Software Defined Networking (SNA) is still only a baby buzzword barely
plumbed – although it may have already caused bad blood between a couple
of giants in the trade – when along comes a French start-up called Lyatiss
repotted to Silicon Valley and not yet out of beta that says that – however
chi-chi – Software Defined Networking is a limp, insufficient technology
compared to the more evolved Application Defined Networking (ADN)
widgetry it’s inventing.
What’s the BIG Deal? DATA On the Origin of the Term
NY Times BITS (Steve Lohr) today: An interesting “detective story” seeking the coiner of the phrase “Big Data”.
The unruly digital data of the Web is a big ingredient in what is now being called “Big Data.” And as it turns out, the term Big Data seems to be most accurately traced not to references in news or journal archives, but to digital artifacts now posted on technical Web sites, appropriately enough.
Cloud Spectator “Media Sponsor” of Cloud Expo New York & Silicon Valley
SYS-CON Events announced today that Cloud Spectator has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, and the 13th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on November 4–7, 2013, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Cloud Spectator offers cloud computing education to an enterprise audience; constantly analyzing this dynamic industry to keep information up-to-date, as well as providing custom reports to cloud providers.
Evolution of the Email Archiving market in 2013: Cloud Computing or Hybrid Solutions?
By, Marilena Dobre, Marketing Coordinator, SpamExperts
The end of last year has brought exciting predictions for the cloud environment in 2013. Service capabilities involving cloud computing are now setting the benchmark in every aspect of the IT industry. In the email security market where SpamExperts activates, Email Archiving for back-up and compliance is an equally hot topic of debate. The question hence arises what the opinions are around having email archived in the cloud and where this market is moving towards.
The immediate benefits of cloud-based email archiving are straightforward: no hardware required, free up local resources, and “infinite” redundant storage capacity. However, once you dive into the subject, dilemmas around privacy and security arise.
Email can concern sensitive data and information. Company contracts, trademarks, patents, upgrades, discoveries, pricing, employees data, third parties information, and more are now circulated via email. Are traditional enterprise buyers ready to let all this crucial data moved away from their premises to the cloud, into the “hands” of a 3rd party? How about data storage legislation and location?
To answer these questions, let us look at who is using email archiving and for what purpose. In general, we can distinct email archiving users between users for compliance reasons and for back-up reasons. Typically the larger organizations, institutes, and companies operating in regulated industries look at email archiving from a compliance perspective where questions around storage location and eDiscovery are dominating deployment and product choices. Email archiving offered by hosting providers to the ‘store around the corner’/ typical SMB client tend to be focused around the back-up nature of email archiving and hence deployment and product choices are often depending on price, convenience, and availability. Typically, cloud solutions fit nicely to this latter group of email archiving adopters.
According to Symantec’s “Avoiding the Hidden Costs of Cloud 2013 survey“, cloud compliance is quite complicated for organizations. The study included business and IT executives at 3,236 organizations in 29 countries and revealed that nearly a quarter of these organizations have been fined for privacy violations in the cloud within the past 12 months. One-third of those surveyed have received eDiscovery requests for cloud information, out of which two-thirds were unable to timely respond and have missed the deadlines, potentially leading to fines or compromised legal actions. These findings suggest a local deployment under full control and management of the organization in question may be a preferred deployment method for an email archiving solution.
According to Gartner’s “Predicts 2013: Cloud Computing Becomes an Integral Part of IT“, cloud computing has fragmented public opinion into two viewpoints, and this is getting worse. The fragmentation is a split between the desire for enterprise-grade cloud computing (favored by IT departments) versus consumer-grade cloud computing (favored by business and individual users).
We can therefore conclude at this point that Cloud is new and sexy, but, as far as the Email Archiving market is concerned, it is not (yet?) for everyone. A cloud based email archiving solution is not yet a sure win. The key differentiators amongst email archiving providers will remain hybrid deployment solutions, security, compliance, and easy access to the archived data. Furthermore, for hosting providers in particular that are looking to serve the general SMB market, integration with their current infrastructure and backend are key decision making factors.
Polls: Quarter of US, Third of UK Know What ‘Cloud’ Means
Webfusion, a UK hosting group, polled more than 1,000 respondents in the US to gauge their understanding of ‘cloud’ technology. Of the respondents, almost one third (31.8 per cent) stated that they had no understanding of the term at all, with only 25 per cent claiming to have a clear understanding of Cloud technology. The findings come on the heels of a similar survey conducted in the UK, which revealed that 34 per cent of the British public had a good understanding of ‘cloud’.
Key findings include:
- 25-34 year olds have the best understanding of ‘cloud’, with one third (33.8 per cent) claiming to know what Cloud computing is
- 63 per cent do not recognize Dropbox / iTunes/ Gmail / Hotmail as Cloud services
- 91 per cent do not recognize scalable hosting as ‘Cloud’. This figure stands at 84 per cent in the UK
Commenting on the findings, Thomas Vollrath, CEO of Webfusion’s parent company Host Europe Group, said: “We were surprised at the general lack of cloud knowledge in the UK, but it turns out that we are much more Cloud savvy than our American counterparts, despite the US often being considered as technological innovators. With research indicating that three quarters of US businesses are consciously using some sort of cloud service, with UK adoption standing at 61 per cent, these results are yet more surprising.
“If consumers in the US don’t know what ‘Cloud’ means and have no idea that applications like iTunes are Cloud-based, then perhaps the use of the term should be restricted, at least in consumer circles. The reversal between US and UK consumer and enterprise Cloud knowledge goes to show that the use of the term ‘Cloud’ still remains a business message and should be used as such,” he concluded.
Cloud Expo NY: Calculating the True Value of Industry-Specific Clouds
Industry-specific clouds are those PaaS, IaaS, and PaaS services that are tailored for a specific vertical, such as transportation, retail, finance, and health care. IDC sees a $65 billion market in these industry solutions for 2013, rising to $100 billion in 2016.
The value of industry-specific clouds is that businesses within a vertical can connect to applications, processes, and databases that are pre-defined for that vertical within a public or private cloud. They can extend processes and databases into the business domain, versus defining the data and processes within a generic cloud-based platform.
So, are industry specific clouds right for your business? What options are out there? How do you figure out the ROI?
NewVoiceMedia Secures $20M Series B Funding
NewVoiceMedia,a provider of Cloud contact centre services, today announced that it has secured $20m funding from new investors Highland Capital Partners Europe and MMC Ventures, as well as existing shareholders Notion Capital and Eden Ventures.
NewVoiceMedia’s cloud service is instantly deployable and provides unique and patented routing capabilities designed to enhance the customer experience. The company is growing by more than 200% a year and now serves more than 8000 agents in 30 countries including Parcelforce, PhotoBox, QlikTech and SHL.
The additional investment will help accelerate the Company’s global ambitions including opening new offices in North America, where the solution is already widely used. Its platform, ContactWorld, integrates natively with salesforce.com Service Cloud and Sales Cloud, enabling customers to quickly and easily deploy world-class contact centres.
Cloud Expo New York: Requirements of a Cloud Database
The traditional databases of the 20th century were never designed to scale to meet 21st century data demands. Google alone processes about 24 petabytes of data/day. With the added complexity of heavily virtualized hardware and storage plus apps being moved in and out of private, hybrid and public clouds, application developers, SaaS vendors, ISVs and enterprise IT all need a better answer.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Barry Morris, CEO & Co-Founder of NuoDB, Inc., will through customer examples and performance benchmarks explore the new rules for a 21st century Cloud Data Management System and discuss the critical new roles databases play in customers’ strategies and how to resolve today’s web-scale challenges.
AMD Micro Servers Certified on Rackspace, Validated on OpenStack
AMD’s SeaMicro SM15000 x86-based micro server has been certified for the Rackspace Private Cloud, which simplifies the management of large pools of compute, storage and networking resources using OpenStack.
The so-called “Nova in a Box” and “Swift in a Rack” reference architectures are respectively supposed to be the most efficient compute and highest storage capacity solutions validated for OpenStack.
Product Certification means that enterprise deployments of Rackspace Private Cloud on SeaMicro SM15000 micro servers are a proven and rigorously tested solution.
Managing IT in an Environment of Change
Social interactions driven by mobile devices are causing a huge growth in infrastructure needs by enterprises. This write-up is about an event held for enterprise users.
The growth of mobile devices generated by smartphones and tablets is driving universal access to information in the multi-channel era. Similarly, social networking is a disruptive change that influences many aspects of consumer behavior. The large amount of data created through these means requires analytics to help enterprises respond to market dynamics. Cloud technologies help enterprises analyze this data in a timely manner, enabling enterprises to deliver significant advantages over their competition.
On January 22, 2013, Oracle hosted an executive roundtable in Cincinnati for enterprise IT users to discuss these changes and associated challenges. Attendees represented a variety of industries, so their requirements varied, but the fundamental need to transform how enterprise IT adapts to these changes was the same.