By LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama is calling digital security a top priority, whether it's guarding the computer systems that keep the lights on in the city and direct airliners to the right runway or those protecting customers who pay their bills online. To oversee an enhanced security system for the nation's computer networks, Obama is creating a "cyber czar" as part of a long-awaited plan stemming from a review he ordered shortly after taking office.
On Friday, Obama is expected to lay out broad goals for dealing with cyber threats while depicting the U.S. as a digital nation that needs to provide the education required to keep pace with technology and attract and retain a cyber-savvy work force. He also is expected to call for a new education campaign to raise public awareness of the challenges and threats related to cyber security.
The review, however, will not dictate how the government or private industry should tighten digital defenses. Critics say the cyber czar will not have sufficient budgetary and policy-making authority over securing computer systems and spending.
Officials familiar with the discussions say the cyber czar would be a special assistant to the president and would be supported by a new cyber directorate within the National Security Council. The cyber czar would also work with the National Economic Council, said the officials, who described the plan on condition of anonymity because it has not been publicly released.
The special assistant title is not as high in the White House hierarchy as some officials sought. It would not give the czar direct, unfettered access to the president. Instead, the official would report to senior NSC officials—a situation many say will make it difficult to make major changes within the calcified federal bureaucracy.
Government and military officials have acknowledged that U.S. computer networks are constantly assailed by attacks and scans, ranging from nuisance hacking to more nefarious probes and attacks. Some suggest that the actions at times are a form of cyber espionage from other nations, such as China.
Obama is not expected to announce who will get the job during Friday's unveiling of the review, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the selection process is ongoing. Other officials close to the issue say a handful of experts—both in and out of government—are under consideration.
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Associated Press writer Ted Bridis contributed to this report.
A recent Wall Street Journal article is reporting on the increasing number of cities sweetening the incentives for high-tech companies to move operations to places like Kalamazoo MI, or Toledo OH. Diversifying the kinds of industries these cities rely on and investing in the future are shrewd goals that will serve to bolster their local economies. Since VC and traditional bank funding have become extremely tight in these times, cities are taking an aggressive approach and capitalizing on the strong demand for investment in innovative technology companies. These cities are using financial incentives such as tax breaks, direct funding, grants, and relocation assistance in their arsenal.
Local investment firms are also working in conjunction with cities to offer attractive and aggressive packages to prospective firms with viable business plans and lure them away from traditional hot beds such as Silicon Valley.
Conventional wisdom that pushed companies to locate themselves within close physical proximity of like-minded corporations is no longer a hard and fast rule. The high cost of living, and unbearable commutes in the typical high-tech hot spots may be reason enough for startups or small tech companies to take these cities up on their offer.
This is a great example of communities creating opportunities locally through creative partnerships, even in one of the worst economies since the 1930s. Despite a sharp downturn, there are still opportunities for tech companies to flourish and evolve, creating products and service that will push us into a brighter information age.
Key Highlights: • New relationship joins CFN Services’ low latency network with Telx’s proximity hosting advantages. • CFN’s ultra low latency solution guarantees a round-trip connection between Telx’s NY metro and Chicago facilities that is at or below 16.6 milliseconds. • Telx customers gain direct access to a leading network integrator and design firm serving the financial services industry. • A common carrier-neutral stance provides CFN and Telx customers with optimal solutions.
NEW YORK and CHICAGO (May 27, 2009) – Telx, one of the largest and fastest growing domestic interconnection and colocation data center operators, announced today that custom network provider CFN Services has added network nodes for its ultra low latency financial network in Telx facilities at 60 Hudson Street and 111 8th Avenue in New York City as well as in 600 South Federal Street in Chicago. These new nodes allow Telx Financial Exchange customers colocated in New York, New Jersey, and Chicago – including Telx customers colocated in the company’s facility at 350 East Cermak Street – access to CFN’s ultra low latency network, which guarantees speeds of 16.6 milliseconds or better.
The addition of CFN into Telx facilities helps Telx customers gain an optimized network configuration to ensure the ultra low latency for all pieces of the trading process from market data feeds, ticker plants, exchanges and other key trading platforms. These services can provide the competitive advantage that financial companies need to gain an edge in today’s market. CFN Services will also work to implement a customized plan to ensure that the network configurations are optimal based on each customer’s individual criteria.
“In the current market, financial services companies need every advantage available to thrive,” says Eric Shepcaro, CEO of Telx. “The suite of financial service providers and ultra low latency networks, such as those offered by CFN, are critical to our customers’ success. Telx remains committed to seeking out service providers who can help our customers realize their full business potential.”
In addition, the carrier-neutral stance adopted by both Telx and CFN provides added advantage for customers: by bringing a wide variety of service providers to the table to compete for your business, Telx helps customers get the lowest available service price with high-quality proximity hosting; while CFN creates custom networks utilizing optimal spans from available routes based on the customer requirements regarding latency, price, optimization, performance, and time to install.
“In addition to ultra low latency networking, CFN offers unique, performance-level SLAs that guarantee a specific latency today and network improvements that guarantee latency improvements over time,” said Wil Tirado Vice President of Engineering for CFN. “When obtained from within a Telx colocation facility, customers are assured a long-range business plan for growth that accommodates both current and future needs for decreased latency and increase space, power, and cooling over time.”
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About Telx Telx is a world-class leader in providing interconnectivity solutions through their network-neutral and network rich, colocation facilities. With over a dozen facilities in North America, Telx offers cost effective networking solutions for customers to seamlessly access diverse global networks and exchange information in a secure and reliable environment. Over 600 leading telecommunications carriers, ISPs, content providers and enterprises rely on Telx’s world-class team to support their mission-critical global infrastructure needs and to create a global connectivity marketplace to dramatically expand their business growth opportunities. Telx is a privately held company headquartered in New York City with facilities in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Miami, Phoenix, Charlotte, as well as Weehawken and Clifton, N.J. For more information about Telx, visit www.telx.com.
About CFN Services CFN Services is a managed telecom infrastructure services company providing network services for the Enterprise, Public Sector and Carrier Markets. Specializing in network planning, deployment, and managed services, including local access transport, low latency networking, and mobile backhaul optimization, CFN Services leverages the company's flagship FiberSource® network planning and optimization platform. CFN Services has provided network planning and deployment services to some of the leading wireless and wireline network operators including Verizon, AT&T, Level 3 and Sprint. For more information, visit www.cfnservices.com.
Please email mike@wbsconnect.com for more information.
The U.S. Government today just took another huge leap into the 21st century by launching a new website, data.gov. Their new site will make raw data available from several U.S. Federal Branch datasets that includes metadata, data in XML, Text/CSV, KML/KMZ, XLS, or ESRI. They give the public readily available tools that allow the people to data mine and extract information out of the available federal databases. Its refreshing to see our government taking steps to embrace information technology, this project was spearheaded by the Federal CIO Council who’s mission is act in a transformation way on how federal entities share information and collaborate.
More and more, we are seeing the U.S. government act in more transparent ways so that citizens who are interested in what their government is doing has the ability to search and sort into these massive data sources. This is yet another example of how the modern age is changing the way we view and interact with the world around us.
I am very interested in watching the progression of this site, as the degree of the accuracy and completeness of the information will ultimately decide how powerful it will be. The promise of this tool is if the dataset is large enough the general creativity of individuals and companies out there will be able to do things with the information beyond it’s intended scope.
Eventually I can envision a powerful search engine hooked into these datasets so I can search for things like, “Total spent on military contractors” or “Federal spending in Colorado” or “Official federal election results in Los Angeles County”.
This will also help the citizens keep our government honest, if they post information it is likely to be immediately copied and stored somewhere else. This way, should information be redacted at a later date, a record of it may still exist in another location. An example of this would be how Google stores cached web pages in their own databases when they crawl them. If the site is down or you just want to see what the webpage contained at the time a snapshot was taken you can compare the live site to the cached version.
I applaud our government for moving in the right direction and giving us more tools to get involved. A democracy requires the participation of its citizens and as long as we keep moving in this direction, we will be further empowered reach a more perfect union and a government thats accountable and works for all of us.
Great article in Network World. The article shows why Cloud Computing with a service component is the wave of the future. Not every company is going to have someone who is equipped to manage the internal infrastructure in the cloud. However in order to compete in today's business environment, virtualization is important. The companies that are succeeding are doing more with less. Which then points to a virtual infrastructure with a little added bonus, support.
The new breed of cloud provider offers the service component which enables any company to run as efficiently as a nimble web 2.0.
Enjoy the article.
By Denise Dubie , Network World , 05/20/2009
LAS VEGAS -- Despite the reported benefits of virtualization, a majority of IT managers polled at Interop this week say they experience problems with the technology and don't always realize the cost benefit.
Network Instruments polled 120 network managers, engineers and IT executives at Interop to learn how IT organizations are putting server and desktop virtualization technology to use. Fifty-five percent reported they virtualized mission-critical servers, including e-mail and Web servers, and another 50% said they run DNS and DHCP servers on virtual machines. And nearly 40% have already extended virtualization to their desktop environments.
Yet 55% told the network analysis vendor they experience more problems than benefits with the technology, while the remaining 45% said they had realized the benefits of virtualization. Among the problems were a lack of visibility and tools to troubleshoot performance problems in virtual environments for 27% of respondents. More than one-fourth of those polled at Interop cited a lack of training on virtual infrastructure and 21% expressed concern over an inability to secure the infrastructure.
For nearly 60%, the primary problem with virtualization was a lack of experience to appropriately manage the technology and nearly 50% said that technology implementation costs were too high, according to Network Instruments.
Managing the technology doesn't seem to have become less challenging for network managers. Last year, nearly 40% of 117 network managers polled at Interop also listed virtualization as the emerging technology that represents the "greatest monitoring challenges," according to a joint survey conducted by Network Instruments and NetQoS.
"Not surprisingly, a high number of companies have deployed critical network services on virtual machines," said Charles Thompson, product manager at Network Instruments. "The number of organizations without appropriate monitoring tools, however, definitely caught my attention. Without proper tools, application performance can unnecessarily degrade and network teams waste hours troubleshooting."
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) confirmed Wednesday that it was missing an external hard drive containing personal information for staffers of former President Bill Clinton and visitors to the Executive Office of the President.
According to Channel Web, the National Archives said in a nine-point, question-and-answer briefing posted to its web site and dated May 20 that it would offer a $50,000 reward for safe return of the hard drive.
"We do not know whether the drive was stolen, lost, or otherwise misplaced," the NARA briefing reads.
The data, according to NARA, includes social security numbers and briefings on Secret Service and White House operating procedure. A report in United Press International quoted congressional aides who said the hard drive contained more than 100,000 social security numbers, including for one of former Vice President Al Gore's daughters, along with manuals on Secret Service and White House operating procedures.
It does raise an interesting question, how secure is information?
If not designed properly, the storage unit can be hacked into, physically removed or erased. NARA said in its question-and-answer that the drive was last seen at its headquarters in College Park, Md., in October 2008 and is said to have been first reported missing on March 24, 2009. National Archives staff discovered the drive was lost thanks to an analysis project the National Archives began in March to figure out how to make data analysis more efficient.
This builds a great case for off site storage where information is not kept on a hard drive, tape or disk. If this were stored in a a large storage facility, it may not have had the opportunity to get "misplaced".
Technology is far too advanced these days to let something like this happen. This is the equivalent of being frustrated that the walkman was lost so we could not access the information to put it on the iPod.
I recently read an article on Time.com where they offered their opinion of the top 12 most influential gadgets and gizmos (http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/0,28757,1638782,00.html). I’ll recap this interesting list for you (in chronological order):
1. (1976) JVC HR-3300 videocassette recorder. This Betamax-killer was available for a mere $1400 (gee what’s that in today’s dollars?). 2. (1977) Atari 2600 video game. I remember playing pong…for hours. How easily we were entertained back then…and yes, I was very young. 3. (1979) Sony Walkman. I’m sure joggers everywhere rejoiced, but only if they could afford the $200 price tag. 4. (1982) Commodore 64. Just 64K of RAM, but the precursor to our modern business lives nonetheless. 5. (1984) Apple Macintosh. One of the first mainstream desktops to employ the beloved mouse. Takes me back to my first “real” job. 6. (1989) Nintendo Game Boy. My DS-using son is grateful. 7. (1993) Apple Newton Messagepad. Its $700 price and cumbersome size prevented it from gaining popularity. My first foray into the PDA marketplace was the Palm Pilot (still have it!). 8. (1999) Blackberry. I have to admit I had no idea the Blackberry was invented so early. Of course this $400 version looks and acts nothing like the savvy ones of today. 9. (1999) TiVo. Thank them for the DVR technology you get from cable and satellite today. A must-have in my house. 10. (2001) Apple iPod. Amen to that. I remember my first pre-iPod MP3 player. It was given to me on a company reward trip, and I can’t even remember the name of it. It held only about an hour’s worth of music and was so difficult to figure out that it ended up stuffed in a junk drawer. 11. (2002) Sanyo SCP-5300. The very first cell phone with a built-in camera. It went for $400. How far we’ve come in such a short time. 12. (2007) Apple iPhone. ‘Nuf said.
I’m sure we could add a few more to the list: the cassette player (see ya 8-track), the telephone answering machine, fax machine. What do you think they missed?
What’s shocking to me is where we’ve come in just over 30 years. Imagine where we’ll be in another 30.
Key Highlights: • Fiberlight dark fiber will now connect Telx’s Dallas facilities at 2323 Bryan Street and 8435 Stemmons Parkway to 1950 Stemmons Parkway. • Telx provides access to more than 100 carrier and enterprise networks to facilitate Ethernet and SONET/SDH connections. • Provides Fiberlight with an additional point of presence, or PoP, to offer customers in Telx’s 8435 Stemmons Parkway facility lit services up to ten gigabits.
NEW YORK (May 19, 2009) – Telx, one of the largest and fastest growing domestic interconnection and colocation data center operators, has chosen Fiberlight, LLC, a leading fiber optic solutions provider to link its two Dallas area data centers to 1950 Stemmons Parkway via a dark fiber ring. The new ring makes the Telx facility at 8435 Stemmons Parkway the region’s most interconnected network hub. Customers installing equipment in one of Telx’s two Dallas-area facilities can have low-latency access to more than 100 carrier and service providers located in the three locations over the high-quality Fiberlight optical transport network.
“Many customers choose Telx because of our ability to offer a myriad of network choices. This offers excellent growth potential for all types of businesses,” said Rose Klimovich, Vice President of Product Development and Product Management for Telx. “The addition of 1950 Stemmons Parkway to our Dallas ring offers additional bandwidth and circuit options to our customers, creating even greater possibilities for our customers.”
The Telx facility at 8435 Stemmons Parkway is also an excellent choice as a disaster recovery center since it is in a low threat zone. It offers customers a state of the art facility with low latency and reliable network options that connect facilities around the United States, providing greater network distribution and business continuity options for customers colocated in other regions.
“We are excited to continue our relationship in supporting Telx’s efforts to offer network-rich, carrier-neutral interconnection facilities. FiberLight owns and operates one of the largest and most dense fiber networks in Texas and continues our growth with this new ring,” said Ben Edmond, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing of Fiberlight. “We’re pleased to be able to offer customers a comprehensive optical networking solution that includes high reliable bandwidth coupled with excellent interconnection capabilities.”
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About Telx Telx is a world-class leader in providing interconnectivity solutions through their network-neutral and network rich, colocation facilities. With over a dozen facilities in North America, Telx offers cost effective networking solutions for customers to seamlessly access diverse global networks and exchange information in a secure and reliable environment. Over 600 leading telecommunications carriers, ISPs, content providers and enterprises rely on Telx’s world-class team to support their mission-critical global infrastructure needs and to create a global connectivity marketplace to dramatically expand their business growth opportunities. Telx is a privately held company headquartered in New York City with facilities in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Miami, Phoenix, Charlotte, and Clifton and Weehawken, NJ. For more information about Telx, visit www.telx.com.
About FiberLight, LLC FiberLight provides optical transport services including Ethernet, Wavelengths, IP, SONET and Dark Fiber within and in between more than 60 cities including; Atlanta, Washington DC, Miami, Baltimore, Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Houston, San Antonio, San Francisco, Clearwater, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, and Northern VA. The most exacting customers in the industry including telecom carriers, international carriers, government, large enterprise, content providers, and web centric businesses all rely on FiberLight to transport mission critical and delay sensitive data. For more information visit www.fiberlight.com.
Telx Media Contact: Karyn Price Bailiwick Company for Telx +1 609 397 4880 ext. 204 kprice@bailiwickpr.com
Fiberlight Media Contact: Pat Mahony Marketing Manager (678) 347-9256 pat.mahony@fiberlight.com
When I was a kid in the early 1970s, I heard a lot about Interferon. This was some magical substance that was supposed to cure cancer, kill viruses and perform other incredibly important things, such as power a rocket to Mars. Interferon this and interferon that. A lot of hype, with not a lot of action, since interferon was scarce and expensive. This changed in 1980, when the interferon gene was able to be mass produced, allowing it to become one of the most successful pharmaceuticals ever to come from genetic engineering. But, back in the 1970s, Interferon seemed to be all hype and no real action.
Some people are asking me if this is the case for Cloud Computing. Recently, within past year or so, you have seen everybody jump into the game with their version of how cloud computing is going to change the future of.....(you fill in the blank). From supply chain management of the local pizza joint to delivery of music videos. They all were getting some angle on cloud computing. So, in order to temper this overwhelming overuse of the phrase cloud computing, we need to come up with a universal standard of what is and what is not cloud computing.
The timing could not be better for The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This US Government entity is working with teh GSA Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) and the OMB to come up with some basic standards to allow for cloud interoperability and portability. (Hopefully, I am not confusing the rest of the world, by referencing the CIO of the GSA, OMB, and NIST. The .gov folks sure love to use letters to describe themselves). Since the US Government is the single largest buyer of IT infrastructure in the world (US$70 billion annual budget), they are a great place to start for standardizing how vendors structure and deliver cloud computing to government entities. NIST is working with commercial vendors to come up with a baseline of what is and what should be included in the basic ideas of cloud computing. This includes the definition of delivery models for cloud, including: Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS); Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
The government has asked for input from commercial cloud providers, so that the US Government can assess what is the prevailing private sector lowest common denominator for cloud computing. Companies have been asked to fill out a Request For Information (RFI), not to exceed 25 pages and submit to the GSA by email no later than May 26, 2009. I like that the request was not for typed forms to be filled out in triplicate and sent via USPS with sufficient postage. This last reference goes back to my cynical fear of long and drawn out governmental bids of years past.
So, Uncle Sam (or in this case, his newly appointed lieutenants, Vivek Kundra FED CIO and Patrick Stingley, first federal cloud CTO, aka the Federal Cloud Czar), asks the commercial sector to come up with a few basic key characteristics and their various delivery and deployment models.
So far, NIST has come up with this basic overview:
Key Characteristics: On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed, without requiring human interaction with each service's provider.
Ubiquitous network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).
Location independent resource pooling. The provider's computing resources are pooled to serve all consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. The customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources. Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.
Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned to quickly scale up and rapidly released to quickly scale down. To the consumer, the capabilities available for rent often appear to be infinite and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.
Pay per use. Capabilities are charged using a metered, fee-for-service, or advertising based billing model to promote optimization of resource use. Examples are measuring the storage, bandwidth, and computing resources consumed and charging for the number of active user accounts per month. Clouds within an organization accrue cost between business units and may or may not use actual currency.
Note: Cloud software takes full advantage of the cloud paradigm by being service oriented with a focus on statelessness, low coupling, modularity, and semantic interoperability.
Delivery Models: Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure and accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a Web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.
Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created applications using programming languages and tools supported by the provider (e.g., java, python, .Net). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but the consumer has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.
Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to rent processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly select networking components (e.g., firewalls, load balancers).
Deployment Models: Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is owned or leased by a single organization and is operated solely for that organization.
Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations).
Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is owned by an organization selling cloud services to the general public or to a large industry group.
Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (internal, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting).
Each deployment model instance has one of two types: internal or external. Internal clouds reside within an organizations network security perimeter and external clouds reside outside the same perimeter.
Note 1: Cloud computing is still an evolving paradigm. Its definitions, use cases, underlying technologies, issues, risks, and benefits will be refined in a spirited debate by the public and private sectors. These definitions, attributes, and characteristics will evolve and change over time.
Note 2: The cloud computing industry represents a large ecosystem of many models, vendors, and market niches. This definition attempts to encompass all of the various cloud approaches.
I like what I have read so far. It is my hope that by bringing together the leading suppliers of cloud computing, along with some of the largest existing users of cloud computing, that the US Federal Government can understand what it has the potential to buy and use. If the US Gov't jumps onboard, the naysayers and Luddites will eventually follow. Mark my words, Cloud Computing is going to be big.
San Francisco, CA and Amsterdam, The Netherlands – May 14, 2009 – eBuddy, the world’s leading independent web and mobile instant messaging (IM) platform, today announced the launch of eBuddy for Android, a free instant messaging application that enables users with AIM, Facebook, ICQ, Google Talk, Yahoo! or MSN Windows Live Messenger to have multiple chats in one interface, and provides a high quality, fast and reliable ‘on-the-go’ chat experience.
The eBuddy for Android multi-language instant messaging application will be immediately available as a phone download via Android Market, the destination where consumers can discover and download a variety of fun applications to personalize their Android-powered phone to fit their unique lifestyle.
eBuddy for Android features include: • eBuddy ID – one log-in to access all your favorite IM networks • Free, fast, reliable and high quality IM experience • Ability to run in the background • New message notifications in the Android status bar • Emoticons for every IM network • Buddy list grouping, profile viewing and account management • Automatic reconnect • Ability to receive offline messages • Compatible with Android 1.1 and 1.5 (Cupcake)
“eBuddy Mobile Messenger has been downloaded over 20 million times and is one of the world’s fastest growing mobile IM services with over 5 million unique monthly users,” states Jan-Joost “JJ” Rueb, CEO and co-founder of eBuddy. “We believe the global market for Android-powered phones and applications is primed for exponential growth, and we’re excited to give eBuddy users and Android enthusiasts around the world access to eBuddy whenever and wherever they want!”
About Android The Android Market has recorded 40 million downloads during the initial 6 months since launch, and currently features over 3K apps of which one-third are paid. Free applications in the Android Market are currently available for download in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Poland, Australia and Singapore. Android mobile owners download an average 40 applications per phone. More than 1 million Android-powered T-Mobile G1 phones have been sold since the device launched in September 2008. Vodafone has begun exclusive sales of its Android-powered HTC Magic mobile phone in the UK, Germany, Spain and France, with more countries to follow. HTC plans 2 additional Android-powered handsets this year, and Samsung, SE and Huawei plan to release Android-powered handsets in Q3 2009.
About eBuddy eBuddy created the world’s first independent web browser-based IM service in 2003 and extended the service to mobile in June 2007. eBuddy is available in over 30 languages and is currently processing over 6 billion messages per month. eBuddy’s patent-pending technology enables more than 18 million unique monthly visitors with AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, ICQ, MySpace, MSN Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! IM accounts to chat free of charge in one interface without having to download or install any application. eBuddy offers two versions of its mobile IM client, the popular J2ME version, eBuddy Mobile Messenger, and the mobile Internet version, eBuddy Lite Messenger, and is one of the world’s fastest growing mobile IM services with over 5M unique monthly visitors. eBuddy is based in Amsterdam with additional offices in London and San Francisco, and is a privately held company backed by Prime Technology Ventures and Lowland Capital Partners. Learn more at http://www.ebuddy.com.
Media Contact: Mindy M. Hull VP, Communications eBuddy Tel. +1 415 889 9977 (USA) Tel.+31 625 047 680 (Europe) mhull@ebuddy.com
Regardless of the economic climate SMBs are always faced with doing more with less due to the constant demands of the marketplace. Most SMBs invest more into their IT than any other area due to the realities that without it, companies loose money and miss out on opportunity. IT Optimization is an approach that can lower operational costs and help SMBs become agile and responsive to business challenges. With ever shrinking budgets ITO has been taking an increasingly dominant role in the way IT departments approach delivering services.
So then, the question is how IT managers, when faced with dramatic resource challenges and ever growing business needs cope?
The goal of reducing complexity should be freeing up precious resources to support and enable growth. Existing IT infrastructure can be optimized and re-envisioned. Typically businesses over purchase technology, create systems and environments with increasing complexity that tend to catch up and bite them over time. Companies find the quickest and expedient way to enhance IT systems, but this piecemeal approach saps resources that can be used to increasing core business efficiencies and drive market innovation. At its best, IT systems should never be a hindrance to management’s ability to make fully informed decisions within a minimum of time.
During the evolution of a company IT departments tend to end up with an over bloated infrastructure. Conventional wisdom dictating that a new server should be purchased for every major application, especially since servers have become more and more affordable. This leads to systems that tend to be vastly under-utilized and have a hard cost to maintain that seems to only grow. Very few companies have the capability or the resources to completely re-do or replace their existing systems. Fortunately, there are solutions out there that can put IT managers on the path to consolidation:
Virtualization – This method greatly reduces the issue of underutilizing hardware by using software to virtually divvy up a physical server into multiple virtual servers. This drastically reduces utility costs, increases the effectiveness of hardware by orders of magnitude, and increases reliability and redundancy.
Cloud Computing – Further building on virtualization, cloud computing promises to make the next quantum leap in on-demand computing. Going from a physical infrastructure to an abstracted cloud platform may be a difficult jump for IT managers but the advantages are tangible. Being able to tap into computing power from a massive array of inter-connected servers, scale on demand and pay as you go. No longer will you be hampered by physical infrastructure, need more CPU resources to handle a spike in traffic, no problem, just increase the amount of resources demanded from the cloud in real time and your off to the races. The same can be said with storage, bandwidth, and memory. Freeing an IT infrastructure from the physical has serious advantages both on the agility of a company and the capital expenditures of hardware purchases that can be jarring.
Eventually, if you have a growing and successful business, IT departments must implement some form of ITO. Streamlining existing processes, enabling agile business response, increasing business intelligence, improving company collaboration, and running lean and smart. Taking a cold eye and looking at your existing infrastructure, and processes may not be an easy task nor will it be done in a near term but any growing SMB must set IT goals that leads to built-in efficiency and yields the tangible results that can be a determining factor between success, and failure.
From a savvy TV ad campaign to an international service disruption
Ups: Last week Google took to the TV airways, something it had not done before. It launched its first ever TV ad campaign promoting their browser Google ChromeThey’ve found a way to highlight the browser with very inventive and entertaining clips. If you haven’t already, you must go to the Google Chrome site on You Tube and check them out. My favorite is “The Evolution of Simple, “which, as the name suggests, is the least flashy-techy one. Which one is your fave? What remains to be seen is whether the ads will help them gain any market share in the browser sector, as they currently have around 1%.
Downs: When Google has a hiccup, the whole world knows…quickly. The news that Google was down for many users today spread like wildfire. In the last hour I must have seen no less than 50 news stories and blogs related to the outage. Analysts are going crazy trying to identify the culprit, Google or network provider AT&T. All the hubbub certainly confirms to how important the search engine giant is to our technology-dependent world. The interesting thing is, I searched high and low for some kind of announcement from Google addressing the issue. I couldn’t find anything (maybe my Google search engine wasn’t working properly!?!).
SAN MATEO, Calif. – May 12, 2009 – IntelePeer Inc., a leader in hosted on-demand rich media communications, today announced a partnership with Telx, one of the largest North American providers of network-neutral colocation and interconnection services. IntelePeer will offer ReachSuite™-hosted voice and rich media applications that allow Telx customers to quickly roll out new, high-margin voice and telecommunications services while avoiding up-front capital costs.
“Telx customers include leading service providers, content providers and enterprises that demand premium performance and reliability to meet the demands of their business and consumer customers,” said John Hart, senior vice president of business development and marketing for IntelePeer. “IntelePeer ReachSuite applications offer the value these Telx customers need to stand apart from competitors in a crowded market, while delivering the carrier-grade performance they require. With our ReachSuite, they can quickly roll out new high-margin services that drive new productivity while reducing operational and telecommunications costs for their customers.”
IntelePeer ReachSuite applications also reduce telecommunications costs by routing communications through IntelePeer’s high-quality, carrier-grade global peering fabric. IntelePeer uses this global infrastructure to offer ReachSuite applications through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model. This eliminates most up-front costs, while ensuring carrier-grade quality and communications cost savings that are so valuable in today’s financial environment.
“Telx is committed to offering customers the very latest in communications services offered in a cloud computing, or Communications-as-a-Service (CaaS) model in order to facilitate technology adoption without the cost or service disruption of a forklift upgrade,” said Rose Klimovich, Telx vice president of product development and management. “IntelePeer offers our customers such turnkey communications solutions that help integrate phone, conferencing and electronic communication within familiar interfaces and in a cost-effective way.”
Telx offers rich connectivity and service options in the most secure and reliable colocation facilities to meet the requirements of the most demanding mission-critical operations. Telx colocation centers offer premier conditioned space, state-of-the-art access control and surveillance systems. To expand their business opportunities, Telx also provides their customers access to a global marketplace of services providers like IntelePeer.
About Telx Telx is a world-class leader in providing interconnectivity solutions through their network-neutral and network rich, co-location facilities. With fifteen facilities in North America, Telx offers cost effective networking solutions for customers to seamlessly access diverse global networks and exchange information in a secure and reliable environment. Over 600 leading telecommunications carriers, ISP’s, content providers and enterprises rely on Telx’s world-class team to support their mission-critical global infrastructure needs and to create a global connectivity marketplace to dramatically expand their business growth opportunities. Telx is a privately held company headquartered in New York City with facilities in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Miami, Phoenix, Charlotte, Weehawken, and Clifton, N.J. For more information about Telx, visit www.telx.com.
About IntelePeer IntelePeer, www.IntelePeer.com, a leader in hosted on-demand rich media communications, enables carriers, businesses and software vendors to easily deliver voice and multimedia capabilities to any phone or network-connected device – without incurring up-front capital costs. Through our innovative, communications-as-a-service (CaaS) platform, IntelePeer AppworX™, our SuperRegistry™ and our extensive peering grid, we provide our customers with the platform to offer high-quality interactive voice, video, SMS, data and other rich-media services while providing significant cost savings for their telecommunication expenditures. Through intuitive APIs, Web Services, and brandable widgets and applets, IntelePeer removes the complexity of telecom and opens network functions to mainstream developers who are creating voice-Web “mashups” and communications-enabled business processes embedded into enterprise, webcasting, social networking, entertainment and e-commerce applications. Business professionals who use customer relationship management (CRM) software and common desktop applications such as calendaring and contact management also rely on us for instant access to bridge-to-services, voice blast, video blast, text-to-speech, conferencing and other features that enable communications-enhanced business processes that drive efficiency and deliver cost savings. Based in San Mateo, Calif., we operate our own carrier-grade network carrying more than 6 billion minutes, with worldwide coverage delivered through an IP and TDM peering grid with over 50 leading service provider peering partners. IntelePeer is privately held and is backed by venture capital firms VantagePoint Venture Partners, Kennet Venture Partners, NorthCap Partners and EDF Ventures.
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IntelePeer, IntelePeer AppworX, SuperRegistry and ReachSuite are trademarks of IntelePeer, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Other trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners.
IntelePeer Contact: Scott VanSickle The Hoffman Agency (408) 975-3084 svansickle@hoffman.com
Telx Contact: Karyn Price Bailiwick Company (609) 397-4880 ext. 204
Very similar to the early cell phone adopters or high speed internet adopters, Cloud Computing has just begun.
For a long time many CIO's and CTO's were afraid to host their information in anything other than a box that they could literally touch. Now that technology and security have caught up with us, that trend is being reversed.
Throughout time networks and computers have done two things for sure. They have gotten smaller and relied on remote infrastructure to process information.
Kim Hart wrote an article in the Washington Post, where she points out that Cloud Computing does have some oposition who see this as just another hot buzz word that will soon fade like SAAS. She writes, skeptics say that it's nothing but hype.
"Cloud computing is the same old client-server computing we've known for years, except pretending to be intoxicatingly new and different and liberating," wrote Peter Lucas and Joseph Ballay in a report published by Maya Design, a technology research lab. "The marketing fairy godmother waved her wand over the whole 'new model' and pronounced it 'cloud computing.' "
Technologists say cloud computing is largely made possible by its distant cousins: open source and virtualization.
Sure open source and virtualization play roles in Cloud Computing, but there are a few things that differentiate it from a virtual server. In a true cloud computing environment one will find a few characteristics that can not be found in a typical hosted server supported by open source technology. Here one can find an elastic, state of the art solution, which can be adjusted with the click of a mouse and can handle any traffic spike.
In a single server environment there is a limit and human interaction to move to the next threshold.
The conundrum for many IT firms is it does at time cannibalize their existing, more traditional streams of business.
In a traditional IT environment there are charges and minimums for bandwidth, colocation (including space and power), hardware costs and a staff to support it. With the cloud, these are all condensed into one nice technology with a great total cost of ownership.
All of the technology sector follows one of two paths, up, or down. It is virtually impossible to stay stagnate, because the sector is evolving so quickly.
Right now the trend is to exploit the technology available to do more with less. Although the technology of virtualization has been around for quite some time, the adoption rate is souring and finally people are getting out of their own way in order to really get some business done.
The beauty of this is that it's just the beginning and it certainly will be a nice ride.
I have to admit that over the past several decades I have become a cynic when it comes to the ability of government to deliver on time or on budget. My typical slight on a business that I believe is bloated is, "ABC Co. is just like the Department of Motor Vehicles". Usually, when I say this, people automatically understand that I mean that ABC Co. must be bloated, faceless, slow, and bureaucratic. I don't want to sound unpatriotic, but I had come to believe that our state and federal governments were too far gone to ever be considered nimble and dynamic. I struggled with the idea that privatization to more efficient organizations might be the only way to get things done in government. What would it look like if FedEx and UPS ran the US Postal Service? If we let some Swiss or German rail company run Amtrak? Imagine the geniuses at WalMart taking over supply chain management for the Pentagon.
These were just crazy visions of a guy who had written off government as never being able to efficiently deliver services. That was before I ever heard of Vivek Kundra. If you have not been paying attention to recent nominations by President Obama, Vivek Kundra was appointed the first Federal Chief Information Officer on March 5, 2009.
Mr. Kundra, 34, has a compelling life story. Born in India, his family moved to Tanzania at a young age. His first language was Swahili. When he was 11, his family moved to Gaithersburg, MD. He holds a BS in psycology and Master's of Science in Information Technology, both from the University of Maryland. After school, Kundra served as Vice President of Marketing for Evincible Software and CEO Creostar. In 2001, Governor Timothy M. Kaine of Virginia appointed him assistant secretary of commerce and technology. Kundra was the first person to hold dual cabinet roles in the history of Virginia. Kundra left his Virginia postion to take on the role in Washington DC, Mayor Adrian Fenty's cabinet as the District of Columbia's CTO (a rold which he held for 19 months, prior to accepting the post as National CIO). Kundra has kicked some butt while in his DC CTO position, overseeing 600 staff that provided technology services for 86 agencies, 38,000 employees, as well as 600,000 residents, businesses and millions of visitors.
One of the first initiatives that Kundra took on as DC CTO was to find a way to cost effectively empower DC employees to have better computing power and collaboration. To do this, he chose to use Google Apps, and other consumer technologies in the public sector to quickly scale. Another example of Kundra's success as DC CTO was when he set up a 30-day contest with a cash prize, called Apps for Democracy. The estimated cost for producing the contest, including the prize, was $50,000. Kundra estimated that the District probably saved close to $2.6 million over what it would have cost to hire contract developers. The contest invited developers to come up with the most innovative way to use data feeds from DC government for Web and mobile applications The contest resulted in 47 Web, iPhone and Facebook apps that benefited the city. In his October 15, 2008 essay, Building the Digital Public Square, Kundra wrote about how his Apps For Democracy team took the District's vast stores of data on all aspects of government operations and offered it up to everyone to use. By organizing the information into convenient catalogs and live data feeds, made available at the Data Catalog, anyone could go in and find information on crime incidents by date, time of day, ward, block or other methods. Other data on construction projects, parking, tourism, leaf collection schedules and various others were all made available, with more than 240 different data feeds made available.
Kundra envisions a digital public square, where everyone (constituents, policymakers, concerned citizens and businesses) can have access to important data without the traditional governmental red tape and cold/distant bureaucracy. Kundra is a fan of cloud computing to dynamically scale applications that are successful, without the bloated cost of building massive infrastructure on individual tech projects. What an amazing concept to bring to government!
In his new role as Federal CIO, Kundra wants to move the government away from its dependence on big IT contracts. He pointed to cloud-based services used by the private sector to quickly create and provision development platforms, as well as for information sharing, such as for photos and videos. "Yet, you look across the federal government, and we don't have a single platform that allows you do that," he said. "We have the ability to run an open, transparent, participatory and collaborative government."
If Kundra gets to implement his vision for the US Government, we can expect to see a change in how technology projects are spec'd, bid and delivered. I can't wait to see what is in store for US citizens. I can only imagine we will be watching YouTube videos on how to apply for Social Security benefits, or possibly using iPhone apps to vote in future federal elections.
In light of all of the historical comparisons about the current economic situation and its proposed fixes, I'd like to offer my own perspective based on technology trends that have the potential to re-ignite growth for decades. My analogy comes from what at first sounds like an unlikely source: the automobile industry.
In the early 1900s, Ford ( F - news - people ) mastered the art of assembly line manufacturing, revolutionizing production techniques across industries, from consumer goods to large-scale machinery. What was once the privilege of the upper class became within reach of the average citizen. Article Controls
The efficiencies gained through mass production not only put a car in every garage, but also catalyzed consumer culture, reset the baseline standard of living and reshaped everything from how and where we worked, to how and where we lived.
The introduction of the assembly line began moving our economy away from an inefficient, build-to-order model to scale manufacturing. Over the last century, the automotive industry dramatically refined the art. Today, companies including BMW run highly automated factories that seamlessly integrate customers' orders with parts suppliers and dealerships. This configure-to-order model allows for customization not available in the Model-T era, while preserving and enhancing the efficiencies gained by the assembly line.
The early 21st century is like the early 20th century in that we are at the beginning of a new economic paradigm. This time, however, the engine of growth will not be manufacturing, but information. Real-Time Quotes 05/08/2009 3:59PM ET
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The equivalent of the assembly line is industry standard hardware, the components used to build the backbone of the largest Internet companies on the planet. Standardized hardware has unshackled the computing power once trapped in mainframe computers, democratizing it so that all can share. More recently, software has been developed that virtualizes, automates and differentiates this hardware to enable a configure-to-order model for the IT industry.
Even better: The "cloud" can deliver these capabilities and offer a new level of customization and efficiency at affordable prices and on a massive scale.
There's been a great deal of hype in the industry about cloud computing. To say it simply, the cloud is the next stage in the evolution of the Internet. Its impact, however, will be sweeping, fundamentally changing the way we connect with each other and with information.
The cloud is making once-expensive information technology available to a mass market through a pay-per-use model. This promises to increase productivity and drive growth. Small and medium-sized businesses can leverage data to drive efficiencies and improve products and services. Large companies can shift applications to the cloud and so spend their resources on the technology that gives them a competitive advantage.
More importantly, with this underlying infrastructure in place, both large and small companies can use technology to expand or invent services, open up markets and address some of the biggest challenges we face as a global society. For individuals, this promises services that are more intuitive, personalized and relevant in our daily lives. Here's one example:
HP has a cloud service, called MagCloud, that makes it possible for anyone to publish a professional-quality magazine and print, promote, sell and deliver it on demand. Printing on demand means no large press runs, no pre-publication expense, no waste.
By eliminating substantial pieces of the physical supply chain, we can offer professional-quality print to a mass audience while reducing the impact on the environment. The same on-demand technology can be extended to book publishing and allow individuals to print customized books, mixing their own content with that of professionals.
Looking ahead, we envision a rich ecosystem of printing services--connecting businesses to businesses and businesses to individuals--that delivers information where, when and how it's needed.
This is truly just the beginning. The cloud makes it possible to deliver everything as a service--from business processes to personal interactions--and to create altogether new business models across industries.
In my view, the ability to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship in this new model is one of the most promising ways to ignite the next wave of economic growth. We can no more see the full impact of the cloud than Henry Ford foresaw the impact of his desire to produce more cars in less time.
Russ Daniels is vice president and chief technology officer of Cloud Services Strategy at Hewlett-Packard ( HPQ - news - people ).
Streaming media is one of the largest reasons why bandwidth demand is growing at an exponential rate. Large media corporations have been slow on the uptake to diversity their distribution model and embrace the Internet that was once seen as a pirating free for all. If there is one thing that the iTunes store has proven is that, if you make media easily accessible you will find an army of consumers who are eagerly willing to part with their monies for convenience. Instant gratification is an extremely powerful marketing vehicle in an age where brick and mortar stores are no longer the only way to get music and videos. Online distribution has opened the hearts and wallets of a large audience that can be sold to 24x7 and across borders with real time fulfillment. Walt Disney Co has recently purchased a 30 percent stake in Hulu and will start to load it up with their content. To sweeten the deal for potential users, Hulu will start to offer music videos, sports and news from their respective commercial content providers. This puts pressure on Google to figure out a revenue model for YouTube that can attract the big media to share content for a slice of advertising revenue or other mutually beneficial business agreement. Since Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006 for $1.6 billion they have been devising strategies on getting it to a profitable state. A recent Credit Suisse report estimates YouTube dominates domestic video streams with a 41% share but could be facing an operating loss of ~$470 million in 2009. Bandwidth alone accounts for 51% of their operating expenses with a running rate of ~$1 million per day. With Hulu getting directly beefed-up by big media with a built in ability to monetize their content the race for market share is heating up. YouTube is moving in the direction to provide more professional content with its recent deal with Disney-ABC Television and ESPN. Online media content availability still has a long way to go but, with large corporate interests involved, the market only continue to develop and bandwidth will always be in demand.
Key Highlights: • Adds a point of presence (PoP) to the AboveNet metro Ethernet network in the Dallas area and connects to the AboveNet eXpressWaveTM long-haul national network • Provides Telx customers colocated in the company’s 8435 Stemmons Freeway facility with Ethernet connectivity at speeds of up to 10 Gigabits
NEW YORK and DALLAS (May 5, 2009) – Telx, one of the largest domestic interconnection and colocation data center operators, was recently selected by AboveNet, a leading high-bandwidth connectivity solutions provider, to house a new point of presence, or PoP, in Dallas. AboveNet will expand its metro Ethernet network to Telx’s facility at 8435 Stemmons Freeway in Dallas, allowing customers to link to AboveNet’s metro Ethernet network throughout Texas. The addition of this PoP will also provide customers with connectivity to AboveNet’s long-haul network so that customers can link to other corporate locations.
“Connectivity choice is a major hallmark on which we’ve built the Telx business,” said Tesh Durvasula, CMO for Telx. “Adding bandwidth and a network PoP from AboveNet into our Dallas facility not only increases the choice customers have in the networks that they can interconnect with, but also the number of different facilities that they can distribute applications, services or content to. Our relationship with AboveNet underscores the Telx commitment to offering the most interconnection choices, the fastest network speeds and the easiest implementation process in the colocation market today.”
8435 Stemmons is an excellent facility for disaster recovery applications. The addition of the AboveNet node into this facility offers customers a low latency, reliable network that connects locations from the eastern seaboard to the southern United States. AboveNet’s network provides greater distribution and business continuity options for customers colocated in other regions.
“Carrier-neutral data centers are a crucial part of the IT infrastructure. These facilities are among the best for enterprises in any industry to get the high-bandwidth connectivity and flexible interconnections they need to compete in the global marketplace,” said John Deering, Director of Sales, Texas Region at AboveNet. “By extending our relationship with Telx to its facility in Dallas, we are offering our customers the ability to expand their own networks with high-bandwidth solutions and a wide variety of interconnections that can help drive business opportunities.”
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About Telx Telx is a world-class leader in providing interconnectivity solutions through their network-neutral and network rich, colocation facilities. With over a dozen facilities in North America, Telx offers cost effective networking solutions for customers to seamlessly access diverse global networks and exchange information in a secure and reliable environment. Over 600 leading telecommunications carriers, ISPs, content providers and enterprises rely on Telx’s world-class team to support their mission-critical global infrastructure needs and to create a global connectivity marketplace to dramatically expand their business growth opportunities. Telx is a privately held company headquartered in New York City with facilities in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Miami, Phoenix, Charlotte, and Clifton and Weehawken, NJ. For more information about Telx, visit www.telx.com.
About AboveNet AboveNet Communications, Inc. provides high bandwidth connectivity solutions for business and carriers. Its private, fiber optic network delivers key network and IP services in and among 15 top U.S. metro markets and London. AboveNet's network is widely used in demanding markets such as financial services, media, health care, retail and government.
Contact: Karyn Price Bailiwick Company for Telx +1 609 397 4880 ext. 204 kprice@bailiwickpr.com
Last week Level 3 announced that they were making strategic changes to the company, including eliminating approximately 150 positions and realigning their customer facing groups in North America. Today, most of those changes were communicated internally and some of these changes will directly affect the CDN group. It was announced last week that Grant Van Rooyen who was the President of the Content Market Groups is gone and I've now learned that Lisa Guillaume who is the VP of CDN Services for Level 3 will be leaving this week. While Level 3 said about three people from the CDN group are leaving due to these changes, I'm hearing the number may be higher.
While all companies make changes, the way in which Level 3 has communicated these changes has been odd. Today alone, I took quite a few calls from Level 3 customers asking me exactly what is going on at Level 3 and multiple customers told me of various changes as opposed to me hearing about them directly from Level 3. A quick check with some of Level 3's competitors also shows that in the past 24 hours, some Level 3 CDN customers have been reaching out to other CDNs, which means someone is not communicating the change very well.
At one point or another, change happens with all companies. But when it happens in such a short span of time and the company does nothing to communicate those changes to the market, it leaves everyone speculating on what is actually taking place. I never understood why companies don't get in front of the news and manage that message to the market and to customers, instead of letting the market come up with their own message and interpretation of what is taking place.
Many have been asking me today whether or not Level 3's new alignment of their business spells the end of their CDN services. While Level 3 has said the opposite, I do have to wonder how the change affects the way the product is marketed and sold. While Level 3 has been smart to integrate CDN into their other offerings, selling CDN can't be thought of as selling something like transit. You need to have a hands-on approach with CDN and all of the various video ecosytem pieces that go along with it.
To date, Level 3 has done what I consider to be a terrific job in the market going from nothing to $50M in CDN revenue in just under two years. They have a real ecosystem offering, have very happy customers and for the past 24 months, have been executing what I consider to be a very solid and strategic game plan. But with Level 3 now realigning the company and putting new people in charge of the content markets group, which the CDN product falls under, we'll have to keep a close eye on how these changes may affect their CDN offering going forward.
At next week's Streaming Media East show, I'll be meeting with executives from Level 3's CDN group to hear more details on what their CDN strategy is moving forward, so look for a blog post with more details on this subject in two weeks.
Two recent articles about lawn mowing caught my eye. And they couldn’t be more different.
The High Tech. A recent post on cnet News, talks about a creation by scientists at the University of Southern Denmark. They have found a way to control a lawnmower with a Wii remote (Wii Mower takes the Yawn out of Lawn Mowing, in a Cnet article. First we had the push mower, then the motor powered mower, the self-propelled mower, the riding mower…and now all you need to do is point the Wii remote in the right direction. All I have to say is…don’t tell my son. It’s hard enough to get him to mow the lawn. Now he’ll insist on the latest invention, mowing with just one hand, leaving his other free to do some texting (Ugghh).
The Back to Basics. Google has replaced their lawn maintenance crew with goats (yes goats). 200 or so goats now roam the Google grounds, trimming the landscape while enjoying a free lunch. The cost of the goats is apparently about the same as employing lawn-mowing workers, but Google is citing green reasons for the change. But what about the engine exhaust discharged by the vehicles transporting the animals or the other “gases” that will be emitted by the goats during their stay?
There’s been a whirlwind of responses to the goats (good and bad), including this response from PETA assistant marketing manager Amy Cook, posted in a Tech Crunch article: “PETA has no problem with letting goats do what goats want to do (e.g., look cute and eat weeds), but we do have concerns about how the goats may be transported, whether they are provided with access to shelter during storms and shade as well as water during hot weather, where they are housed when they aren’t “working,” what kind of veterinary care they receive, and what becomes of old and/or excess goats. PETA has found over and over that whenever animals are used by a business to make money, corners are cut and animals often suffer as a result. And that really gets our goat, if you’ll pardon the pun.” I say “Good for you Google!” We need more creative thinking like this. By the way, Yahoo has also employed goats to maintain their grounds.
I guess there’s always more than one way to skin a cat (or mow the lawn!)
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