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A few weeks ago, as a damp winter chill settled on San Francisco, Peter van Hardenberg decided it was time for some eggnog. He knew of an excellent homespun recipe from a former colleague at Heroku, a company that helps startups build cloud-based apps. And if he recalled correctly, it was stored on one of Herokus many cloud servers. But when Van Hardenberg typed in the relevant URL, he found the cupboard was barelost to some long-ago server maintenance. It had just fallen off the internet, he says.

Such are the daily glitches of life in the cloud. Cloud computing has made essential tools, like Google Docs and Slack, possible. But it comes with compromises. The smart toaster cant toast without Wi-Fi. The music skips when you enter the subway tunnel, and then the entire library disappears when the startup goes out of business. Weve forgotten what its like to have software that works, Van Hardenberg says. But for software companies, the model of hoarding software and data on remote servers works just fine. Its lucrative, in fact. Hand over enough of your data, and youll eventually need a membership to access it. Or else its probably being used for advertising. None of your data is truly yours.

Van Hardenberg and his colleagues at Ink & Switch, a private research lab that includes other Heroku alums, want to provide an alternative to that model. They call the effort local-first software. (Van Hardenberg considers it a form of penance for having built a company based on offering cloud services.) Local-first reflects a yearning, in part, for the days when software came in a cardboard box. Back then, you installed it on your computer, where it remained safely ensconced, along with your files. But the point isnt to ditch the cloud entirely so much as deemphasize it, says Martin Kleppmann, a Cambridge University researcher who works with Ink & Switch. Its local-first, not local-only. The idea is to marry local storage of software and data with certain things the cloud does well, like collaboration.

Files are stored across the devices of invited collaborators, rather than on a corporate server or in the cloud. Its decentralized, in other words. That word is often synonymous with blockchain. And there are overlaps, spiritually, in the desire to avoid centralized authority. But blockchains are based on a lack of trust with other users. They use a computationally expensive process called consensus to ensure everyone agrees on a common state of affairs, without anyone taking advantage. Local-first software is based on trust. The point is collaboration among friendly parties. The consensus I need is whats on my computer, Van Hardenberg says.

Entrepreneurs want to know, what gun do I have to hold to my users heads to make them pay?

Peter van Hardenberg, Ink & Switch

Local-first software uses a leaner technology called conflict-free replicated data types, or CRDTs, first fleshed out by researchers in France and Portugal in 2011. The concept is similar to Git, a tool programmers use to manage software development on platforms like Github. But instead of manually merging changes, as Git requires, CRDTs do it automatically. When Kleppmann came upon the idea a few years ago, the technology was being used primarily in a few backend databases and in academic applications. But he was intrigued by the concept. So he set out to make it more useful to developers, designing a JavaScript library called Automerge that made CRDTs more flexible and efficient. The hope is to get the software to a point where developers want to use it to build a local version of Slack or TrelloKleppmann personally wants a local-first Evernote.

The Ink & Switch team has used Automerge for a handful of prototypes. Van Hardenberg shows me an app called Pushpin. Its a little bit like Pinterest, a board where users can share images and notes, along with websites pulled from Chrome using a plugin and a simple chat function. He had been pleasantly surprised by how well the CRDTs worked. It was like the Wright brothers, he says. Were really flying. This magical feeling of freedom and independence.

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You Can Have Collaborative Software Thats Wary of the Cloud - WIRED

Pure Storage: Doing Very Well, Thank You For Asking

Anyone looking for the bad news stemming from Pure Storage's third fiscal quarter 2020 results and changes at its top executive level had best not ask Charles Giancarlo, the company's CEO.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Pure Storage late last month said it did not meet its third fiscal quarter expectation and which reduced its fourth fiscal quarter guidance because of softening storage prices and new macroeconomic headwinds. The company also said its longtime president, David "Hat" Hatfield will transition to a new role as vice chairman and president emeritus. He also introduced the company's first-ever chief operating officer, as well as its new chief financial officer.

But none of that should be looked at in a negative way, Giancarlo said. He told CRN that Pure Storage is continuing to generate cash, and has no debt, which he said combined means the company has "$56 billion" more in net cash compared to rival Dell Technologies. In addition, he said, the company is continuing to advance its cloud capabilities in such a way that differentiates it from rival NetApp.

For more on Pure Storage's financial situation, competitive situation, cloud situation, and executive situation, and to learn about the search for Giancarlo's one-syllable nickname to bring him in line with other "Puritans," turn the page.

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Pure Storage CEO Giancarlo Talks Cloud, Exec Changes, And Having '56 Billion More Dollars Than Dell' - CRN: The Biggest Tech News For Partners And The...

By Rick Clarkson, Chief Strategy Officer,Signiant

Over the past few years, IT managers in the M&E sector have been dealing with increasingly global and elaborate media supply chains. Consumer demand for content on any device, at anytime, anywhere in the world has pushed content production and distribution workflows to include far more people and far more file movement. On top of that, a massive surge of data in the industry from increasing frame sizes and resolution rates, the adoption of virtual/augmented reality, and the massive amounts of raw footage capture required for reality-based programming, sports events and feature films has further complicated the situation. New technologies, particularly innovations in cloud services, have emerged to help, but they can add even more complexity without the right plan.

Almost all media companies are adopting the cloud for some workflows and use cases, but most are not going all in. Rather, theyre choosing a hybrid cloud approach, continuing to leverage on-premises storage and software alongside cloud investments. At the same time, many of those companies utilize multiple cloud vendors. This new hybrid cloud/multi-cloud world has a lot of benefits but also creates challenges, particularly around storage which, in media, is always at the forefront of ITs mind.

Not only do IT managers have to keep up with evolving storage options, they have to understand how each will interact with their entire software stack and determine if they will support both short and long-term business goals. The result often includes an array of tiered storage types that are distributed across multiple on- premises locations (private clouds) as well as across multiple public cloud providers and regions.

Often, the larger the company the more complex the situation, and even more so for companies that have been through mergers and acquisitions. In those situations, IT managers can face storage and software incompatibilities along with different legacy, active and potential storage solutions from dozens of vendors.

Whatever the situation, managing storage in todays media environment is a difficult, ever-changing, job.

Signiant is well known in M&E for providing secure and reliable intelligent file transfer solutions. A unique aspect of Signiants platform is what we call storage independence, meaning our products are never bundled with storage and are compatible with all storage types, both on-premises and in the cloud. As a result, Signiants software provides a valuable abstraction layer, removing the complexity of dealing with different storage types in different locations. This empowers IT managers and end users in several ways.

Many software vendors require customers to use a particular type of storage by bundling their services with storage (often their own) or only supporting a limited number of storage options. For example, services like Dropbox or Google Drive bundle storage as part of the service. Those services are great for many applications but have well-known limitations when working with large files, and storage bundling presents additional challenges with respect to security, cost and performance.

Arguably, for some types of software, storage independence doesnt matter that much. However, in media, its critical. Most media companies understand the need for secure file acceleration solutions that can transfer large data volumes quickly over public and private IP networks. Storage independence, on the other hand, is a more recently recognized requirement, and is quickly becoming core to business operations for forward-thinking companies in M&E. Why?

At best, a lack of storage independence limits your ability to create a flexible storage strategy for all of your companys assets and projects. At worst, it takes content out of your direct control and hides storage costs. Its important that the software responsible for transferring files between your entire network of storage, systems, partners and people is flexible enough to support your storage choices, now and as the storage landscape continues to evolve.

In recent years, cloud storage has gained traction as organizations see the benefits of its elastic capabilities, raising new questions about what should stay on premises and how cloud storage should be leveraged. Most media companies have invested heavily in their fixed IT infrastructure, including on-premises tiered storage that balances performance and cost for different use cases. In those cases, its important to look for file acceleration software that can be deployed with and easily configured to support different storage types, whether on-premises or cloud. This allows IT managers to strategize on a case-by-case basis and as requirements change.

Here are three cases to consider:

1. Freeing up overflowing primary storage

A top concern for many media companies is freeing up local primary storage, which is typically housed in expensive, high-performing systems. Some companies choose to offload inactive content to mid-tier, more affordable on-premises systems, while others are offloading to cloud storage in AWS, Azure and/or Google in order to take advantage of its flexibility, ease of deployment, and pay-for-what- you-use pricing model.

2. Disaster recovery

Disaster recovery (DR) is one area where cloud storage is being adopted, offering elasticity and high availability. Short-term backup is typically put in place to facilitate disaster recovery for high-value projects such as feature films or episodic television production. Being able to quickly move large files to and from backup storage is required for disaster recovery. Acceleration software that overcomes network latency and congestion typically associated with moving large data sets to or from cloud storage is key for DR. In these cases, having a file transfer solution that both moves large files quickly and supports storage independence allows you to choose and switch between cloud storage providers, supporting an intelligent, flexible storage strategy.

3. Long-term archiving

Archiving is another area where cloud storage is being considered now that lower cost options are available such as AWS Glacier. Glacier offers a much lower cost tier of storage but sacrifices the immediacy required for DR. However, it still is important to be able to move your files quickly into archives as the amount of content produced in a day may exceed the amount of available network bandwidth you have to move it at night. Acceleration software allows companies to get their data into backup storage during off hours to keep the network freed up when creative resources are at work.

In the end, companies should assume the volume of content will continue to grow as will storage options. As new features or new providers become appropriate to implement, there should be no barriers to adoption. This is where large file transfer solutions that are fully storage independent grow in importance.

Storage independence has long been a central tenant in the design of all of Signiants intelligent file transfer solutions. Our products allow the flexibility to choose the right storage for each situation, never tying you to any one storage type or vendor, whether on-premises or cloud. For media companies already in the hybrid cloud/multi-cloud world, Signiant technology has become an increasingly important abstraction layer, allowing IT to choose different storage types for different use cases while giving creative professionals and partners a secure means to transfer content with speed and ease.

And for media companies planning to adopt a hybrid cloud/multi-cloud approach now or in the future, intelligent large file transfer solutions that are storage independent will be essential to thriving in that new world.

About Signiant

Signiants enterprise software provides the worlds top content creators and distributors with fast, reliable, secure access to large media files, regardless of physical storage type or location. By enabling authorized people and processes to seamlessly exchange valuable content within and between enterprises Signiant connects the global media supply chain. For more information, please visit http://www.signiant.com.

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Secure, intelligent file transfer in a hybrid cloud/multi-cloud world is more important than ever before [sponsored] - RedShark News

AWS Outposts is a converged infrastructure rack, announced at re:Invent in Las Vegas this week. In effect this is Amazons public cloud in a box, delivering an all-AWS hybrid computing environment within the customers data centre.

By coupling Outposts so tightly to AWS, Amazon is taking a different approach than other converged infrastructure rack vendors such as Dell EMC.

AWS Outposts is a fully-managed compute, networking and storage rack built with AWS-designed hardware that allow customers to run AWS services on-premises or in co-location sites and is connected to the AWS public cloud.

An Outpost rack is conceptually equivalent to a converged infrastructure (CI) rack such as Dell EMCs PowerONE and VxBlock systems.

The Outposts rack containsservers, storage, AWS software, redundant power supplies and built-in top-of-rack network switches. The switch supports 1/10/40/100 Gbit/s uplinks. There are Outposts compute and storage capacity options. Customers can also work with Amazon to create a custom combination with their desired EC2 and EBS capacity. This combo is pre-tested and validated by Amazon before delivery.

An AWS Outposts FAQ states: AWS Outposts leverages AWS designed infrastructure, and is only supported on AWS-designed hardware. For example, EBS snapshots created on an Outposts rack are stored in the connected regions S3 vault.

The Outposts rack must be connected across the public internet to a parent AWS region with a high-availability link. AWS uploads and executes software upgrades and patches across this link.

Outposts racks are configured by available EC2 and EBS capacities. For example: Compute optimised 11c5.24xlarge EC2 capacity and 11+ TB of EBS capacity. There are options for memory optimised, graphics large units, general purpose units. Here is a sample from a trial configuration process.

There is no option to select specific server CPU models with their cores and clock rating. You cannot specify the amount of memory nor the amount and type of storage media. We saw no option to specify particular software or Amazon services.

Prices lists EBS storage tiers 2.7TB, 11TB, 33TB and 55TB with per GB/month prices ranging from $0.25 to $0.55.

Customers can pay all upfront, make a partial upfront payment or pay through monthly subscription. For example, an OR-FWTFFXJ compute-optimised unit with a three-year term costs $239,761.41 upfront, $123.650.18 partial upfront payment and $3,434.73 monthly or $7,148.67 monthly.

The most costly Outposts rack, an OR-HSZHMMF memory-optimised large unit, costs $1,079,998.31 upfront or $33,869.12 per month.

These prices do not include operating system usage, which is charged by the second per instance.

AWS Services on Outposts are priced based on usage by the hour per instance and excludes underlying EC2 instance and EBS storage charges. Available AWS services include RDS, ECS, EKS, EMR and App Mesh and their prices are explained in their service web pages. For example, this is the EKS pricing page.

Dell EMC intends to launch VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts next year so users can have VMware on their own in-premises gear, in the AWS public cloud and on the Outposts rack.

Cohesity, Druva and Veritas have each announced that their protection products support AWS Outposts.

Lets now explore how AWS Outposts differs from Dell EMCs PowerOne and VxBlock CI systems.

PowerOne is a converged infrastructure system comprising compute, storage, networking, VMware virtualization software, and data protection in a single rack. All components come from Dell Technologies. The technical specifications list the components in each category:

The customer has to understand their workload and what it needs in terms of compute, storage, networking and protection capacity. On delivery it has to be set up and an automation engine helps with this and with provisioning resources for application workloads.

The PowerOne selection language is different from that of AWS Outposts which is specified in terms of EC2 instance types and EBS capacity.

Dell EMCs VxBlocks are also specified by components and use Dell EMC storage, VMware virtualization software and Cisco servers and networking.

Customers can run a VMware environment in Amazon but there is no easy way to port VxBlock applications to run in AWS. Typically, VxBlock hybrid cloud entails backing up VxBlock data to AWS, not application portability.

When or if VMware Cloud Foundation runs on VxBlock and PowerOne we can look forward to an all-VMware hybrid cloud that embraces CI systems from Dell EMC and AWS Outposts.

Pricing for PowerOne and VxBlocks is not publicly available.

Ideally a hybrid on-premises public cloud environment would have a simpler management plane and application portability between the on-premises and public cloud systems.

AWS Outposts enables customers to run an all-Amazon hybrid cloud with Outposts on-premises linking to the AWS public cloud under a single AWS management facility.

Amazon sees hybrid cloud as the AWS public cloud connected to AWS Outposts.

Dell EMC envisages the hybrid cloud as its on-premises infrastructure extended out and linked to multiple clouds, for backup or storage tiering, for example. Customers should be able to run virtual machines that run on-premises in the public cloud and also containers.

With this model, the on-premises supplier calls the shots and helps itself and its customers to avoid cloud lock-in.

By contrast, AWS Outposts shows Amazon constructing the hybrid cloud as an entirely in-house affair with a unified on-premises and public cloud AWS environment managed from AWS. With the notable exception of VMware Cloud Foundation, this vision does not accommodate third party vendors or integrate with non-Amazon environments. At least, not at the moment.

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AWS Outposts: You can have any hybrid cloud you want...as long as it is Amazon - Blocks and Files