roger: When did you start WorkVoices and why? What need did you see?
Marc: We started WorkVoices in the beginning of 2009. Both founders were consultants at the time and saw the need for more interactive communication between employees, instead of a push-information edited intranet. We also noticed the need for a one-portal solution to combine all applications in use at a company into one main stream.
Roger: How does your product and service differ from Tibbr, for example, or from Salesforce’s Chatter?
Marc: It differs firstly because we link to Google Apps. A tight integration with Mail, Calender, etc., is on its way. We also provide WorkVoices as white label, so the styling can be completely set to the customers’ needs, and even custom functions can be built in. We also provide integrations to other applications, and can add more if needed.
Roger: How is it delivered? As SaaS, for example?
Marc: Yes, it is delivered as a SaaS solution, and thus readily available for users. We prefer the cloud, and have the flexibility there to help customers.
Roger: Do you view it as social media or collaboration software, or both?
Marc: I think it’s both, but mainly collaboration software. Social media is considered to be more on the Internet and Worldwide Web instead of on a company’s intranet. We do however provide integration with LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Roger: Is there a typical client for WorkVoices? Big company, for example? How many people would work in a typical WorkVoices environment?
Marc: There is no typical client for WorkVoices. We do business in almost all sectors, whether it be an engineering company, hospital , education, government, to non-profit organizations. We believe a minimum of about10 people should be in a network, to make it attractive to use. At the high end, we have quite successful networks of approximately 2,000 users, and this number is rising.
Roger: How did Cloud Expo work for you?
Marc: We enjoyed meeting a lot of people and made some friends – even, perhaps, a possible partner for us the US.
WorkVoices Speaks Up at Cloud Expo Holland Pavilion
The Holland Pavilion has been one of the highlights of recent Cloud Expo shows, including the most recent conference and exhibition in Santa Clara, CA.
A group of entrepreneurial companies in the cloud and social media spaces were present at the show last week, including a Utrecht-based startup called WorkVoices, described as “the enterprise social network leveraging your business.”
I spoke with company co-founder Marc Koetsier about the company and its vision…
Roger: When did you start WorkVoices and why? What need did you see?
Marc: We started WorkVoices in the beginning of 2009. Both founders were consultants at the time and saw the need for more interactive communication between employees, instead of a push-information edited intranet. We also noticed the need for a one-portal solution to combine all applications in use at a company into one main stream.
Roger: How does your product and service differ from Tibbr, for example, or from Salesforce’s Chatter?
Marc: It differs firstly because we link to Google Apps. A tight integration with Mail, Calender, etc., is on its way. We also provide WorkVoices as white label, so the styling can be completely set to the customers’ needs, and even custom functions can be built in. We also provide integrations to other applications, and can add more if needed.
Roger: How is it delivered? As SaaS, for example?
Marc: Yes, it is delivered as a SaaS solution, and thus readily available for users. We prefer the cloud, and have the flexibility there to help customers.
Roger: Do you view it as social media or collaboration software, or both?
Marc: I think it’s both, but mainly collaboration software. Social media is considered to be more on the Internet and Worldwide Web instead of on a company’s intranet. We do however provide integration with LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Roger: Is there a typical client for WorkVoices? Big company, for example? How many people would work in a typical WorkVoices environment?
Marc: There is no typical client for WorkVoices. We do business in almost all sectors, whether it be an engineering company, hospital , education, government, to non-profit organizations. We believe a minimum of about10 people should be in a network, to make it attractive to use. At the high end, we have quite successful networks of approximately 2,000 users, and this number is rising.
Roger: How did Cloud Expo work for you?
Marc: We enjoyed meeting a lot of people and made some friends – even, perhaps, a possible partner for us the US.
Cloud Computing: Nokia Offers Cloud-Based Maps
Loss-making Nokia Tuesday introduced a cloud map service called Here.
It means it to be one of five businesses including smartphones, basic phones, patents and cellular infrastructure that will help it get back on its feet.
Its map customers include Amazon, Rand McNally, Bing, Daimler, Nikon and Yahoo.
Here is supposed to work across multiple devices and operating systems and offer directions and hotel bookings.
Nokia has also just bought Earthmine, a California 3D mapping concern, to drive phone sales. Terms were not disclosed.
VM Backup to Dropbox Cloud Storage by NAKIVO Backup & Replication
NAKIVO, Inc., a provider of affordable VM backup solutions has announced the general availability of NAKIVO Backup & Replication v1.0 and support for Dropbox, an easy to use, cost effective offsite cloud storage for VM backups.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is the first to support VM backup directly to Dropbox which enables one of the most affordable VM cloud backup solutions in the market: 0.5TB of cloud storage is under $50 per month.
In addition to backing up locally, remotely, and to Dropbox, NAKIVO Backup & Replication is the first to provide VM backup directly to Amazon EC2. With industry-leading pricing, high upload speeds, encryption, and configurable access rules, Amazon EC2 is the optimal offsite backup destination for businesses of any size.
VM Backup to Dropbox Cloud Storage by NAKIVO Backup & Replication
NAKIVO, Inc., a provider of affordable VM backup solutions, has announced the general availability of NAKIVO Backup & Replication v1.0 and support for Dropbox, an easy to use, cost effective offsite cloud storage for VM backups.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is the first to support VM backup directly to Dropbox which enables one of the most affordable VM cloud backup solutions in the market: 0.5TB of cloud storage is under $50 per month.
In addition to backing up locally, remotely, and to Dropbox, NAKIVO Backup & Replication is the first to provide VM backup directly to Amazon EC2. With industry-leading pricing, high upload speeds, encryption, and configurable access rules, Amazon EC2 is the optimal offsite backup destination for businesses of any size.
Big Data Conundrum: Show Me the Money!
Inventory levels. Sales results. Negative comments on Facebook. Positive comments on Twitter. Shopping on Amazon. Listening to Pandora. Online search habits. No matter what you call it or what the information describes, it’s all data being collected about you.
Thanks to new technologies like Hadoop, once-unquantifiable data (like Facebook conversations and Tweets) can now be quantified. Now, because nearly everything is measurable, everything is measured. The result: companies are spending big dollars to collect, store and measure astronomical amounts of data.
Show me the data!
There’s a name for this movement: Big Data. Not only is it a name, it has been the “it, it” of 2012, possibly trumping “the cloud.”
Back to Basics: The Theory of (Performance) Relativity
One of the primary reasons folks use a Load balancer is scalability with a secondary driver of maintaining performance. We all know the data exists to prove that «seconds matter» and current users of the web have itchy fingers, ready to head for the competition the microsecond they experience any kind of delay.
Similarly, we know that productivity is inherently tied to performance. With more and more critical business functions «webified», the longer it takes to load a page the longer the delay a customer or help desk service representative experiences, reducing the number of calls or customers that can be serviced in any given measurable period.
So performance is paramount, I see no reason to persuade you further to come to that conclusion.
Cloud Computing Aided Resiliency in Wake of Sandy
Hurricane Sandy brought with it a heavy dose of disaster, but utilizing the cloud helped mitigate what could have been even more difficulties faced by businesses.
“Overall, I think cloud does help,” said Stephanie Balaouras, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Tier one cloud and SaaS providers such as Google and Amazon operate their cloud services from multiple data centers and can simply shift workloads to other locations as needed. They are also able to deliver a level of availability that many organizations could never achieve themselves. This includes the resiliency of the data center infrastructure itself to the resources that they invest in high availability and disaster recovery capabilities,” Balaouras said, according to an article on SearchCloudSecurity.com.
“Cloud computing can absolutely help in BC/DR operations,” said Kevin O’Shea, information security practice lead at engineering, construction and technical services firm URS Corporation. “For example, we saw several large webhost providers switch to alternate locations when their primary data centers went offline in New York City. However, businesses must be organized in such a way as to be able to offload critical applications and data to a cloud provider,” he said.