Cloud Contracts Criticized by U.K. Regulator Over Price, Service

Cloud Contracts Criticized by U.K. Regulator Over Price, Service

By Stephanie Bodoni and Jeremy Kahn

(Bloomberg) — Cloud computing service providers were criticized by a U.K. regulator for using contracts that allow them to hike prices and terminate services without notice.

Three providers of cloud services, Dixons Carphone Plc, JustCloud and Livedrive, agreed to improve their terms, the Competition and Markets Authority said Friday in a statement. Several other companies will have to make similar changes, the watchdog said, without identifying them.

While people find cloud services useful, the CMA “also heard some complaints resulting from unfair terms in contracts,” Nisha Arora, the authority’s senior director for consumer issues, said in the statement. “If left unchanged, these terms could result in people losing access to their treasured possessions or facing unexpected charges.”

SEE ALSO: EU Hands Huge Government Cloud Contracts to BT

Cloud storage offers a convenient means of safely storing family photos, music, films and important documents, and access them from any device, the CMA said. About three in 10 people in the U.K. use such services, mostly for free, from their smartphones and tablets, the regulator said. This is true for the likes of Google’s Drive or Apple Inc.’s iCloud, said Cecilia Parker Aranha, project director at the Competition Markets Authority.

The three providers that have agreed to change their contract terms today weren’t necessarily the worst offenders, but were of particular concern to the CMA because they offer standalone cloud services storage products for which they charge consumers for any level of storage, Parker Aranha said.

In a fast developing market “it’s important that we act now to ensure that businesses comply with the law and that consumers’ trust in these valuable services is maintained,” Arora said.

Source: TheWHIR

Twitter open-sources Heron for real-time stream analytics

Twitter open-sources Heron for real-time stream analytics

Heron, the real-time stream-processing system Twitter devised as a replacement for Apache Storm, is finally being open-sourced after powering Twitter for more than two years.

Twitter explained in a blog post that it created Heron because it needed more than speed and scale from its real-time stream processing framework. The company also needed easier debugging, easier deployment and management capabilities, and the ability to work well in a shared, multitenant cluster environment.

Apache Storm was the original solution to Twitter’s problems. It was created by a marketing intelligence company called BackType, and Twitter bought the company in 2011 and eventually open-sourced Storm, providing it to the Apache Foundation.

There’s no question Storm has a lot of advantages. It’s scalable and fault-tolerant, with a decent ecosystem of “spouts,” or systems for receiving data from established sources. But it was reputedly also hard to work with and hard to get good results from, and despite a recent 1.0 renovation, it’s been challenged by other projects, including Apache Spark and its own revised streaming framework.

Shopify Launches GoSpaces to Help Entrepreneurs Get Online

Shopify Launches GoSpaces to Help Entrepreneurs Get Online

Shopify launched a web presence tool for small businesses called GoSpaces to 38 countries in 20 different languages on Wednesday. GoSpaces provides a stripped-down version of Shopify’s core service, offering entrepreneurs a landing page from which they can graduate to more complex websites and ecommerce.

While small business hosting and web building as a package is not just a familiar, but a competitive market space, the company claims its differentiating factor is its “open, flexible and extensible platform.” GoSpaces was first conceived in 2013, and is still in development. Its API is still in beta testing, and auto-currency settings to let customers view shop with local prices are currently being added.

SEE ALSO: Squarespace Turns into Registrar with Launch of Squarespace Domains

“It’s an experiment and we might take the learning from here and push it over to Shopify, and that’s kind of how we’re looking at it,” Shopify VP of Growth Bruno Roldan told BetaKit. “We want to expand into these markets really fast, learn, sit back and say ‘Hey should we expand on this platform, or should we further some of these learnings into the Shopify platform.”

“We’ve found in a lot of markets credit card penetrations aren’t what they are over here; the circumstances around ecommerce are very different. We are looking at this model where it’s not just about ecommerce, it’s about getting people set up online,” he said.

The GoSpaces blog offers up an infographic about the strength of international business environments for entrepreneurs.

Shopify became publicly traded on the NYSE last year, in the midst of a shifting ecommerce market that includes an online store platform launched by GoDaddy in 2014, but will soon not include Amazon ecommerce hosting.

UPDATE: This article mistakenly referred to the Shopify service as Spaces, not GoSpaces. Shopify is listed on the NYSE, not the NASDAQ. The WHIR apologizes for these errors.

Source: TheWHIR

GoDaddy Launches App for Would-be Entrepreneurs to Get Feedback

GoDaddy Launches App for Would-be Entrepreneurs to Get Feedback

Entrepreneurs and small business operators who want to find out if their business ideas are hot or not can put the question to GoDaddy’s new community-based app Flare, which launched Thursday. Tinder-style swiping gives feedback on ideas, and entrepreneurs can poll their idea’s supporters, who can in turn pledge to be customers once the idea is off the ground.

GoDaddy says its research shows that two-thirds of the company’s customers have had an idea for a new business, product, or service, but only 15 percent pursued it. The biggest barriers to action are not knowing what to do next, and a lack of confidence.

“We created Flare because we recognized the need for a community where people can get impartial feedback on ideas and connect with others to help them turn those ideas into something meaningful,” Rene Reinsberg, vice president of Emerging Products at GoDaddy said in a statement. “Whether you’ve just had a fleeting thought and want to explore where you might be able to take it, or you’ve been dreaming of creating your own business your whole life, Flare is the first place to go for someone that wants to take the next step.”

Flare is mobile-only, at least for the time being. It is now available on iOS, and launches for Android devices next month.

EIG launched a mobile app providing social networking and business advice for SMBs in 2015 called Business on Tapp, which is up to 50,000 downloads.

GoDaddy’s broadening of SMB services continues, as it began extending its Professional Web Services internationally with a Canadian launch last week.

Source: TheWHIR

Penton Technology Newsmakers: Q&A with HOSTING CEO Joel Daly

Penton Technology Newsmakers: Q&A with HOSTING CEO Joel Daly

Welcome to Penton Technology Newsmakers, a recurring monthly series focused on bringing you informative one-on-one interviews with industry experts. For this month’s edition, we talked to HOSTING CEO Joel Daly, who took over as CEO in February. Daly co-founded HOSTING along with former CEO Art Zeile. In this Q&A, Daly talks about his new role, and how conversations with customers have changed as cloud and compliance have become critical. This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.

The WHIR: Can you start by giving me a bit of a background on HOSTING?

Joel-Daly

HOSTING CEO Joel Daly

Joel Daly: We put together HOSTING on the concept of getting into this crazy thing called cloud. Now 8 years ago, we had to explain what the cloud was, and now my mother and my uncles and everybody who’s out there can explain exactly what cloud is. It’s not an education piece anymore. Our strategy was to create a national footprint and we did that; we were able to acquire and build locations across the U.S. Now we’ve got around six data centers.

The other crazy challenge that I was fascinated with is, like it or not, with our services we have to partner very closely with our customers. I’ve always had a passion towards customer service. The big business challenge that was out there is can you build a great services company through acquisitions which is sometimes challenging because you’ve got old processes. People that had their own cultures and I’m very proud to say that we’ve accomplished that. We’re very passionate about building a customer service culture.

WHIR: You worked with former HOSTING CEO Art Zeile for a long time.

Daly: Art is one of my best friends; really great guy. He made the decision to take some personal time and to pursue some other opportunities but he’s still a very large investor and is very close with the company. We’re still tied in very closely with him and do wish the best for him. If you take a look at our past we’ve been a dynamic duo and… I’m excited about the new role which he told me, it is time for me to do. We’ve got our management team who’s been with us for a while.

WHIR: You’re in an interesting position coming from the role of HOSTING founder and COO before taking over as CEO. Can you talk about that a bit?

Daly: I was very fortunate being founder, being COO, and working through all the integration stuff that was out there, getting that service culture up and going. With that, over the course of time, we have continued to refine our strategy of what stake in the ground do you want to own. Through the acquisitions and through our strategic initiatives, we really honed in on leveraging the cloud by providing managed services to companies that really at the bottom line require any type of HIPPA or PCI compliance. We wanted to be able to leverage the right tools that were out there, putting the right workload, using the right tool for the right workload. From day one we’ve always offered what’s called hybrid services. Being able to not force customers on any one specific technology, but allowing them for flexibility. As we continue to focus on those regulated markets, really what it comes down to is if you look at HIPPA and PCI they usually come down to what I call the compliant verticals. Those are healthcare, retail, financial services, and any technology companies that service them.

SEE ALSO: 5 Cloud Compliance Standards You Must Know as a Mid- to Large-Sized Business

From a role standpoint, being an entrepreneur, I’ve done almost everybody’s job. I was pretty fortunate in doing the COO role which was product engineering, operations, and then focused on sales and marketing. With the most recent announcement I’m excited about being the CEO. Really if you look at my background, I’ve been doing a lot of these things for a very long time. I’m truly excited in the new role and the team that we have.

WHIR: So obviously coming from the COO role into the CEO role you have a pretty unique perspective on your customers as well as the employees in your organization. How are you bringing that experience and how’s that going to shape your leadership at HOSTING?

Daly: The greatest thing about being an entrepreneur and when you start with a company of two people is you have to do everybody’s job. The beauty of being in a smaller company is the fact that you’ve walked in everybody’s shoes. We’re now $100 million dollar company with around 400 employees and my focus is bringing my background and experience. I am my customer. I had to figure out, what are the best technologies that are out there?

The other big shift that’s happening within the industry is that infrastructure is only one component. The decision making of that infrastructure is shifting from the folks that used to be in charge of infrastructure to the apps developers. Really being able to assist them in taking away impediments for them to deliver their software to their end users that really add value. I believe that my background, having lived that pain, having being in charge of all of our software, all of our systems engineering, I can really bring to the table, especially with all my prospect and my customer conversations, empathy because I’ve experienced their pain. I do believe that there’s great value in that, not only in the way that we deliver our services but also thinking about how we’re trying to drive our manage services and our new product development in the future.

Pages: 1 2

Source: TheWHIR

Spark 2.0 prepares to catch fire

Spark 2.0 prepares to catch fire

Apache Spark 2.0 is almost upon us. If you have an account on Databricks’ cloud offering, you can get access to a technical preview today; for the rest of us, it may be a week or two, but by Spark Summit next month, I expect Apache Spark 2.0 to be out in the wild. What should you look forward to?

During the 1.x series, the development of Apache Spark was often at a breakneck pace, with all sorts of features (ML pipelines, Tungsten, the Catalyst query planner) added along the way during minor version bumps. Given this, and that Apache Spark follows semantic versioning rules, you can expect 2.0 to make breaking changes and add major new features.

Unify DataFrames and Datasets

One of the main reasons for the new version number won’t be noticed by many users: In Spark 1.6, DataFrames and Datasets are separate classes; in Spark 2.0, a DataFrame is simply an alias for a Dataset of type Row.

This may mean little to most of us, but such a big change in the class hierarchy means we’re looking at Spark 2.0 instead of Spark 1.7. You can now get compile-time type safety for DataFrames in Java and Scala applications and use both the typed methods (map, filter) and the untyped methods (select, groupBy) in both DataFrames and Datasets.

Salesforce Names Amazon Its Preferred Cloud Provider

Salesforce Names Amazon Its Preferred Cloud Provider

Salesforce has officially named Amazon Web Services its preferred public cloud infrastructure provider, Amazon announced Wednesday.

The announcement follows a report by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that Salesforce was using AWS for infrastructure that underpins its new Internet of Things service but there hasn’t been an official acknowledgement from either company until now. Salesforce’s other services, including Marketing Cloud Social Studio and SalesforceIQ, according to the announcement.

Salesforce has traditionally used colocation data centers to host infrastructure that supports its flagship cloud CRM services. The San Francisco-based company said it would now use AWS to bring new infrastructure online more quickly and efficiently, although it did not indicate that it would phase out its colo footprint.

Source: TheWHIR

F5 Networks Joins Equinix Cloud Exchange

F5 Networks Joins Equinix Cloud Exchange

Equinix, Inc. has announced that F5 Networks has joined the Equinix Cloud Exchange™ to provide direct, scalable, and reliable access to its F5 Silverline® cloud-based DDoS protection solution inside Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. By joining the Cloud Exchange, F5 enables enterprise customers in each of these markets to seamlessly access “scrubbed” data in a low-latency, secure and scalable environment.

DDoS attacks are increasing in scale and complexity, and are not expected to slow down any time soon. To prevent these attacks from reaching the enterprise network, organizations need a hybrid solution for cloud-based mitigation in addition to on-premises protection. In fact, in a recent report by F5, The State of Application Delivery, 81% of respondents cited plans to move toward hybrid cloud environments to leverage the flexibility and potential cost savings it offers. By working with Equinix, F5 ensures that its customers have the ability to create that hybrid defense solution in a secure and high-performance environment while also providing the ability to create a multi-cloud deployment model.

F5 Silverline DDoS Protection is a managed service delivered via the F5 Silverline cloud-based platform. It detects and mitigates DDoS attacks in real time, with industry-leading attack mitigation methods and bandwidth to stop even the largest of volumetric DDoS attacks from ever reaching the enterprise network. Current customers using Equinix Cloud Exchange for multi-cloud deployments can now subscribe to the F5 DDoS mitigation service.

“We are thrilled to be working with Equinix to help safeguard enterprises against the rising tide of DDoS attacks. To best protect enterprise applications and data, today’s CISOs need both an on-premises solution that satisfies the network operations team, while also incorporating a cloud-based component to defend against massive DDoS incidents. A hybrid solution, with Equinix Cloud Exchange at the access point and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection, is the ideal solution,” said Ian Jones, senior vice president of Silverline Cloud Services, F5.

Equinix Cloud Exchange provides an option above other post-mitigation traffic delivery methods such as GRE tunnels, L2VPN, or cross connects, allowing for scalable, reliable, high performance private traffic delivery from F5 Silverline to the customer during mitigation.

The F5 Silverline DDoS Protection solution is available on Cloud Exchange in Frankfurt, Singapore, Silicon Valley and Washington, DC. Availability on Cloud Exchange provides F5 customers improved performance and scale compared to other post-mitigation delivery methods, including public Internet and L2VPN. Additionally, the Cloud Exchange provisioning portal offers simple and streamlined configuration of the F5 Silverline DDoS Protection clean traffic delivery path.

Equinix Cloud Exchange customers will have access to F5 Silverline DDoS Protection managed service to defend assets from all DDoS attack threat vectors, obtain Security Operations Center (SOC) expert advice 24x7x365, and gain attack mitigation insights with the F5 Customer Portal before, during, and after an attack.

Source: CloudStrategyMag

CenturyLink Data Center VP Joins RagingWire as COO

CenturyLink Data Center VP Joins RagingWire as COO

datacenterknowledgelogoBrought to you by Data Center Knowledge

RagingWire Data Centers, the US data center provider majority-owned by Japan’s NTT Communications, has appointed Joel Stone, former head of data center operations at CenturyLink, as senior VP and chief operating officer.

Stone will lead facilities engineering, design, construction, and data center operations at RagingWire, which recently pivoted from a mixed retail and wholesale data center services model to one focused on wholesale, seeking to take advantage of the current hunger for data center capacity by big cloud providers, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

Stone has a lot of experience in both data center services and web-scale data center infrastructure. At CenturyLink, he oversaw a global portfolio of 60 colocation data centers. Prior to joining CenturyLink in 2011, he oversaw global operations at Global Switch, which provides data center services in Europe and Asia. Before that, he spent nine years managing data centers at Microsoft.

Reno, Nevada-based RagingWire was attractive to him because he buys into the company’s new business strategy, Stone said in an interview. “They’re making their mark in the wholesale industry,” he said. “I have a great opportunity to come in and help them with their strategy to grow the business.”

Joel Stone, COO, RagingWire Data Centers

He left CenturyLink at a time of uncertainty for the Monroe, Louisiana-based telco’s data center business. Since last year, the company has been exploring alternatives to owning its extensive data center portfolio, which it increased substantially in 2011 when it acquired data center provider Savvis for $2.5 billion.

The company’s execs said that while they have no plans to get out of the colocation business, they are weighing apotential sale of some or all of its data center assets.

Stone declined to comment on CenturyLink’s data center plans.

His focus at RagingWire will be on expanding the company’s existing campuses in Sacramento, California, and Ashburn, Virginia, completing the massive-scale data center construction project the company kicked off last year in Texas, and building in new markets. RagingWire is eyeing expansion into New York, Silicon Valley, Chicago, and another West Coast market – Los Angeles, Phoenix, or eastern Washington – the company’s president, Doug Adams, told DCK earlier.

There isn’t a single particular type of data center design that works for all cloud providers, Stone said. “Some cloud providers require very strict architecture, and they really don’t want to deviate from a true 2N-type of style. Others have more of a single-cord [approach] and they have geographic redundancy.”

For RagingWire, the key differentiation will be scale, since that’s what all the major cloud providers are after today. They’re racing to expand data center capacity, and they expand in multi-megawatt chunks, so scale is important to them.

“From our perspective, it’s all about scale,” Stone said.

Original article appeared here: CenturyLink Data Center VP Joins RagingWire as COO

Source: TheWHIR

Rackspace Partners with Dovecot to Cut Down on Email Server Costs

Rackspace Partners with Dovecot to Cut Down on Email Server Costs

Rackspace will adopt Dovecot Pro to power its email platform in an attempt to make its email servers substantially more efficient, and therefore less costly. Rackspace announced the shift along with Dovecot parent company Open-Xchange on Tuesday.

Rackspace technical director Dan Shain says the company is hoping to serve its 3.5 million end-users with one-fifth of the number of IMAP email servers. This would result in savings on the cost of electricity, cooling, and maintaining hardware. Shain also says the change will improve the scalability and reliability of Rackspace’s email service, and can be implemented without any service disruption.

SEE ALSO: Rackspace CEO: Q1 2016 Growth Driven by Managed Cloud Services Demand

“Rackspace is an extremely valued and long standing member of the Dovecot open source community, working with us to constantly improve Dovecot’s IMAP server offering for the benefit of end-users across the globe,” said Timo Sirainen, chief architect and co-founder, Dovecot. “Large email providers are under constant pressure to reliably grow their storage capacity at an affordable price for both themselves and their end-users. By partnering with Dovecot, Rackspace, famous for its fanatical customer support, has tackled this challenge head on.”

Dovecot was merged into Open-Xchange in March 2015, and Rackspace has long been an active member of Dovecot’s open-source community. In addition to Dovecot’s email backend and fully stateless design, Rackspace will gain Dovecot Pro’s Object Storage Plugin, with its scalable storage from Scality. Dovecot also reduces the storage capacity needed for full text indexes by 50 percent over other open source full text indexes, the companies said.

This year’s Open Email Survey showed Dovecot has cornered over two-thirds (68.5 percent) of the IMAP server market.

Open-Xchange also expanded its infrastructure services by merging with PowerDNS on the heels of the Dovecot merger last year.

Rackspace has also struck several deals this year to boost its OpenStack cloud, including most recently with cloud optimization startup AppFormix.

Source: TheWHIR