WBS Connect and Vidtel Introduce Innovative Video Calling Services

DENVER, Colo., February 2, 2009 – WBS Connect, a Colorado-based global technology services company today announced it has entered into a strategic partnership with premier video communications service provider Vidtel. Together WBS Connect and Vidtel are addressing the growing communication needs of small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with a powerful video calling service that greatly increases worker productivity while also shrinking business travel expenses. And unlike other video calling technology that can be expensive and cumbersome to implement and use, the WBS Connect and Vidtel service offers truly universal and unrestricted video calling.

The new video calling service links together any video-enabled device on any network across the globe, enabling customers to make seamless video calls to remote offices, partners and customers world-wide, easily and cost-effectively. In addition to video calling, customers can also use their robust VOIP phone to make and receive regular voice calls to anyone in the world with a telephone number (i.e., mobile, international, local and long distance calls).

“We are excited to be working with WBS Connect, a company who clearly understands the business video communications industry”, said Scott Wharton, Chief Executive Officer of Vidtel. “We believe WBS Connect has a unique perspective on how to overcome the business challenges facing small and medium-sized business. The WBS team has proven again and again that they are innovators by delivering high-definition video conferencing products over their global network IP network and we believe they are an ideal partner to help us cultivate the growing technology category of video calling.”

With the addition of video calling services to its portfolio, WBS Connect now offers a complete suite of premium and affordable Business Video Communications solutions, which also includes high-definition video conferencing and web collaboration solutions. These Business Video Communications solutions are all delivered over WBS Connect’s extensive technology framework, built throughout North America, Europe and Asia. With WBS Connect’s worldwide Internet operations and the team’s networking expertise and full-service support options, WBS Connect and Vidtel are helping businesses become competitive with a smarter approach to business communication.

“For too long small and medium-sized business have been lost in the shuffle between traditional phone service, high-end video conferencing services and low-quality PC-based video chat options,” said Scott Charter, managing partner of WBS Connect. “By working with Vidtel we are closing the gap by expanding access to robust video calling services that are the truly the future of business communications. Video phones will replace traditional phones on everyone’s desk and will help to enhance productivity and improve communication as only ‘face-to-face’ conversations that capture body language and facial expressions can.”

See a demonstration of these innovative video calling services at ITEXPO, Feb 2-4, 2009, at the Miami Beach Convention Center, Booth # 227.

About Vidtel
Vidtel is a video communication provider that offers video phone calling, video mail and regular phone calling for less than the cost of your monthly phone service. Vidtel’s vision is to make video calling as easy as a telephone, as smooth as TV and as inexpensive as a daily newspaper. Users can easily make and receive video calls anywhere in the world with Vidtel and a broadband connection. Vidtel provides you with everything your regular phone service can do, including a regular telephone number. Vidtel offers full-motion video for the experience of being there and live customer support. We have a 30-day risk-free offer. Go to www.vidtel.com for more information or call 1-877-MY-VIDTEL.


About WBS Connect
WBS Connect is a privately-held provider of worldwide technology services. The company leverages multi-gigabit commitments with IP transit carriers to offer direct connections with no AS hop in the United States, Europe and Asia. WBS Connect also offers colocation, storage, and expert managed network services. WBS Connect has a presence in carrier neutral data centers in Amsterdam, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, NYC, Seattle, and Toronto. For more information visit the WBS Connect website:
www.wbsconnect.com.





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The Internet: How Neutral is it?

Net Neutrality is a very hot topic these days. According to Wikipedia, Network neutrality is a principle proposed for residential broadband networks and potentially for all networks. A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.

The next logical question is, is any network really neutral? My answer is, not really. There are too many factors for a truly neutral internet. If you are a network provider there are many factors that go into this, some technical, some financial, some just corporate policy. The heart of the matter is that there is still a person who is programming these networks to dictate what traffic goes where.

Recently Cox decided to make it public that they are going to offer preferential treatment to internet traffic it deemed time sensitive. According to The Denver Post Starting on Feb. 9 in parts of Kansas and Arkansas, Cox will give priority to Internet traffic it judges to be time-sensitive, like Web pages, streaming video and online games. File downloads, software updates and other non-time sensitive data may be slowed if there is congestion on the local network, Cox said.

A large issue is that all networks carry traffic for their competitors. If certain traffic is slowed, and it happens to have a negative impact on a Cox competitor, it could very well be Cox who gains from this.

Google as they often do, have found a way to get in the mix. According to Reuters Google Inc on Wednesday unveiled a plan aimed at eventually letting computer users determine whether providers like Comcast Corp are inappropriately blocking or slowing their work online.

Google has Vint Cerf, known as the father of the internet working on their behalf. Cerf said in a blog post, "When an Internet application doesn't work as expected or your connection seems flaky, how can you tell whether there is a problem caused by your broadband ISP (Internet service provider), the application, your PC (personal computer), or something else?"

To the average person, they really would not be able to tell. Actually to the average network engineer, they would not be able to really tell either. Only when a high level customer has an issue where there is high latency on a specific route is when there is an issue. When there is money paid because service level agreements are not met due to latency, then it is a problem. If it is found that the SLA's were not met because another network did something to slow it down, it could get ugly. An ISP's SLA is a very big deal and if it is tripped it will cost them a lot of money.

We know the internet should be neutral. We know it is not and we know how to measure it. The biggest issue is since the internet is not regulated these are all hypothetical's. Putting it bluntly, so what do we do now?

The FCC can demand that the internet is regulated, but they can only control the traffic that flows through the U.S.A.. Currently the majority of the internet users are in India and Asia. The FCC will not be completely effective unless they reach a global agreement.

In order for net neutrality to work, every public and private network needs to get on the same page, otherwise this argument will continue to be circular.

Right now there is no real end in sight, but as the world becomes more reliant on the internet, it is a problem that is not going away.

Telx Continues to Expand in 2009

Telx, one of the country’s largest interconnection and colocation data center providers, has announced its expansion into an additional 14,000 square foot facility at 111 8th Avenue in lower Manhattan. The fully conditioned site will house Telx’s Financial Xchange, which offers financial customers some of the most diverse and reliable low latency networks coupled with proximity to other business-critical financial networks. With added space in 111 8th Avenue, Telx can accommodate the growing demand for financial “cross-connects,” or network connections between businesses and financial companies. The site also offers direct connectivity to the critical trading infrastructure networks as well as basic colocation.
According to Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Worthen in a January 7, 2009 article; “To cut costs during the recession, many businesses running out of space in their own data centers have turned to third-party data center providers to rent out space. Demand for these services rose 14 percent from a year earlier in 2008 … .”
Telx’s expansion at 111 8th Avenue is an answer to this increasing customer demand. The building currently acts as a hub for more than 80 percent of the exchange-directed fiber connections running in New York. Telx’s superior connectivity streamlines the distance market data travels and delivers customers best-in-class speed for a reliable, high-performance solution.
“Despite a down economy, customers continue to seek low latency, close proximity colocation space and the opportunity for vast choice in interconnections in order to optimize their network and increase productivity and efficiency,” said Tesh Durvasula, Chief Business and Marketing Officer for Telx. “Expanding our presence at 111 8th Avenue helps us to ensure that customers – especially those in the financial sector – in need of quick data transport, reliable network uptime and more than 145 choices in potential interconnections can find everything they need with Telx.”
This new space at 111 8th Avenue is connected to other Telx spaces in that building as well as other Telx NYC Metro locations at 60 Hudson Street, NYC; 100 Delawanna Avenue, Clifton NJ and 300 Boulevard East, Weehawken, NJ. This also allows all these facilities to have the same direct link to the financial exchanges. Telx expansion space is available for occupancy in February 2009. For more information, visit www.telx.com.

New Sun Data Center to Save 11,000 Metric Tons a Year

Sun Microsystems just unveiled their new data center in Broomfield that will save the company $1 million per year in energy costs. Along with $1 million savings it will also save 11,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Good for the company and good for the environment.

The Rocky Mountain News reported, between 2000 and 2006, data center energy consumption more than doubled in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Consumption exceeded that of all the country's color televisions.

The facility was an old Storage Tek that is 496,000 square feet, which Sun has consolidated into the new 125,000 square foot data center. Their servers process a lot more information and require much less power per cabinet.

Sun has an automated cooling in the centers that turn up the cooling based on server utilization.

"You match what you need, where you need it, and that makes it brutally efficient," said Don Nelson, Sun's senior director of global lab and data center design services, of the center's overall design.

This is a trend that will appear more and more often. Currently the most popular data center in the world is the Switch Communications SuperNap. They have built their data centers under their patented TSCIF model to be the most energy efficient data centers in the world. The most impressive part of this is that their data centers also have the more power per square foot than any other data center in the world.

Sun's new energy efficient model is along the same lines as the Supernap in Las Vegas, NV and hopefully they will have some similar success.

Ex-CEO Sell Mansion for $100

The former chief executive of Lehman Brothers has deeded his multimillion-dollar Jupiter Island mansion to his wife — for $100.

Lehman Brothers went under in September, much of the blame was placed on their CEO who was accused of aggressively running the company into the ground. According to the Denver Post Richard Fuld left the company and remains under federal investigation into whether bank executives misled investors about the company's assets. The move may not protect the mansion if there is a civil judgment against Fuld within four years of the deed transfer.

So in summary, Fuld, creates one of the largest bankruptcies of all time, makes the American people pay for it and then finds yet another loophole to sell his mansion to his wife for $100. This guy is something else, isn't this how the economy wound up in this situation?

65,000 Jobs cut, on Monday

On Monday alone, companies across the employment spectrum announced more than 65,000 job cuts in the United States and around the world, a stark sign that businesses are enduring a painful, protracted downturn.

They are jobs from every employment spectrum. According to the New York Times Monday’s toll included 20,000 cuts at Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of construction and mining machinery; 8,000 jobs at the wireless provider Sprint Nextel; 7,000 workers at Home Depot, and 8,000 from the expected merger of the pharmaceutical makers Pfizer and Wyeth. The beleaguered automaker General Motors announced that it would cut shifts at plants in Michigan and Ohio, where the downturn has hit hardest, eliminating some 2,000 jobs.

Companies are fine tuning their work forces everywhere. 2009 is about survival and it appears the consensus is that if the jobs are cut early, there is a better chance of hitting an economic forecast.

Ironically many of the companies that do the reporting may also be facing hard times, as in the major newspapers. Not just local trade publications, major newspapers such as the New York Times are feeling the pressure.

When names like Home Depot, Sprint, and General Motors are preparing for a hard year, it might be a good idea to take note.

Experts say the worst is yet to come. Lets keep our fingers crossed.

Get Off Your Phone and Drive

Cell phones have become a problem for people on the roads. Driving while talking or texting on the phone has caused many accidents. It is a distraction that takes the focus off of the main purpose for being in the vehicle.

The Rocky Mountain News reports that parents are trying to stop their kids from having access to their phones while driving. This is good, not only for inexperienced drivers, but for people in general. Drivers seem to have their hands full with driving alone. Many states have made driving while talking on the phone illegal, as we know, not all are deterred.

Aegis Mobility has come up with a GPS technology that will track the phone.

The DriveAssistT system will disable a phone at driving speeds and send a message to callers or texters saying the person they are trying to reach is driving. But because that person could be a nondriving passenger, the approach is a blunt tool.

The auto responder is a nice touch. Not only is it safe, it is polite as well. Aegis Mobility might be on to something. This is good for people everywhere, young and old. Thanks Aegis, lets hope you take off.

More Companies Leaning on Social Media for Marketing

Marketing dollars are drying up and companies are looking to social media to get their word out. In fact there are PR firms that will set up and manage a Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or even a Youtube page for their clients.

According to the News & Observer "There are tons of studies that say word-of-mouth is more effective than any other marketing, and this is essentially word-of-mouth online," said Jim Tobin, who heads Ignite Social Media in Cary and is co-author of a self-published book on the phenomenon, "Social Media is a Cocktail Party."

This cocktail party is giving a lot of people the voice they had been hoping add sales would give them for years. It is allowing companies to get in front of the people they want to get in front of. It is targeted, deliberate and effective.

If used properly, the social medias are a gold mine. Occasionally people may overdo the personal marketing with too many updates on sites like Facebook or Myspace, but for the most part the social media sites are a very easy and effective tool.

Newspapers and radio stations who survive on add revenue will need to evolve and keep the social media piece in mind. The internet has made the world flat and the degrees of separation seem to be decreasing.

That being said, I am going to go set up our Facebook page.

Verizon Wireless to Offer Digital VOIP Hub

Verizon Wireless has launched a residential VOIP play with a digital touch screen voice over IP hub that can text and will offer some web applications.

According to Information Week After plugging it into a broadband router and paying the monthly $34.99 service fee, users can get unlimited calls anywhere in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The device also can send and receive text, picture, and video messages, as well as unlimited SMS messages to anyone on a Verizon Wireless phone.

The hub will be available after February 1, for $199 after a mail in rebate. This typically means the hub will cost almost double but with a contract of some sort the consumer can have the discount to get the phone for $199.00.

Theoretically this is a smart play if there is a consumer that is interested in consolidating their local an LD and want to have text and picture messaging to their home.

However most of the long distance these days is done on cell phones and the cost for a residential phone line is more than half the cost of this new service.

In a down economy, where cash is king, the residential service it needs to start at a lower price point. Right now business VOIP services offer unlimited North American calling for $25.00 and the phone are less money. Sure there won't be the text and picture features, but then again, that is what cell phones are for.

Verizon wireless is a little ahead of it's time on this one.

No Company is Safe from Layoff

No company is safe from that dirty word layoff. Layoff's are here and here to stay for a while. What makes recent news so unique is the type of companies that have recently announced. These are house hold names that are making wave, companies like IBM, Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts (EA Sports.. It's in the game), Sega, Hewlett-Packard with many more to come.

The business community has this sense of uncertainty where staying flat is the new growth and some say that survival mode should be a way of life.

Companies are trying to get as lean and mean as possible. Running as efficiently as possible will be what determines which direction a company will go in 2009. Laying people off is one way to run more efficiently, but there is still more the equation.

There are as a couple schools of thought on how to achieve this. The first key ingredient is automation, the fewer strokes it takes to achieve a task, the less resource it will take to get the job done.

The second is accuracy, the closer a company or individual can come to getting it right the first time, the better. Time is money and the more that gets done, the more money made. A sturdy foundation of knowledge and training will assist in this.

The last key component should be back up. Make sure to keep the information secured and backed up. If a company loses their CRM or accounting package at the wrong time, it could be enough to force the lights out. A solid back up system will allow everyone to sleep a little better at night.

Companies are going to lay people off, it's a reality, but if they do, they need to make sure their processes are complete before they remove a key component. Otherwise things will get dropped and the mistakes will be more expensive without the employee as it was with the additional salary.

Chef Boyardee and Faxes

In the mid-1980s the facsimile or fax machine became a must have device in businesses around the world. The origins of the facsimile machine date back to the mid-19th century, however it took over a hundred years for it to catch on. Video communication, on the other hand, is finally working towards it ubiquitous adoption in business and it only took fifty some odd years. I purposely refused to call this video conferencing, opting instead for communication. There are too many forms of video communication that are being adopted. Video calling is bound to become the new desk phone. Today, more and more companies have VoIP handsets on the desk. The video phone is just a hardware step up, yet running over the same IP connection. It is so darn easy to call or receive a video call, once you plug in the hardware. I tried it out several months ago after reading about Scott Wharton, from Broadsoft fame, leaving to start VidTel. I have spent the past year searching, testing and adopting various forms of video communication for our business. So, back to the fax. What is the connection? Well, back in the 80's, it was cool to have a fax. Today, most businesses have a fax machine, yet it is now not so cool, since the analog P.O.S. is not so good for sending anything that you want the receiving party to see with any true clarity. I actually get a little pissed off if someone requests that I fax them a document; my typical reply is, do you mind if I scan that document and email it to you?

So, what is the correlation? If every lemonade stand and widget company has a fax, why not a video connection?

Video communication devices are getting stronger, more stable and less expensive. Video codecs such as the recent H264.SVC (ratified by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group, or VCEG in Nov 2007), have allowed stable and clear communication over a standard Internet connection. Go check out Vidyo, Inc., the company that just won the Frost & Sullivan 2009 North American Conferencing and Collaboration Product of the Year. Vidyo's H264.SVC codec is amazing. It works on various pieces of equipment, from your road warrior laptop on the low-end. up to the high-end HD Telepresence System. (By the way, I still think the coolest high-end immersive video experience comes from Digital Video Enterprises (DVE) and their guaranteed eye contact units, which by the way, also work on H264.SVC. HD videoconferencing has become affordable. Since the clarity of a HD video conference is amazing, more and more businesses will adopt it. Others, unwilling to spend even a few thousand on HD video conferencing, might settle for video communication in one form or another; whether it be video calling (check out Vidtel.com, the company that will probably be providing you with video calling in the next year), web collaboration with video cams, or some other form. However, as the various forms of video conferencing, video calling and video via web collaboration platforms all drive businesses to use video as if it were the ubiquitous fax machine, we will all be a bit more connected. Who knows, as we see our kitchen appliances beginning to be built with bluetooth and wi-fi connectivity, you might start getting advice from Chef Boyardee on the front of your microwave oven.








Scott Charter
WBS Connect

"Warning, Prostitution Free Zone."

Speaking of nothing technical whatsoever, during the inauguration police will be hanging signs that say "Warning, Prostitution Free Zone." According to WUSA Those who disobey could be fined 300 dollars, and even jailed.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't prostitution already illegal? Therefore, shouldn't that zone be prostitution free already? I am not sure how I would feel if I were in a strange city and I saw a sign that said that it was a prostitution free zone. It seems like should go without saying, reminding folks of the problem could make it worse.

The "fill in the blank" zone analogies could go on forever. Point being, the strategy might need some retooling.

Cell Phone Users to Expect Delays

President Elect Barak Obama is not officially the President yet, but he is already impacting the communication networks. The new day and age of politics is here and the inauguration is expected to be one of the busiest communication days ever. People will be twittering, blogging, calling and texting.

According to the Washington Post,Pre-inauguration concertgoers who flocked to the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday sent about 10 times the volume of wireless calls, text messages, pictures and videos as on the busiest hour of a typical day, causing scattered outages that customers who gather for President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in should expect again today, company officials said.

The major cell carriers all have confirmed they have plans and back up plans but suffice it to say there will be delays. From a sheer volume stand point there will be just too many people sending too much information.

The IP networks should be very happy though. The blogging, twittering, facebooking, digging and flikring that will be going on will find traffic spikes that are far higher than normal.

The new age of communications is meeting the new age of politics which will make for a very busy Tuesday Night.

DC Power Use Increasing in Data Centers

The idea of wide spread use of DC power in the Data Center has been getting quite a bit of attention. Most arguments against using DC for most equipment is that power supplies in most rack mounted equipment is AC so adoption has an immediate barrier as well as the additional design consideration required to deliver DC circuits.

The major push for using DC power is the inherent inefficiencies of power conversion in the path from utility to servers. An InfoWorld article (http://tinyurl.com/847lt3) points out the inefficiencies in converting 16,000 VAC to 440 VAC to 220 VAC then finally to 110 VAC which then hits UPSes that convert AC to DC then back to AC and is then finally delivered to the rack. This leads up a loss of 50 - 70 percent through numerous steps of inefficient power conversion.

Recent developments in the enterprise server space indicates that major players (HP IBM SUN) will be making servers with native DC power supplies. Data Centers are constantly being pushed up against the wall when it comes to power consumption. Of course, there are caveats to DC power such as voltage loss using 46 VDC depending on the length of the cable run (20 percent drop in voltage every 100 feet) that need to be considered.

With major enterprise hardware manufacturers getting on board we will see less objections to getting straight out DC power directly to our racks and allow more growth. Solutions must be put out there to address power constrictions for an ever growing need to fuel the information age.


Danny Kim
WBS Connect

Bartz to Rebuild Yahoo??

I read today in a number of places including the Rocky Mountain News Yahoo Inc. named technology veteran Carol Bartz as its new chief executive Tuesday, bringing in a no-nonsense leader known for developing a clear focus - something that has eluded the struggling Internet company during a three-year slump.

Understandably their numbers on Wall Street have been down, but their site is still number one. According to Alexa.com they still have the top rated web sites ON THE PLANET. Most companies try to find ways to drive traffic to their sites so they can utilize their viewers. Bartz has inherited a nice problem to have. A lot of traffic that needs to be put to good use.

Bartz explained she wants to give Yahoo some "friggin breathing room" which is absolutely possible. She has a reputation as a no nonsense type of person. If she surrounds herself with good people, then the Yahoo machine will be in for an oil change rather than a complete overhaul.

Traffic is the key, since she has it. She will be fine.

The Value of a Datacenter Part II

Previously key factors to understanding power delivery to a site were explained. Understanding how the power is delivered and the redundancy factor associated with the power and mechanical equipment allows for a solid baseline for the value of the facility. With that said it is key to understand that unlimited power to a site doesn’t mean it is a top tier facility. If there is not robust connectivity options to the site it I just a building with power.
After the Telecom craze of 1996-2001 connectivity rich facilities or Telco hotels were strategically located in many metropolitan areas. These facilities had extensive fiber infrastructure built into them and were eventually developed as the focal collocation facilities in the market. Within the Telco hotel there is usually a centralized Meet Me Room that all cross connects are facilitated from. This allows the land lord to control the connectivity within the facility as well as manage riser space and conduit builds. As the legacy Telco Hotels filled and the need for Datacenter space increased new facilities were built. The new facilities were generally located close to power substations but not always on net with the telecom providers.
When evaluating any facility new or old it is important to understand the following. 1) What carriers have lit services in the MMR or facility? Not all facilities have MMR’s. 2.) What carriers are in the manhole in the street and what type of services can they offer. 3.) When evaluating the carriers in the manhole/MPOE make sure you look at how the circuits can be delivered into the building. Are there diverse conduit banks into the building, is there specific areas of concern along the penetration that construction workers may interrupt the service and 4.) Ask each carrier you are interested in connecting with to walk the site with you and provide detailed fiber maps of their pathway to and around the site.
There are several third party groups that will assist in working with the carriers and provide detailed information regarding network availability to the site. One I can recommend and have used in the past is Amesbury Consulting- Guy Ashton is the principal.
The bottom line is that in order to properly understand just how good or bad the facility is that you may but your infrastructure in you must be comfortable with the power and it must have ample network facilities to support your business

RDM

Skype's iPhone Ap Could Be Near

Skype's new iPhone Ap might not be too far away. The Rocky Mountain News reported that Skype, a subsidiary of eBay Inc., said last week that a version of its Internet calling and instant-messaging software is available for Google Inc.'s Android cell phone platform as a free download. And it indicated an iPhone Skype program isn't far behind.

The major hold up had been the consumer needed to be in a Wi-Fi hotspot in order for the service to work. The Skype service could not integrate with the cell service to make calls. Since all new iPhones are now 3G it is possible that the network might be strong enough to make an internet call.

There are two important items to take away from this. The first is that Apple is making it easier and easier to run your life just from your hand held computer. Soon they will allow Skype customer to bring their Skype accounts to the iPhone making long distance rates very low. This will put pressure on a number of their competitors.

The second thing it will do is open up to the video calling. Skype's bread and butter is the video calling. Yes the instant messaging and the person to person calling is nice, but the video calling is what they are known for. There are cell phones now that can run a mobile video call. Once Apple perfects it, (or decides to release it) we will see a whole new way to call people.

First things first, lets see how the Android does with the Skype service.

China's Internet Users Now over 298 Milion

China's fast-growing population of Internet users has risen to 298 million after passing the United States last year to become the world's largest, a government-sanctioned research group said Tuesday.

Currently the USA has about 305 million people total. China has almost that many on the internet. Statistics like these are a good reason President-elect Obama will have high speed internet access on the top of his list.

An article in the Washington Post online illustrates that the President-elect does have his work cut out for him. There is not a question that the country needs to bring high speed to the rural areas. The mode of transmission and the allocation of funds seems to be the point of contention. Currently the penetration in the USA is far below where it needs to be for the US, to compete with China.

In an article in the Denver Post, it also states that the penetration in China is low at a 22.6%. This means they too have room to grow.

Fasten your seatbelts: the cloud computing ride still has a lot of track ahead

Some say cloud computing is the next huge trend. Others believe it is over-hyped. My take is that both groups probably are right. While cloud is going to be huge, it is definitely not for all (probably only for 80% of human race). Nobody seems to agree yet on the exact definition of cloud computing, yet the best and shortest explanation comes from John M. Willis, "the abstraction of the hardware and software from the service". Most agree that cloud computing is a general term to refer to the scalable increase/decrease of specialized infrastructure allowing for computing, storage and memory to support a host of applications from the Internet or other some other Wide Area Network (*the cloud is an early networking reference, where a cloud was drawn to represent a large network, such as the Internet. Data would input on one side, and output somewhere else,...thus data going through a cloud. As long as the data got to its destination, the middle portion, or cloud was not important to the end user). This general concept of cloud computing incorporates a wide area of uses: sofware as a service (SaaS), Web 2.0, as well as other applications that now can be accessed via a web browser, while the backend application and data are stored on servers somewhere else. What makes cloud computing so attractive is the ability to easily leverage an existing infrastructure of computing/storage/hardware in a specialized atmospherically controlled environment, managed by a staff of IT staff that are in charge of ensuring 100% uptime of the computing platform.

Stealing from John Willis again, cloud computing breaks down into three buckets: Service Based (SaaS: such as SalesForce.com), Platform Based (PaaS: such as Enkiconsulting.net. Here, you have an application, but need a service provider to manage the underlying infrastructure for you, along with keeping the firewall/security in check, as well as monitoring the health of the application), and lastly...Pure Infrastructure (IaaS: such as Amazon. You get the infrastructure, but you better know how to cluster servers and manage the underlying OS and related technical issues). While this three bucket overview SaaS, PaaS and IaaS may be an oversimplification, it is a great way to quickly explain the major differences and uses of cloud computing.

Any organization that might be considering to purchase new or additional servers, storage, and memory, is a potential candidate for cloud computing. The 800 pound gorilla in cloud of course is still Amazon, with their cloud which is massive in size, and small on additional services to support customization. This is the commodity model of cloud computing, similar to a big bank vault. Those with data can come and use the vault, and only pay for the amount of storage or computing they use in this vault. However, the Amazon vault is not currently offering a large array of services to assist the depositor with managing or monitoring the health and operations of the data being stored or computed. Many companies have sprung up to provide add-on services to the Amazon cloud.

Still cloud computing is not for everyone. If you are not planning on turning on a computer in the next few years, you might not be a candidate for SaaS, PaaS or IaaS. I hope my sarcasm and bias towards the cloud does not get me too many flames. A great example of a company that has a great idea/service and built it using a cloud computing infrastructure is Animoto.com. With only five employees, this company is revolutionizing the way people create slideshows/music videos. Since they were built in a cloud, they were able to handle the explosion. One day they were doing a few renders per day on 20 servers, and then they got a mention on Slashdot. Within the week, they were up to 5000 servers. After the initial buzz died down, they went down to 100 servers. The elastic growth up and down would have been impossible without the cloud. SaaS and IaaS is already being done well, and will continue to mature over time with more entrants. Look for Sun and Google to give Amazon a run for its money. PaaS is probably going to see a lot of growth, due to the demand from enterprises that need the assurance of an SLA with 99.999%. This area of cloud computing is what I believe has the most room for exciting growth. In full disclosure, my company has begun to play in the PaaS space.

This cloud computing thing is just getting started. I can't wait to see where this ride takes us.



Scott Charter
WBS Connect

Infinera Customers Headed to the Top

Infinera has quickly made a name for themselves. They have found a way to manufacture and sell equipment to telecommunications networks at a fraction of the traditional costs. Their gear allows carriers to produce more circuits at a faster speed while spending less money.

In an article in CNN Money they talk about the impact Infinera is having on the global traffic shaping. The article points out that the major customers of Infinera happen to hold major positions in the top ten traffic rankings. Most notably are Savvis, XO, Global Crossing and Level 3. For a complete traffic ranking, check out Renesys.com. (On a side note the guys at Renesys do a great job and have a fantastic blog.)

The question then is, which cam first the chicken or the egg? Did they A. have the traffic and bought the Infinera gear to support it? Or B. did the Infinera gear allow the carriers to procure the service for a much lower cost, allowing the carriers to lure customers away from other networks, pushing them up the traffic rankings??

The answer is B.

And the whole world felt the affects of it. Over the past 6 months the wholesale prices have dropped significantly. It is no coincidence that Infinera's last major carrier customer was installed about 10 months ago, creating a very competitive environment.

To say Infinera has made an impact on the global telecom market is an understatement.

IT Stimulus Package

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has posted a research paper detailing how an IT stimulus package from the government can speed up economic recovery. Focusing on key areas of national IT such as Broadband networks, Health IT, and Smart power grids it touches on areas that warrant greater public interest.

Broadband networks is a great national investment when the government puts funds dedicated to stimulate the growth of broadband network penetration in the US market. We already have the knowledge and the people so this would be a industry that would immediately contribute to overall economic growth and ensure we have a robust national IT infrastructure.

Health IT would considerably improve the quality and cost of medical care in the US. They cite that a 10 billion investment into these systems would create upwards to 212,000 new jobs for a year. There are many challenges to getting such a large scale project to completion that several other countries with a successful deployment do not have such as the lack of a single payor system. If we want to fix the health care system we need to start taking a very close and hard look at how we are doing Health IT and invest.

Smart power grid systems is another large part of our ability to keep the economy running and our country secure. The United States consumes over 4 billion megawatt-hours worth of electricity annually and our appetite for energy will only grow. Smart metering and overall monitoring of a power grid is surprisingly lacking in many states and municipalities.

With so many industries asking for a bailout its important to keep the basics in mind. Although IT has only been around for a small part of our history it has proven to be essential to modern life and should be treated as critical component to our economy and security.



Danny Kim

Terremark Brings Dynamic Capacity Management to The Enterprise Cloud(tm)

Terremark Worldwide, Inc. announced they will be rolling out their Dynamic Capacity Management to their Enterprise Cloud. Terremark, who was most well know for their Data Center, the Nap of Americas in Miami has been making a strong push in the managed service space, most are calling cloud computing. They understand that the infrastructure they have invested in can ultimately help their clients become more efficient.

In a press release they said, "With the enhancements we are introducing, The Enterprise Cloud has taken the next step in offering increased control of IT environments to our customers," said Randy Rowland, General Manager of Managed Hosting Services for Terremark. "The Enterprise Cloud's combination of highly scalable, dedicated cloud-based resources with a real-time burst mode gives the enterprise a more agile and economic IT engine than ever before"

Cloud Computing in it's truest form is like an on-demand data center environment. The consumer will use only what they need and pay for only what they use. This is very appealing to many IT directors as they cut down on colocation cost, bandwidth commits and capex spent on hardware.

Terremark has done a nice job with their product. There will be a lot of competition in the next few months and the companies that take off will have the strongest infrastructure to back up their marketing efforts.

2009 will be about efficiency. Data center services and managed services on demand is a nice way to be efficient.

Wesbell Technologies to Distribute SimpleSignal's SIP Trunking

SimpleSignal, a leading service provider of hosted telephone systems for businesses, and Wesbell Technologies, the sole North American distributor of the AastraLink Response Point solution, announced today that they have entered into a distribution agreement to market SimpleSignal's SIP Trunking solution to Wesbell's AastraLink Response Point resellers.

Automation is number one priority in many IT circles and moving to a SIP platform does just that. Most business are taking the commiunications into a cloud and voice communications is no different. SIP Trunking is a nimble technology that not only offers fantastic functionality, but the cost savings are phenomenal as well.

"This distribution arrangement with Wesbell Technologies means thousands of businesses will have access to our SimpleSIP Trunking solution and can gain access to advanced calling features using the same telephony system they have in-house," said Michael Sterl, vice president of Sales for SimpleSignal. "During these tough economic times, SimpleSIP Trunking allows companies to improve their workers' productivity and connectivity in an economical way."

We use a SIP product for all of our voice needs. We have a main office along with a number of remote users and we would not do business any other way.

Wesbell Technologies just made a step in the right direction.













PR Web

Best Buy to Sell Used iPhones

Best Buy Co. Inc. has begun selling used iPhones for $50 less than the retail price of new devices.

Until now there has not been an easy way to go and find an original iPhone unless the consumer goes through an online retailer such as eBay or Craigslist.

According to an article online, Best Buy is going to compete with Walmart, who just started selling the new version this month.

As someone who just accidentally broke their iPhone I was very happy to hear Best Buy is doing this. In order to get a new phone, I had to step up to a new 2 year contract and do it through the AT&T store after a few trips to the Apple Store.

Best Buy will do very well with this.

Clearwire Arrives in Portland

Clearwire (and Intel) have introduced the city of Portland to "Clear," its 4G WiMAX wireless broadband service - part of its "Let's Be Clear" campaign. Clear provides connectivity for both consumers and businesses and supports the Portland metro area.

Clearwire offers their 4G service through it's WiMAX network. Rates run between $10 to 49 per month. Consumers can even use a dongle with a USB attachment to plug into their cell phones or laptops.

According to TG Daily there will be three Clear stores opening January 10, 2009.

The storefront has worked well for many carriers. Take the Apple stores, Sprint stores and other carriers in the malls.

Opening the stores is a good idea. Many consumers feel better when they can walk in and physically see a new product or talk to someone about service issues.

The adoptability and quality of this product are going to be what drives it. If the service is lightning fast and the product is easy to install, Clearwire could do very well. If not, people will continue to use their cell phone carrier to get online. They are planning a nationwide rollout, so lets watch Portland Oregon and see if this is going to take off.

Sun Buys Cloud Computing Vendor Q-Layer

Sun Microsystems has bought Q-layer, a Belgian vendor of software for automating the management of computing clouds, it said Wednesday. Cloud Computing companies, like Q-layer, are prime targets for aquisition in 2009. These transactions will be a win win all around. The provider has intellectual property and the ideal suitor will have infrastructure and a platform to run it on.

The financial terms were not disclosed online. According to the article, Q-layer is the developer of NephOS, a system designed to allow enterprises to create and manage their own private computing clouds by linking facilities operated by different divisions of the enterprise. The software works with Windows and Linux, according to Q-layer, which says it has partnerships with Microsoft and VMWare.

This is a great pick up by Sun. They have more storage than anyone around. They have the name that people trust and they have the expertise to support the growth.

Hibernia Atlantic to Build New Subsea Cable

Hibernia Atlantic announced that they will build a new submarine cable network for the Department of Enterprise Trade & Investment of Northern Ireland and Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources for Ireland. The new cable was announced online today.

Hibernia has done a nice job of building their network inside North America as well as in the UK. This new cable is exciting because it offers a new wealth of capacity and the ability to directly and securely connect to Canada, US, UK and mainland Europe. Currently there are areas of congestion that will completely go away once the new path has been established.

This is a huge win for Hibernia giving them stability and a real value add for years to come.

Here is a map of their new expansion.

Online Security Breaches up 50%

Online security breaches were up 50% in 2008 from 2007. The Washington Post reported that the personal records of 35.7 million Americans were stolen in 2008.

Speculation is that the rise of organized crime mixed with the economy will keep this trend moving upward until companies increase the security internally. The increased security not only needs to protect from outside hackers but from internal staff as well.

Memo to all your CIO's out there, keep your information locked down because people pay good money for that information.

The Rise of the Virtual Worker

I just love the folks over at Nemertes Research. They put out some great reports on a variety of subjects relating to emerging technologies. Ted Ritter, one of their analysts, was nice enough to recently forward me some recent benchmarks. I dug out some cool information on the growing trend towards more virtual workers. Nemertes analysts spend hundreds of hours conducting detailed, open-ended interviews with IT executives across a range of industries. They compile the results into comprehensive trend, technology, and business analysis and use the baseline information to create business-value benchmarks. So, it is safe to say they are crunching numbers on the subjects they research. So, back to the continued rise of the virtual worker.

In order to cut costs and attract the best talent, many organizations are paying folks to stay at home. I know this first hand, as our company has a large percentage of our staffers working from home. Whether that home is across town from our main office, or across the globe, we are attracting talent to work with us by allowing them to stay put. In this day and age of video conferencing, VoIP phone and video phone service, why would we want not allow some of our staff to work from home. Nemertes' research has tracked an incease in the amount of virtual workers in 2007 and 2008. 89% of companies in their research identified themselves as having some sort of virtual workplace. On average, this group had 29.8% of their employees as being virtual, which was a rise from last year's 27%. Organizations in their research that had over $1 million in revenue had an even higher percentage of virtual workers, ranging from 76 to 100% being virtual.

What are some of the reasons for this increase? More companies are implementing green policies, in order to cut down on energy consumption. So, employees are allowed to work from home either full or part time. Also, in order to attract and retain high-value employees, this added bonus seems to be more common to throw in. Finally, our work habits are changing. As more and more commerce is down in the information age, our work force has become more accustomed to working reomotely, and see this remote work option as a perk.

What are you doing at your company to retain key talent and cut down on your costs? Unless you are running a coal mine, or a fabrication plant, can you honestly come up with a good reason not to allow some or all of your workers to have a portion of their work experience completed from home?



Scott Charter
WBS Connect

Netflix Steaming Was Only a Matter of Time

Netflix and LG announced a partnership that will allow Netflix users to instantly stream movies directly from the movie rental service. According to a number of sources including CNN, said no additional device is needed in order to access the service.

The new television will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

The line between computer monitor and televisions has officially blurred. The flat screens that sit on the desk tops are the same that hang on the walls or sit in the living rooms.

This opens the door for other movie rental companies such as Blockbuster to partner with an LG competitor. Not only the movie rental companies but companies such as Tivo will potentially partner with manufacturers to make their adoption rates even easier.

This may not seem huge now, but the concept will push things in a new direction.

Twitter Hackers Make Big News

As a Twitter user I too noticed the extra few Direct Messages yesterday from hackers. It was a little annoying, but to find the story in every major technology section is amazing. Evan Williams, nice work! Evan Williams is the CEO of Twitter and his social micro blogging site just made business headline nationwide.

Hackers stole the identity of celebrities such as President Elect Obama and Britney Spears. The goal of the scam was to get Twitter users to go to web sites under the illusion that Twitter users such as Obama or Spears invited them. Presumably to steal information.

The real story here is that Twitter has arrived and in a big way.

Greener IT

A great article on ZD Net details the kind of green resolutions many of us would like to make. Two ways WBS Connect will be driving their green initiative will be with business video communications and Cloud Computing.

WBS Connect has been on the path to bring high quality video conferencing technology to the marketplace using the remarkable H.264 SVC codec. Video conferencing technology has improved by leaps and bounds and is now becoming even more accessible as the broadband revolution takes hold all over the world. Anyone with a high speed internet connection can have access to video conferencing.

Cloud Computing allows it's users to only pay for what they use. They will no longer need to purchase more servers than they need, same goes for space, power and bandwidth. The efficiencies in Cloud Computing almost speak for themselves.

Virtualization and cloud computing are both great options to getting your IT deployments greener. These new technologies should not be missed, so much is developing in the cloud computing environment and off-sourcing your services helps both your bottom line and the planet while delivering you scalable on-demand capacity.

Whether its a greener IT deployment, or more powerful and scalable solutions, there are so many things to feel good about with these technologies.

Danny Kim

Microsoft Potentially to Cut 17% of Workforce?

There are rumors right now that Microsoft may be cutting 17% of it's workforce. This is a big number to any company, but to the technology giant, this means roughly 15,000 jobs. This is according Fudzilla. Could be a very interesting quarter for Microsoft, who's Xbox is feeling the heat of the Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation. Not to mention the stiff competition from Apple on the other side of the house. Even an 800 pound gorilla like Microsoft will be forced to make changes Q1.

China Convicts 11 for Software Piracy

Software piracy has gone on for quite some time and Microsoft has typically taken the brunt of the effort. Most of the pirates have fled the United States to make their quiet retirements away from the U.S. soil. It seemed safest this way, since most other countries did not prosecute anti-copyright violators.

China recently stepped up and convicted 11 individuals handing out sentences ranging from 18 months to 6 and a half years.

You can read more about this in the New York Times.

Box.net Makes File Sharing Easy

File Sharing can be a chore at times. It feels like the stars have to align in order to get someone else a simple file. "If only I could download this onto a jump dirve and walk it over..." this is hard however if the two people are not in the same physical location. Well Box.net has finally made file sharing easy.

Box.net has offered a filing cabinet in the cloud where permissions may be granted and file sharing has been made easier. This goes for any type of file.

In the past some have set up an FTP site, but not everyone is as technologically advanced. Box.net can be used to access music, or homework or work projects.

Just another example of a company noticing a problem, finding a solution and taking the time to market it properly.

Wikipedia Raises $6.2 Million

Wikipedia announced they have raised an additional $6.2 million in operating capital which reportedly will sustain them until June. A number of sources reported the funding, including Computerworld.

Wikipedia requested the funding and apparently their requests were heard. The round gives them credibility and in some ways validates their importance online.

$6.2 million is a large sum of money. If this is for development money, and will only sustain until June, they surely have some big things coming. Keep an eye on Wikipedia.

Colocating for Peering?

If you run a network, choosing the right data center partner to colocate in has been a very tricky and permanent decision. These days the decision is so much more than the price of space and power. It has to do with connectivity to major carriers along with connectivity to the major peering fabrics.

The major internet backbones have a presence in the major meet me rooms in North America. The colocation providers need the carriers in their space in order to add value to their clients. If the carriers have a POP in the colocation facility, it makes for a much easier sale. Companies such as Equinix, Telx, CRG West, Switch and Data, Terramark and the Supernap all have done a great job of ensuring there is ample connectivity into their facilities, which is why they are the leaders in the data center space.

The peering fabrics are a little different animal. They are, for the most part, run by independent operators, some are not for profit. Most of these peering exchanges are location specific. This means that if a major network need to get to a peering exchange that is not colocated in the meet me room where they are located, it will cost them a good deal of money. It will require new MSA and who knows how long the provisioning process will take.

WBS Connect figured out a way to quickly and easily offer data center to data center connectivity. They have over 63 POP's and are in every major data center in North America. The DC2DC (Data Center to Data Center) product can be turned up in days and is affordably priced.

Peering coordinators and Network Managers no longer have to purchase space, power, cross connects just to reach a specific peering fabric. WBS Connect also allows these companies to get between a variety of different vendors with only one MSA.

As 2009 begins to hit full pace, simplicity will be a key factor for those companies that plan on succeeding. Simplifying the peering needs is a great place to start.

Unlock Your iPhone 3G with Yellowsn0w

Since the evolution of the iPhone, people have tried to break into the phone to unlock it. Apparently the AT&T network along with the other available widgets and applications were not enough for some users. Now there is a choice. Yellowsnow has pulled their product out of beta to offer this commercial product to the masses. According to their site anyone can download it and with 9 or 10 simple steps the phone will be a touch screen computer, where a consumer can then make calls on.

After all the work, it appears the consumer, unless they are highly technical, is right back where they began. Then again if the consumer is technical enough, they either already cracked it, or completely disagrees with this discussion.

To the average person, once the phone is unlocked, they then have the option of going to T-Mobile. For all of the T-Mobile users, stuck in contracts, waiting for this day... Congrats! This might be one of the best days of your life. Personally, I use the iPhone and love it.

For everyone else, please send me some feedback if this helps you or not.

Happy New Year.