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President Trump could cost US cloud computing providers more than $10 billion by 2020 – Bdaily

August 22, 2017 | Author: admin

The US cloud computing industry stands to lose more than $10 billion by 2020 as a result of President Trumps increasingly shaky reputation on data privacy, according to the latest research from secure data centre experts Artmotion.

Growth for US cloud computing providers is already thought to be slowing. Although IDCs latest Worldwide Public Cloud Services Spending Guide suggests that the US will generate more than 60% of total worldwide cloud revenues to 2020, the country is expected to experience the slowest growth rate of the eight regions in the analysis.

However, this forecast slowdown does not factor in the effect that President Trumps controversial record on data privacy has had on business confidence in the US as a data hosting location. This coincides with a rapid increase in people expressing unfavourable opinions about the US more generally. In fact, the latest study from the the Pew Research Center highlights that just 22% of people have confidence in President Trump to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs.

As a result of this growing uncertainty, Artmotions new analysis suggests that US cloud providers will experience further slowing of growth in the next three years creating estimated losses of $10.1 billion for the industry between 2017-2020.

Mateo Meier, CEO of Artmotion, commented: In a market that is still expected to grow significantly in the next few years, it is vital that US service providers continue to attract new customers in order to retain market share. Despite the USs current dominance of the global cloud computing market, there is no certainty that the status quo will be maintained. Perhaps the key reason for US cloud providers to be fearful is that this isnt the first time weve been here.

Edward Snowdens revelations about PRISM and the NSAs mass surveillance techniques were hugely damaging to US cloud companies. It also encouraged many businesses to completely rethink their data strategies, rather than continuing to trust that US cloud providers would guarantee the levels of data security and privacy they need. The impact that President Trump could have needs to be understood in that context.

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State of Cloud – 2017 – Read IT Quik

August 22, 2017 | Author: admin

Cloud has taken the world by storm. So much so that Gartner reports that by 2020, more than $1 trillion will be spent in shifting businesses from traditional systems to the cloud, effectively showcasing how far the global industry has progressed in cloud adoption.

The cloud system has exploded and now houses many different segments. There has been a massive shakedown in the industry, and as the dust settles, the main players have emerged. This article identifies these trailblazers in the different segments present in the cloud arena.

Cloud Governance

Cloud Governance manages Cloud Resource Management, Operations Automation, Cost Management, Security and Compliance of Cloud Consumption. A Cloud Security Alliance survey found that 34.8% of enterprises with more than 5,000 employees have a cloud governance committee charged with creating and enforcing cloud policies. This shows the growing clamor to have an able Cloud Governance Mechanism in place to have control over the consumption, productivity improvements and security of multi-cloud setups.

Some of the leading players are CoreStack, Rightscale and Jamcracker.

Cloud Orchestration

Cloud orchestration tools help in sequencing the different automation tasks and ensure that they are carried out in a consolidated process workflow. The cloud orchestration market is to grow from USD 4.95 billion in 2016 to USD 14.17 billion by 2021. This indicates a CAGR of 23.4% from 2016 to 2021, marking rapid growth in the cloud orchestration market. The reason for this growth can be attributed to the increasing need felt by Small and Medium Enterprises to optimize resources, and organizations inclination towards self-service provisioning.

Leading players in this segment are Cloudify, Terraform and Ansible. Its to be noted that this segment has seen a flurry of acquisitions.

Cloud Management

Cloud Management tools help businesses plan, build and operate multiple clouds from a single pane, with their centralized management features. Many of the players in this segment have now however diverged into other areas such as Cloud Governance.

Some of the players are ParkMyCloud, BMCs Cloud Lifecycle Management, etc.

Cloud Brokerage

Cloud brokerage service providers are intermediaries who help businesses interact with cloud providers and provide customized integration and consulting services. However, this segment has lost traction as a pure-play service in the past few years. These days most Cloud Brokers also provide other services such as Cloud Management or Cloud Governance services.

Cloud Market Place

Cloud Marketplaces provide distributors and resellers ecommerce platforms for selling cloud-based services to organizations. The large Cloud Service providers are expanding their footprint to support distributors and resellers to have more market penetration. SaaS Cloud Market place is another area which is picking up.

The top Cloud Marketplaces are Appdirect, ComputeNext, Mirakl.

Cloud Eco System

The Cloud Ecosystem has undergone continuous expansion in the past few years. There were many small but promising players who were acquired by the whos who of the tech world, such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Today, AWS offers 85+ ecosystem services, while Azure offers 90+.

Also, open-source platform, Openstack has announced 50+ incubated projects to strengthen their Cloud Ecosystem.

Cloud Security

Security is a key concern for organizations given the mounting cyberattacks. Recently CloudFlare made news for the wrong reasons, when sensitive data pertaining to top businesses such as Uber, Fitbit, Medium, Yelp, Zendesk, etc. was leaked. At this stage, organizations are exploring effective cloud security options to safeguard from business risks. Security is fast becoming an in-built consideration in any new product release, not an afterthought. The current trends are:

Cloud Service Providers such as AWS, Azure and Google Compute Engine are coming up with their own on-demand security services. This may be a threat for the SaaS based security service providers but their ability to provide security services across these multiple clouds augment well for them.

Cloud Migration

Migration is one area in Cloud that has many wrinkles to iron out. Migration can be in the form of Physical to Cloud, Virtual to Cloud and Cloud to Cloud, and can be carried out via virtual image or operating system. These migrations are usually carried out by Cloud SIs in partnership with the migration tool vendors, like, Appzero and Racemi (Operating System based), Zerto and Doubletake (Virtual Image based).

These Cloud Service providers/ Platforms too are adding migration tools to their arsenal. Case in point is AWS Migration Tools and Azures App Service Migration Assistant. While migration is not as seamless as it ought to be, there is light ahead in the tunnel, in the form of containers.

Cloud Service Provider

We all know the biggies in this field. If Cloud technology powers your business, then you most probably should thank one of these - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine and IBM Softlayer.

At the very beginning, there were other big brands competing too, such as, HP Public Cloud, Cisco Public Cloud, etc. However, they later modified their strategies and closed their public cloud offering. Rackspace, another well-known name, was pitted against AWS, but later migrated to Managed Support Services. It was then acquired by Apollo Global Management.

Recently, Synergy Research released the market share information of the major players, where AWS emerged as the winner in the race for Public Cloud Leadership.

Cloud Platform

The clear winners in the Public Cloud domain are AWS and Azure. AWS raked in $3.5 billion in sales in Q4 2016, a 47% increase from Q4 2015. Azure is gaining mileage with a JP Morgan analyst estimating a cool $2.5 billion in revenue in Q4 2016. Microsoft has disclosed a 93% revenue rise up from Q4 2015 to Q4 2016.

In the Private Cloud domain, Openstack, the opensource platform is ruling roost. The many small-time players in the opensource ecosystem have been acquired by the big fshes, Redhat, IBM, Dell EMC, consolidating the segment. Microsoft is trying to make inroads in Private cloud with Azure Stack, but its impact remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, VMWare is still the number one provider in the virtualization segment.

Cloud Service Delivery Platform

Cloud Service Delivery Platform enables hosting service providers to offer unified Cloud Service delivery for their Cloud business. The need of the hour are service delivery platforms that provide self-service provisioning and run the show services business.

The market leaders are Atomia, Cloud Portal Business Manager (CPBM) and Talligent. ACQUIRER

However, it is to be noted that since large enterprises often build their own Cloud Service Delivery Platform, accelerated growth cant be expected in this segment.

PaaS Service Providers

PaaS provides you computing platform services which typically includes hosted development kits, database tools, and application management capabilities. Companies use these services as scalable environments for new or expanding applications to larger audiences. While Azure and Google started with PaaS and moved to IaaS, AWS started with IaaS and added PaaS as part of their ecosystem of services.

Leading PaaS Service Providers are Salesforce, Google App Engine, Redhat Openshift, IBM Bluemix, Engine Yard and Heroku, which was later acquired by Salesforce.

Upcoming PaaS Services are AWS Beanstalk, and Azure App Services.

PaaS Platform

Though touted as the future of the cloud, Cloud PaaS platform couldnt live up to the market expectations due to evolution issues. PaaS platforms didnt provide fresh approaches for application migration. Nor did they provide the control and flexibility required to manage complex environments. Also, evolution of Cloud Orchestration and Containers side-lined the focus and growth of PaaS platforms as they provided most of the features offered by PaaS platforms with lesser constraints.

The major players are Cloud Foundry and OpenShift. These two adopted Docker to provide Container Image Mobility features. Cloud Foundry also announced multiple siblings such as Stackato, Appfog and Iron-foundry, which were subsequently acquired.

Object Storage Service Providers

Object Storage Services are used by almost every organization adopting cloud, as they are used in managing configuring files, backup, logs, files, etc. The current trend in object storage is to have a hybrid object storage that helps in bursting to cloud from the enterprise object storage based on certain policies.

AWS S3 is considered unanimously as the market leader in cloud object storage. For accelerated hybrid cloud storage, AWS subscribers have to use the Amazon Storage Gateway services. A much more economical version by AWS for cloud object storage is AWS Glacier.

Major players are Azure Blob Storage, Swistack, Rackspace, Internap, Google Cloud Storage, Tiscali and Scality.

Object Storage Platform

While it has been around for quite some time, Cloud Object Storage Platform is slowly picking up speed as a viable competitor for block and file storage. These platforms help organizations enjoy content storage thats simple, flexible and most importantly, scalable. Also, they enable easy retrieval of data from the storage for usage.

OpenStack Swift is the leading opensource platform in this segment. It is important to note that some of the largest storage clouds such as Rackspace, SwiftStack and Internap have been built using OpenStack Swift.

Hybrid object storage is supported via APIs provided by object storage platforms to integrate with the object storage service providers like AWS S3 or Azure Blob. Upcoming players in this segment are Redhat, Ceph, Cloudian, Scality and EMC ECS.

Cloud Storage as A Service Provider

As per a survey by IDGs 2016 Enterprise Cloud Computing Survey, 21% respondents are predicting data storage/data management apps are a high priority area for their organizations cloud migration plans in 2017. With the deluge of data, courtesy analytics and insight-driven strategies, cloud storage as a service provider are betting big on organizations demand for storage needs.

That said, the enterprise storage market is poised for major disruptions this year, as per Techtarget. while AWS and Azure offer storage services, they are nowhere enough to meet the requirements of large enterprises.

Hence, there have bloomed a few players like Zadara to tackle this niche.

Block Storage Platform

The leading Open source Block Storage platforms are Openstack Cinder and Ceph Block Storage. Openstack Cloud platform supports both Cinder and Ceph for block Storage. On the Container Side, Flocker is a leading open-source container data volume orchestrator for Dockerized application.

Cloud File Hosting Service Providers

File hosting is mostly driven by mobile and IoT devices. Also, it has been an eventful year for enterprises, as their fie servers have been now migrated to cloud hosting service providers. The challenge for the major players in this segment is how they tackle the myriad requirement of enterprises, which are Performance, Migration, Security and Availability.

File hosting service providers is a segment that has matured and consists of a quite a number of contenders. We have the biggies Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft, Onedrive, AWS CloudDrive, Apples iCloud on one side and other players such as Sugarsync and Mediare.

Enterprise File Sharing Platform

As per a report, the Enterprise File Sharing and Synchronization (EFSS) market size is expected to grow by 25.7%. by 2021. Composed EFSS trend, demand for cloud-based integration, and Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) has led to widespread adoption of EFSS solutions. Companies are leveraging EFSS solutions to effectively share and manage voluminous day processed every day, while ensuring data security.

Leading players are Sharefile, Box, ownCloud, Egnyte, Sparkleshare, Seafle, Pydio, Syncplicity, and WatchDox. ownCloud, Seattle and Pydio are open source platforms in this segment. Some of the acquisitions in this segment are as above.

Conclusion

As per Bain & Companys research brief titled e Changing Faces of the Cloud, the global cloud IT market revenue is predicted to increase from $180B in 2015 to $390B in 2020, attaining a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17%. In the same period, SaaS-based apps are predicted to grow at an 18% CAGR, and IaaS/PaaS is predicted to increase at a 27% CAGR.

These numbers are indicative of the market sentiment towards cloud and give an idea of the rate at which the technology has been and will be adopted. Cloud has transformed businesses and helped establish new business models that were previously unthinkable. And in that, cloud has greatly advanced the state of business, internationally.

And the future seems promising. At the 2016 Google Next Conference, Eric Schmidt had made a great many predictions with respect to computing. He believes that NoOps will become mainstream, server less architecture will be the next wave of computing.

Another area that is deemed to revolutionize clouds future is containerization and container orchestration, with popular open source projects such as Docker, Kubernetes and Mesos providing benefits of efficiency for memory, CPU and storage.

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Bitcoin rebounds after briefly entering correction territory – MarketWatch

August 22, 2017 | Author: admin

Prices of bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash rebounded on Tuesday, while ethereum remained under pressure, further retreating from recent all-time highs.

A single bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.56% was most recently up 2% on the day at $4,139.87, after dropping to as low as $3,687 in morning trade. At the session lows, the virtual currency had briefly been pushed into correction territory, defined by technical analysts as a 10% or greater fall from a recent peak in an asset.

Bitcoin hit as low as $3,687 earlier on the day, which would represent a 16.7% decline from its mid-August record close above $4,425, according to virtual-currency site Coindesk.com. At current levels it is 8% below that peak.

Even after the stumbles, bitcoins price is about 400% higher since the start of the year, with a market cap at $68.7 billion, according to digital-currency research site Coinmarketcap.com.

Meanwhile, ethereums ether token retreated, coming off a recent record, down 0.5% at $322.33 on the day. It reached a peak in mid-June at about $380 a token.

Some industry experts played down the digital-currency slide.

Naturally some of the prices and exuberance seen in the price are causing traders to take profits, said Charles Hayter, chief executive and founder of CryptoCompare.

The moves for bitcoin come as the industry has tackled so-called scaling issues, which are intended to increase transaction sizes in the blockchain network. Traditional bitcoin participants have coalesced around a new protocol known as Segregated Witness, or SegWit., which solves bitcoins scaling issue.

With SegWit implementation it has perhaps been a question of buy the rumor, sell the news, said Hayter, referring to the industrys recent trading in the wake of upgrades to the bitcoin network.

Meanwhile, bitcoins offspring Bitcoin Cash, which tumbled 14% on Monday, rebounded on Tuesday, trading 5.2% higher on the day at $662.25.

The fallout of bitcoins transaction-size problem was the creation of Bitcoin Cash.

Bitcoin Cash, the nascent alternative to bitcoin, had climbed to a recent peak of $920 on Saturday. At current prices, its market capitalization is above $11 billion, making it the third-most valuable virtual currency, behind cyberunits running on the ethereum blockchain.

Like bitcoin, ethereum went through a fissure last year that resulted in ethereum and ethereum classic, which emerged after ethereums developers engineered a controversial software update that rolled back part of its blockchain in an attempt to recover stolen funds, which led to a segment of investors refusing to adopt the update.

Ethereum and ethereum classic have coexisted the fanaticism of [Bitcoin Cash] as a fringe idea will most likely influence bitcoin, but as with most splits left of field plays, it will not reach mainstream, just like politics, said Hayter. That said, if bitcoin manages to fracture its community through infighting, there could be a chink in its armor.

So-called ethereum classic is worth only a fraction of its updated brethren, with a market value at $1.3 billion, compared with ethereum at nearly $30 billion. Ethereum appreciated nearly 70% since the start of August and is up 3,875% year to date, having started 2017 at about $8.

The total market value of an array of widely followed digital currencies was at $147.49 billion.

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Here’s Why Bitcoin Rose More than $1000 in Two Months – Futurism

August 22, 2017 | Author: admin

In BriefBitcoin is the world's most popular cryptocurrency, and its value continues to reach new heights. Here are a few reasons this relatively unknown digital coin was able to make the climb from obscurity to the mainstream consciousness.

So far, 2017 has been an eventful year for Bitcoin.

The platform recentlyendured a hard fork that saw it split in two and come out seemingly unscathed. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency has risen from relative obscurity to become a popular topic of discussion in the mainstream, with everyone from Bloomberg to Forbes covering it regularly. The year isnt even over, and bitcoin has reached numerous milestonesalready, both in terms of its own history and that ofcryptocurrency in general.

Overall, Bitcoin seems to be steadily trending upward, with even greater heights predicted for the platforms future. So, how did a cryptocoin originally associated with the internets darkest corners become a popular contender for the future of financial and other transactions?

Longevity seems to play a factor. After years of trading, the coin has proven itself as here to stay, leading to years of value increases first a steady rise from 2012 through 2016, and then a more dramatic surge that is still ongoing today.

A cryptocurrency researcher who goes by the Twitter handle Jack Sparrow shared a comparative overview of just how fast bitcoins value has risen.

After it was created in 2009, bitcoin needed roughly seven years to reach a $2,000 valuation. However, the crypto saw the same level of increase from $2,000 to $4,000 in a matter of just 85 days.

The numbers are backed up, of course, by confidence fromlarger institutions. Big financial firms like Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Fidelity Investments are now invested in the crypto, and nations such asChina, Japan, and, more recently, Australiahave started considering more permanent roles for cryptocurrencies in their respective economies as well.

All of this large-scale support is giving smaller organizations and individual investors confidencein the crypto.

The growing popularity of blockchain enterprise use has also contributed to the successes of Bitcoin and other platforms. As more institutions in the financial industry and beyondlook for ways to utilizethe decentralized and secure digital ledger, the cryptocurrencies that spring from these blockchains also get a boost.

Still, even with Bitcoins seemingly unstoppable successes, experts advise caution. As with any hot item, investing in bitcoin can be risky. Some, such as billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban and veteran investor Peter Schiff, even warn that the current cryptocoin craze is simply a bubble. However, while Schiff claims cryptocurrencies will never be money, many others thinkotherwise.

Are we witnessing the beginnings ofa truly cashless future? Only time will tell, and as with any revolution, Bitcoinhas many hurdles to overcome before it can truly transform our society. Right now, though, the crypto is clearly on the rise.

Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.

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The IRS Has Special Software to Find Bitcoin Tax Cheats – Fortune

August 22, 2017 | Author: admin

One benefit of using bitcoin is the digital currency can be anonymousits owners can move money around the world without revealing who they are. Well, in theory at least. In reality, bitcoin is less secret than people think.

The latest reminder of this comes via a report that the Internal Revenue Service is using software to unmask bitcoin users who have failed to report profits. According to a contract unearthed by the Daily Beast, the IRS is paying a company called Chainalysis to help identify the owners of digital "wallets" that users employ to store their bitcoins.

In a letter to the IRS, the co-founder of Chainalysis says the company has information on 25 percent of all bitcoin addresses and that it deploys millions of tags to help track and identify transactions. Here is a screenshot of a paragraph from the letter:

The decision by the IRS to license the software of Chainalysis, which is based in Switzerland with an office in New York, appears to be part of the agency's larger campaign to target digital currency users who have failed to pay tax.

As Fortune reported earlier this year, the IRS claims only 802 people declared a capital gain or loss related to bitcoin in 2015. This is significant since the price of bitcoin soared from around $13 to over $1100 between 2013 and 2015, and hundreds of thousands (like millions) of Americans bought and sold digital currency during this timein other words, there are many people who face bitcoin-related tax trouble, and the IRS is tracking some of them down.

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There are indications, though, the IRS is focusing only on the bigger fish. For instance, in the agency's ongoing legal battle with the popular digital currency exchange, Coinbase, the IRS recently agreed to limit its request for customer records only to accounts with transactions over $20,000.

Nonetheless, the IRS's use of the Chainalysis software is likely to make some bitcoin owners uneasy. Meanwhile, on bitcoin forums, some users have expressed resentment against exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Mt. Gox for allegedly storing wallets in such a way that analytic companies like Chainalysis or BitSeer can identify individual users.

The forum chatter also shows some bitcoin users are thinking of switching to other digital currencies like Monero that are harder to trace.

Finally, the existence of tools like Chainalysis doesn't mean bitcoin users can't be anonymous. Those who wish to keep their identity concealed can do so by maintaining their own wallet and avoiding exchanges that collect customer information.

This is part of Fortunes new initiative, The Ledger, a trusted news source at the intersection of tech and finance.

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Bitcoin Prices Dip Below $4000 to Hit 7-Day Low – CoinDesk

August 22, 2017 | Author: admin

The price of bitcoin is back below $4,000.

Following a period of record highs, average prices across global exchanges declined at the start of trading on August 22, having already dipped more than $150 already from the day's open. At press time, bitcoin was trading at $3,894, its lowest total observed since April 15, when the price hit a low of $3,892.

However, despite the continued show of strength from the market, some traders indicated a belief that bitcoin's rally which has catapulted the digital asset to 350 percent gains this year might be reaching its peak.

BTC VIX, organizer of the cryptocurrency trading group Whale Club, remarked that he is losing confidence in the rally. In particular, he cited the fact that bitcoin prices have dipped below $4,000 four times since first surpassing the milestone, a sign he thinks the market isn't keen to push the price higher in the short term.

"The bulls are tired," he told CoinDesk.

Elsewhere, market observers predicted that bitcoin might stabilize around the $4,000 mark.

Such a view was put forth by Mike Kayamori, CEO of Japan-based bitcoin exchange Quoine, who saw the dip below $4,000 as a sign of consolidation, if not a cause for alarm.

Like many analysts, he appears to believe bitcoin is likely to trade in range ahead of possible changes to its underlying technology, though these won't come for some time.

"[The market] could go lower, but the next big date will be the Segwit2x in November," he concluded.

Barometer image via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Have breaking news or a story tip to send to our journalists? Contact us at [emailprotected].

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China’s two biggest bitcoin exchanges helped themselves to $150 million in idle client funds – Quartz

August 22, 2017 | Author: admin

For a long time up until recently, Chinese bitcoin exchanges didnt charge users transaction feesa major revenue source for other exchanges in the crypto market. How did they make a profit? At least part of the mystery has been solved.

Chinas two biggest bitcoin exchanges, Huobi and OKCoin, collectively invested around 1 billion yuan ($150 million) of idle client funds into wealth management productswhich are often high-yielding and riskyfor their own gain, state newswire Xinhua reported on Aug. 17 (link in Chinese), citing an investigation by the Peoples Bank of China. On the same day that the investigation was reported, bitcoin hit an all-time high of $4,500.

Yesterday (Aug. 21) Xinhua also published a rare commentary (link in Chinese) warning against bitcoins recent price surge. New things are developing so fast that regulations must keep pace, the article said, calling on the government to shut down dubious bitcoin exchanges and to never be soft on them.

Chinas central bank, fearing capital flight and money laundering, has tightened its grip on bitcoin trading in recent months. At the start of this year, the Peoples Bank of China launched an investigation into major bitcoin exchanges including Huobi and OKCoin, and issued warnings about possible risks on their platforms. In response, Huobi and OKCoin ended zero-fee trading and margin-trading services, which lets customers borrow yuan or bitcoin from the exchanges to boost their bets. The exchanges also suspended bitcoin withdrawals, and only reactivated them about two months ago. These moves ended Chinas dominance of the global bitcoin market, as measured by trading volume.

The Xinhua report didnt provide more details about the financial products Huobi and OKCoin invested in using those client funds. While bitcoin exchanges in the US and Europe typically hold client funds rather than use them, the same doesnt apply to their Chinese counterparts.

Huobi declined to comment. A representative for OKCoin didnt respond to a request for comment.

Employees of Beijing-based bitcoin exchanges and wallet apps, through which users send and receive bitcoin, told Quartz that their companies are now required to report to the central bank weekly about suspicious trading activities on their platforms. They are also anticipating that authorities will release new rules on bitcoin trading in Chinaa draft is now reportedly in the making. A 2013 central bank document contains some vague rules, such as requiring bitcoin exchanges to implement know your customer procedures, and abide by Chinas anti-money-laundering laws. The 2013 document also banned financial institutions and payment services from bitcoin-related businesses. That means Chinese banks are not allowed to serve as custodians and hold client money for bitcoin exchanges, a practice that is commonplace for Chinese stock brokers.

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Dreamhost Crowd-Funding Legal Action Against DOJ – eWeek

August 22, 2017 | Author: admin

Web-hosting company Dreamhost is trying to raise $10,000 to help cover its legal costs in an ongoing fight with the U.S. Department of Justice by using crowd funding site Crowdjustice. Pledges are about a third of the way there as of Aug. 21.

The fight stems from a demand by the DoJ that Dreamhost turn over about 1.3 million visitor records--including IP addresses, full contact information, emails, photos and even server logs--as they pertain to Disruptj20.org, a site that planned to hold protests and otherwise cause disruptions during the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the U.S.

Protests on Inauguration Day turned violent, and about 200 people eventually were indicted for rioting. The Justice Department began requesting records for users suspected of being involved in the rioting, and initially Dreamhost complied with the requests for information. However, the DoJ issued far broader demands in a search warrant on July 12, 2017, that demanded all records including all files, databases and database records stored by Dreamhost as they relate to the Disruptj20 site.

DoJ Demands Detailed Information on Content of Email

The information the DoJ demanded included extremely detailed and personal information, including the contents of emails belonging to users of the site, credit card information and any domains that may have been registered by visitors to the site. The demand included all source code from JavaScript, all HTML code and all communication logs.

Dreamhost has declined to provide the information demanded by the DoJ, saying that the warrant is overly broad and as a result violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids unreasonable search and seizure. Dreamhost is also saying that the demands may also violate the First Amendment because of the chilling effect they may have on free speech as regard to political protest.

Supporting Dreamhost in its legal battle are TechFreedom, a non-partisan technology policy think tank, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group. Both groups say that the Justice Department demands are far too broad and are specifically forbidden by the Fourth Amendment.

The founders outlawed general warrants precisely to prevent governments from harassing their political opponents en masse, said Berin Szka, president of TechFreedom, in a statement on the organizations website. If the DOJ can unmask over a million internet users simply for visiting a website, without any further alleged connection to criminal activity, then no American is safe to use the internet to access dissident speech. The fear of being unmaskedand be subjected to harassment, or far worsewill chill the speech of millions more.

EFF: DoJ Making Unconstitutional Demands

Mark Rumold, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that the Justice Department is making an unconstitutional demand in its investigations of the January riots. He said that such a warrant would bring anyone who ever visited the site into the investigation, regardless of why they were there or whether they had any part in the attempt to disrupt the inauguration.

No plausible explanation exists for a search warrant of this breadth, other than to cast a digital dragnet as broadly as possible, Rumold said in a statement on the EFF website. But the Fourth Amendment was designed to prohibit fishing expeditions like this. Those concerns are especially relevant here, where DOJ is investigating a website that served as a hub for the planning and exercise of First Amendment-protected activities.

Yet, its not clear that the federal courts will agree. For years, investigators have used a two-stage process for investigating digital crimes. Those two stages are first, seizing all computer equipment suspected of having information needed by investigators; the second stage is performing a forensics search of the seized computers. Courts have routinely upheld such searches, because theres no good way to find the data needed except by getting it from the storage on the computer.

The procedure there is to hold on to the computer for as long as it takes to get the evidence, even if it takes months. The difference with Dreamhost is that the DoJ isnt asking for the computers and storage, but rather asking the company to get the information itself and pass it along to the government.

Dreamhost Not Suspected of Wrongdoing, Just Hosting

The difference is primarily one of procedure, and it has the advantage to Dreamhost of not having its servers and storage physically removed from its control. But the question then becomes whether theres a difference from the government taking the equipment or asking Dreamhost to keep the equipment and provide the data.

The other difference in this is Dreamhost isnt suspected of any wrongdoing, but rather of hosting a group thats suspected of doing wrong. Its like the owner of an apartment building being required to allow a warrant to be served on a single apartment, rather than searching the entire building. Here, Dreamhost is being asked for the contents of a single customer website, not for the contents of all sites that Dreamhost has.

Those differences may be subtle, but they could make all the difference when the Dreamhost case goes before the judge in Washington on Aug. 24. Whether Dreamhosts arguments are compelling remains to be seen.

Its also not clear whether the crowd-funding effort will raise enough money to support the appeals that are the almost certainly the next step.

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Top 5 tips for doing a cloud storage cost analysis – Information Age

August 21, 2017 | Author: admin

In most of the cases, a cloud storage cost analysis requires domain-specific expertise, otherwise, a company may overlook some small but significant circumstances

The size of the cloud computing market has increased threefold over the past five years, and it is predicted to go beyond $128 billion by 2019.

However, companies should make sure that the expenditures related to the migration to a cloud storage will not eat away the potential economy that this technology entails.

The careful analysis of these expenses will help answer a question that concerns many businesses: How much does a cloud storage cost?.

For readers, here is acloud migration checklist, which advises companies to rest when estimating the cost of moving from traditional on-premises repository.

>See also:Cloud storage is the new battleground in the cloud price war

Usually, it comprises both transparent costs that companies generally expect and hidden ones that may not become evident until contract signing.

For illustration purposes only, we will use the example of Amazons cloud storage pricing, as this public cloud provider does not conceal it.

The price for a cloud storage usually depends on a number of gigabytes that a company requires per month. Some providers, such as these of Amazon S3, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, use a sliding-scale approach to price formation, which means offering bigger storage volumes at downward costs. Also, some vendors provide redundant repositories at higher prices as compared with less redundant or archival ones; the latter are charged the least.

Amazon charges the first 50 terabytes at $0.023 per a gigabyte, while successive volumes are quoted cheaper at $0.022 and $0.021 per GB.

Transferring data out of the storage also entails expenses, while on the average, their moving into it is free. When charging for the bandwidth, many providers apply a sliding-scale pricing. As for AWS, the cost of one gigabyte of data that a company needs to send from within the repository starts with $0.010, while in some cases it is free.

>See also:Enterprise cloud storage: usage and trends

Despite the fact that these numbers seem reasonable if a company needs to send just a few gigabytes a month, transferring large data volumes will cost a bundle.

Depending on a vendor, various REST-based storage requests, a.k.a. transactions, can also be charged, such as:

Get Delete List Post Others

Amazon S3 is among vendors that include transactions into the cloud storage cost. The company estimates this item starting from $0.004 per 10,000 transactions, but the delete request is free. Rackspace Cloud Files, Nirvanix and services alike provide storage requests on a free-of-charge basis.

Companies that require native access to their information bear gateway-related costs. Depending on the demands, a company may opt for a providers gateway or its own one.

>See also:The year of the cloud: flexible, agile and scalable

Businesses that use a vendors gateway, should be ready for the expenses on the equipment and maintenance fees. While companies that choose to integrate their data via their own, specific one should take on the costs of the gateway custom development.

An important consideration, to which many businesses do not give due regard, is the retrieval or restoration of the corporate data. The transfer of large data volumes requires considerable bandwidth, which is why most vendors provide this service on a paid basis.

On top of all, this process does not come cheap. Depending on a service provider, it may vary from some hundred US dollars to a few thousands of them.

For example, Amazon provides data retrieval at the cost that significantly surpasses ordinary data transfer: at $0.05 per a gigabyte. So, the restoration of 100 terabytes of data will cost $5,000.

>See also:Cloud Storage articles and industry news for senior IT business leaders

In most of the cases, a cloud storage cost analysis requires domain-specific expertise, otherwise, a company may overlook some small but significant circumstances.

Down the line, they may make up a large sum and will drive up the total cost of the migration. That is why it is best to turn to a reliable service provider,as subject-matter experts will provide a thorough and correct calculation of anticipated costs.

Sourced by Stanislau Belachkin at Sam Solutions

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Top 5 tips for doing a cloud storage cost analysis - Information Age

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How offsite solutions can complement NAS setups – The Register

August 21, 2017 | Author: admin

Sponsored Storage is a growth area in IT, as the volume of data generated by users and applications keeps on expanding at an increasing rate, while legislation dictates that organisations must retain some types of data for regulatory purposes and cannot just delete it all to free up capacity.

Traditionally, data would simply have been stored on-site, residing on hard drives inside the organisations own servers and PCs, but the development of cloud services over the past decade means that users now have the option to offload some of that burden to online service providers that have much greater storage capacity available.

For many users, including SME organisations, cloud-based storage is an attractive solution to the storage issues they face. It is always available, you do not have to worry about managing any hardware, and it makes it simple for workers to collaborate by sharing files and data with colleagues.

But this does not mean that cloud-based services should be viewed as a replacement for on-premises storage. There are good reasons why some data is best kept under the direct control of the organisation itself.

In fact, on-premises and cloud-based storage are best regarded as complementary. Each has strengths and weaknesses that make them suitable for particular use cases, and both should therefore be considered as essential parts of the toolkit available to organisations for meeting their storage requirements.

Smaller organisations are likely to turn to network attached storage (NAS) or a low-cost server in order to meet their primary storage requirements. A NAS device is often the simpler option, as this delivers an appliance-like box that is relatively easy to configure through a browser-based console. For companies with 25 users or fewer, Microsofts Windows Server Essentials platform provides a wizard-driven setup for configuring a local server.

Whether the choice is a NAS or a Windows server, the organisation gets the advantages of a pool of storage connected directly to the local network, where users can have folders for their own files as well as shared folders for groups of users to store and access data for collaborative working while in the office.

The chief advantages of such an on-premise solution are performance, because data is stored locally on a high-speed network, and security, because it is more difficult for anyone outside the organisation to access the data. Users also get the reassurance of knowing exactly where their data is located and can physically secure it.

For cloud-based storage, the advantages are convenience and ease of access. The convenience comes because you can simply sign up for a cloud storage service and get instant access to a pool of storage capacity, and the fact that it is located online makes it easy to access for users both in the office premises and off-site, while travelling or at a customer site, for example.

Another advantage of cloud-based storage is the available capacity. Services such as Box, Google Drive and Dropbox now offer unlimited storage in their business-focused plans, although in practice there are often limits such as fair use restrictions when you look at the small print.

The most common use cases for cloud-based storage services such as these tend to be as a platform for file sharing and collaboration, or as an online backup facility.

Backing up data to the cloud is widely used even by large organisations, as it provides a safe off-site repository in the event that your primary storage is destroyed or damaged, rather than just a file getting deleted or corrupted.

Many backup tools now support cloud storage services as a backup target, and this includes those bundled with NAS appliances. In the latter case, endpoint devices can be configured to use the NAS as their backup target, while the NAS can then back itself up using either another NAS as the target, or to a cloud storage service.

Some NAS appliances also support synchronisation with common cloud services such as Dropbox or Google Drive, so that files stored in public folders on-premises can easily be made available to users roaming off-site. Users can specify synchronisation of just the files and folders they want, while a one-way sync feature is often supported to only copy files from the NAS to the cloud, or vice versa.

Another potential application for cloud storage is archiving. This enables the user to migrate to cloud storage any data that is no longer used or seldom accessed, in order to free up capacity in their on-premises storage.

There are dedicated cloud archive services, such as Amazon Glacier, that offer very low costs, provided that users do not expect speedy access to data stored there. Some cloud storage services such as Box offer governance capabilities that implement data retention rules and support discovery of content for data governance and regulatory compliance purposes.

When it comes to the question of security, an administrator can easily set access privileges for on-premises storage such as a NAS by individual users or groups of users, while each user can have their own private folder as well as access to shared folders.

But many of the cloud storage providers are catching up fast, with some business-focused services offering user access controls, plus support for single sign-on, two-factor authentication and usage logs, as well as encryption to protect data stored on their cloud.

The question of whether data is best stored on-premises or in the cloud will depend upon a number of factors, such as whether easy access is required for collaboration, whether the data needs to be kept secure, or the costs of storing it in a particular repository.

However, both on-premises and cloud storage have their place in the storage strategies of organisations, and a smart IT professional will make good use of both in order to meet the demands of applications and users.

Sponsored: The Joy and Pain of Buying IT - Have Your Say

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How offsite solutions can complement NAS setups - The Register

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