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More Evidence that Cryptocurrencies Are a Bubble? – Investopedia

August 16, 2017 | Author: admin

Given the flurry of news about cryptocurrencies over the past several months, it's difficult not to get excited at the prospect of quick profits. The industry has grown exponentially, topping $120 billion in total market cap after many of the leading tokens have catapulted to record high price levels since the start of the year. And yet, there are analysts who caution that such meteoric gains can not be sustainable over the long term. While there is ample talk of cryptocurrencies taking over in a major way, including speculation that crypto space may outpace cash over the long term, there are many voices suggesting that the digital currency world is also representative of a bubble. Forbes analyst Clem Chambers has argued this for several months, and suggests new reasons for his opinion in a recent piece.

Chambers argues that the cryptocurrency world is a bubble over the short term. Still, he suggests that the industry will go up, overall, in the medium-to-long term. Regardless, Chambers argues, investors should get involved in the crypto world, even if they feel that the ultimate direction of the market is down. The reason? "Because cryptocurrencies have so many decimal points some of the coins out there are effectively toy tokens," Chambers says. Investing even $100 in them will help even the most skeptical investor to have a better understanding of the new technology and the way it will change the investment world. And that is the key: regardless of when and how a cryptocurrency bubble bursts, it will impact the broader investment world for the long term.

Chambers points to companies that have become some of the largest in the world and which first gained prominence in the dotcom boom. Although the dotcom bubble burst, those major companies are still in existence, and many are thriving.

One of the reasons that Chambers believes investors should spend their time looking at cryptocurrencies, even if they feel that the bubble will pop, is that cryptocurrencies hold the key to understanding how blockchain works. Blockchain, the technology which supports the crypto space, has many broad applications, both within and outside of that field. Chambers believes that "this thrilling madness will at some point spill into the old highly regulated world of equities. Anyone who 'gets it' when this happens will be set to make fine returns."

Of course, Chambers' view is just one of many. With extreme volatility plaguing the cryptocurrency market even now, fortunes can be made or lost in a short period of time. If there is a bubble, when it bursts and the market crashes there will be many who suffer the consequences. And yet, there may still be reasons to consider investing in cryptocurrencies, nonetheless.

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Cryptocurrency Exchange ShapeShift Acquires Bitcoin Wallet Startup – CoinDesk

August 16, 2017 | Author: admin

Cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift has acquired the bitcoin hardware wallet startup KeepKey, the two firms announced today.

ShapeShift will continue to use the KeepKey brand and its staff will stay on to continue working on the hardware product line, according to today's announcement. KeepKey had originally integrated with ShapeShift by way of its API last summer.

The deal the terms of which were not disclosed represents the first acquisition of a startup specifically focused on hardware products.

"This partnership will not only guarantee the future success of the KeepKey brand and product line, but joining the ShapeShift team will enable us to focus on continuing to work on developing better technology and security for crypto-holders,"Ken Hodler, KeepKey's chief technology officer, said in a statement.

The deal comes months after ShapeShift closeda $10.4 million funding round. At the time, the exchange drew on a list of backers that includedEarlybird Venture Capital, which led the round.

It also follows a move by KeepKey toend its supportlate last month for the long-running MultiBit bitcoin wallet. KeepKey first acquired MultiBitin May 2016.

Disclosure:CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in ShapeShift.

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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Canada Approves First Cryptocurrency Sale in Property Rights Shake-Up – Voice of America

August 16, 2017 | Author: admin

TORONTO

Canadian financial regulators have approved the public sale of a new digital currency in the country's first official endorsement of money created independently of the government or central banks, company officials said on Wednesday.

Produced with digital encryption techniques, cryptocurrencies like Montreal-based impak Coin allow users to create their own money supply - with potentially significant impacts for how wealth and property rights are controlled.

Impak Coin has already raised more than C$1.5 million ($1.18 million) for the new currency and plans to launch an Initial Coin Offering - or a public sale of the digital money - this month.

By allowing people to create a new currency, the project aims to reduce the power of big banks in determining how property rights are managed and money is created, said Paul Allard, chief executive of impak Finance, the social enterprise behind the project.

"It is up to communities to decide how to manage a currency, it is not only for the government to decide," Allard told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

'No need for government'

Throughout modern history governments have had control over how money is created and the power to enforce contracts and determine how goods and services are transferred.

Cryptocurrencies - through blockchain, the information storage and database system they use - have challenged that power, said Simon Trimborn, a professor at the Free University of Berlin who studies digital networks.

"The link between cryptocurrencies and individual property rights is the information storage and transaction system behind cryptocurrencies, the blockchain," Trimborn told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"It is a database which can guarantee property rights while there is no need for relying on a company or government."

Contracts are made digitally between peers and transactions are often conducted without government oversight, reducing the state's power over the market.

The move by financial authorities to approve the sale of the digital money means "confidence and trust for investors", said Jean-Philippe Vergne, a professor at the Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada, who studies cryptocurrencies.

"We are observing a profound change in the nature of capitalism," Vergne told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "For the first time we have a technology that allows us to remove intermediaries such as government or central banks."

Digital impact

Impak Finance hopes to raise up to C$10 million from its first sale of coins. Users who buy the new currency will be able to spend it via a mobile wallet connected to their phones.

More than 500 businesses have signed up to accept the new currency when it launches, Allard said.

He expects that will grow into the thousands as the project develops a "critical mass" of users, leading to more buyers and sellers making transactions.

Users will be able to exchange impak coins for traditional money which will be credited to their accounts after an initial waiting period in order to stop speculators from causing volatility in the currency's value, Allard said.

Impak Finance will initially keep 40 percent of the money invested in the new currency as reserves in order to have cash on hand if users want to exchange it for traditional money.

Only businesses adhering to social and environmental standards are able to use the currency, said Allard, who hopes consumers interested in ethical purchasing will be attracted to the plan.

The "impact economy" - a small but growing sector that seeks to put the achievement of social good at the center of business - is expected to grow by more than 15 percent next year in North America, Allard said.

New type of property

Impak Finance will be entering a crowded market of new digital currencies, analysts said.

Following the growth of bitcoin, the most well known cryptocurrency, there are now more than 1,000 similar digital currencies being traded over the internet, said Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University in the United States.

Most of these new digital offerings, however, are used for speculation - investors hoping the currency will gain popularity and then rise in value - rather than buying and selling tangible goods and services, Narayanan said.

"People are trying to get the state out of money and various forms of property," Narayanan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "regulators and law enforcement are trying to adapt to a new technological development."

($1 = 1.2707 Canadian dollars)

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From UFC To Fighting Fake News With Cryptocurrency – SportTechie

August 16, 2017 | Author: admin

A new social network is paying users to post as long as their content is verified.

OnG.Social, the social media platform of parent company OneName Global, Inc., allows users to create posts using a centralized dashboard that can then distribute those posts on a users other social networks Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. These posts are then authenticated by professionals.

In return for posting verified information, users will earnonG-Coins, an original cryptocurrency that rewards truth and seeks to block the spread of fake news. That idea caught on with Adrian Rosenbusch, a former UFC cutman who signed a sponsorship deal withonG.Social after meeting Chris Kramer, the CEO of OneName Global. After seeing what Kramer put into the company, Rosenbusch joined full-time in 2014 as Chief Visionary Officer.

Its a real passion project, which is really what drew me to it in the first place, Rosenbusch told SportTechie. Were having people evangelize our messages because they really believe in it. One such evangelist is Kenny Florian, a former UFC fighter.

On Monday, onG.Social offered its first shares ofonG-Coin in an initial coin offering that was pre-valued at $25 million, according to the onG-Coin website. The ability of users to make money off their posts was intriguing to many in the professional fighting industry, Rosenbusch said, because it allows them to share content about their lives and monetize it. It also gives a platform to fighters who want to start businesses but dont necessarily know where to start.

OnG.Social is backed by IBM after participating in the tech giants Global Entrepreneur program, Rosenbusch said. He added that IBMs pursuit of blockchain technologies goes hand-in-hand with onG.Socials mission. OnG.Social was live as a social platform before it entered the blockchain, but now uses the Ethereum and Waves blockchain platforms, which promotes extra security and reliability, according to a press release.

IBM, theyre busy right now with their own projects in blockchain, so were all doing our thing together. We all see in the same direction, Rosenbusch said.

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In its move to the blockchain, onG.Social will also include the APIs to decentralized social networks such as Steemit, Akasha, Golem, and MaidSafe, among others.

The key to onG.Socials core mission is the Gravity algorithm, which takes into account the validity and social impact of posts and awards cryptocurrency, according to the press release. Posts are validated by community experts for example, apost on a medical procedure would be deemed true or not by a doctor, Rosenbusch said and assigned a Gravity score that would make the post more or less visible.

The users whose posts have low or negative Gravity scores would not be silenced or shut down, as a low-performing channel might be by its corporate parent, but rather ignored by a majority of users.

That alone takes away so many of the problems you have with status-quo networks, where if youre just arguing for the sake of arguing, or posting negative content youll get a low Gravity score, you wont get shut down, Rosenbusch explained. Its all up to the user. Nobodys silencing your voice, but also nobodys paying attention to you.

Instead, Rosenbusch said, the companys goal is to bring people together, allow for the largest multitude of voices, and to protect users content.

The initial coin offering is open until mid-September, and investors who buy onG-Coin can vote, in Reddit fashion, on posts made on onG.Social. The social network is entirely free to use.

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Will the Bitcoin Fork Continue to Boost the Cryptocurrency’s Value? – TheStreet.com

August 16, 2017 | Author: admin

It is now just over two weeks the Bitcoin split happened creating a new currency - Bitcoin Cash. To make intelligent decisions on where Bitcoin may be headed, it's imperative to take a look at how this historic fork has impacted the cryptocurrency landscape.

Trace Schmeltz at Barnes & Thornburg LLP explains what is crystal clear: the Bitcoin market has become more valuable than ever.

"By all accounts, this new currency is now the third most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, despite a slow start out of the gate," Schmeltz says. "The Bitcoin market both BTC and BCC - is more valuable than ever before. It would appear that the market has reacted favorably to this early test of currency run by the masses -- what appears to be democracy in action."

Schmeltz explains the recent fork demonstrates that a currency without a central governing body can survive controversy. "Here, of course, a large number of BTC community-members firmly believed that the 'segregated witness' methodology some members wanted to adopt to expand Bitcoin violated core principles of the first cryptocurrency," Schmeltz says. "So, they 'split off,' or created a fork in the distributed ledger, to form BCC -- Bitcoin Cash."

Ryan Radloff, head of investor relations at XBT Provider, explains there have been multiple forks in Bitcoin's history. "In a funny way, it's a feedback mechanism or voting system by the community to choose which version of a protocol upgrade they believe is best for the coin," Radloff says. "The strongest and most fit will survive, just like anything in life."

But the reasons for the fork, of course, are complex. Radloff explains it happens when a suggested protocol upgrade (code-base update) is not supported by the entire network and thus, the entire network does not upgrade or implement the change.

"At this point, there are two versions of the codebase, with a shared history that diverges at a specific point in time --at which point all future transactions are unique to each codebase and recorded on a different blockchain," Radloff says. "With respect to the recent Bitcoin fork which resulted in Bitcoin Cash: a rule in the original protocol limited the number of transactions per second."

This has created drawbacks as the scale of the network has grown larger. As a result, a group of developers who maintain the network, alongside the core Bitcoin developers, created a rival token known as Bitcoin Cash, designed to allow more transactions per second.

"The core development team also implemented a solution which makes it easier to build protocol on top of the Bitcoin network which allows faster transactions," Radloff says. "This approach has seen widespread adoption and is allowing the network to scale up - likely a partial driver of the most recent rally."

All is not hunky-dory in the Bitcoin world and we must acknowledge prepare for further problems.

Are you investing in cryptocurrency? Don't miss TheStreet's coverage:

Aaron Lasher, co-founder and CMO of Breadwallet, noted thatBitcoin has a scaling problem and can only clear about three transactions per second.

"Due to its popularity, it's operating at max capacity," Lasher says. "The fork was the culmination of almost three years of heated debate about how to scale bitcoin so that it can process transactions more quickly. Two sides had very different solutions, each with trade-offs that require deep knowledge in computer science, technology, and economics to fully comprehend."

Lasher explains that, ideally, the community of developers, miners and users would have come to a consensus and preserved the network as one Bitcoin, but that didn't happen and the network split in two. The landscape has changed, because now neither scaling solution is hypothetical; they are both in the wild, where they will compete for dominance in the marketplace.

This is what a top bitcoin player is doing right now.

Is another Bitcoin fork for possible?

"Regarding another split or fork for Bitcoin - generally speaking spin-off's are good for both entities - old one and newly created," says Krzysztof Kolaczynski, the founder of STABLE, a company which aims to reduce the inefficiencies existing in cryptocurrency markets and stabilize them. "But inthe nearest future, I don't think that another fork would be good for Bitcoin."

"The worst possibility for me at this moment is arranging in the near term another fork - that could put the trust under the danger and I am afraid that it would trigger a cascade reaction of new forks and we don't know what would be the consequences,"Kolaczynski adds.

Kolaczynski explains we should wait at least couple of months in order to see if Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash benefited both entities arranged into this deal.

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Microsoft acquires cloud-computing orchestration vendor Cycle Computing – ZDNet

August 16, 2017 | Author: admin

Microsoft announced intentions to buy cloud-computing orchestration vendor Cycle Computing for an undisclosed amount.

Microsoft is positioning the deal, announced on August 15, as a way for it to enable its customers to use high-performance computing and other "Big Computing" capabilities in the public cloud.

From Microsoft's blog post about the acquisition of Cycle Computing from Azure corporate vice president Jason Zander:

Cycle Computing's CEO Jason Stowe, in his own blog post announcing the deal, noted that the company has customers across the manufacturing, life insurance, pharmaceutical and biotech, media and entertainment, financial services, startup, and government agency segments.

"We see amazing opportunities in joining forces with Microsoft. Its global cloud footprint and unique hybrid offering is built with enterprises in mind, and its Big Compute/HPC team has already delivered pivotal technologies such as InfiniBand and next generation GPUs. The Cycle team can't wait to combine CycleCloud's technology for managing Linux and Windows compute & data workloads, with Microsoft Azure's Big Compute infrastructure roadmap and global market reach," Stowe said in his note.

According to Cycle Computing's web site, Cycle's software currently works with not just Azure, but also Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Cycle's software orchestrates workflows, manages data, and "balances cloud options," in the company's words and works with both public and private clouds from other vendors.

I've asked Microsoft if it intends to continue to support AWS and Google Cloud -- not just Azure -- with Cycle's technology moving forward. So far, no word back.

Update: A Microsoft spokesperson said: "We will continue to support Cycle Computing clients using AWS and/or Google Cloud. Future Microsoft versions released will be Azure focused. We are committed to providing customers a seamless migration experience to Azure if and when they choose to migrate."

Since 2005, Cycle's software has been used to "deploy virtual clusters and storage and run cutting-edge genomics, machine learning, simulation, and scientific computation workflows for Government, Universities, Fortune 500s, and all sizes of data driven, innovative companies like The Aerospace Corporation, Lockheed Martin, Purdue University, JP Morgan Chase, and Pfizer leveraging millions of hours of cloud based computation," its site says.

Neither Microsoft's nor Cycle's blog posts today provide details about how or when Cycle's software will be incorporated into Microsoft's Azure services platform.

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Cloud computing decision guide: Breaking down 7 top solutions for healthcare – Healthcare IT News

August 16, 2017 | Author: admin

To help with your planning, this Healthcare IT News Cloud Computing Buyers guide looks at the top four IaaS providers, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM. A report from Synergy Research Group found that these platforms have over 60 percent of the public cloud market. (Amazon has the lions share with 33 percent share; the other three divide 27 percent of the market.) The market is far from stable, however; Microsoft and Google each achieved an annualized growth rate of 80 percent in the first quarter of 2017.

We also look at services from three companies who specialize in supporting healthcare providers with managed services: ClearData, CDW and VMware.

Shop carefully. Read the fine print and really make sure you ask a lot of questions, Snedaker says. Dont take a sales reps word for anything. Not to disparage sales reps, but if its not in the contract, it really doesnt matter what the salesperson said.

She also advises stress testing. Get your team to think up all the very worst case scenarios they can think of and bounce them against the contract. Does it still hold up?

Cloud computing has a clear advantage on the cost side. But healthcare IT managers know that cost is not the only priority. They have a special responsibility to deliver data reliably. And while cloud computing offers many advantages, its a big step and adequate planning is essential to ensure success.

As Snedaker says, Take your time in understanding the solution before you drop your data off at someone elses house.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon was the pioneer in Infrastructure-as-a-Service, with the first public cloud offering in 2006 and it has built on that headstart. One reason it keeps that lead is pricing. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is very aggressive in pricing: it has already made two reductions just since the start of the year for storage and the Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) which offers virtual computers for rent.

AWS also innovates at a fast pace. Many cloud platforms go weeks or months between service updates. AWS posts several service updates on its Whats New page almost every day.

To support healthcare providers, AWS recently removed the dedicated instance requirement from its HIPAA business associate agreement (BAA), and added 13 new services to the BAA since January 2017. The HIPAA eligible services that have been added this year include Amazon WorkSpaces, AWS Microsoft AD, and Amazon Cloud Directory.

It also created a new feature to simplify management of BA addendums. Using the AWS self-service Business Associate Addendum, a cloud account admin can instantly designate an AWS account as a HIPAA Account for use with PHI. Users can then sign in to AWS Artifact to confirm that the account is designated as a HIPAA Account, and review the terms of the BAA for that account.

One of AWSs new directions is the AWS Healthcare Competency Partners program for vendors who are offering services through AWS. PracticeFusion, Infor and Phillips are among the partners.

Learn more about AWS

CDW Cloud Solutions

The same company that provides IT departments with a deep inventory of hardware, software and specialized medical equipment also offers cloud management services. This option will be especially appealing to HIT departments that find themselves stretched. CDWs services include migration planning, project scoping and ongoing support. CDWs managed IT services include proactive maintenance, monitoring, notifications and reporting.

CDW has six data centers hosting cloud infrastucture and it can provide more IaaS support through partnerships with AWS, Microsoft and others. The offering helps clients find the right mix of services to map against their clients requirements. And CDW is not necessarily biased in favor of a cloud solution. It also operates and provides managed support for data center solutions.

Learn more about CDW Cloud Solutions

ClearDATA

ClearDATA has only one focus: cloud computing for healthcare. It says that it employs a team that is trained in health IT operations and capable of supporting interoperability, patient engagement, data analytics and other health IT priorities. The environment is a HITRUST certified managed cloud infrastructure that adheres to HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules and the HITECH Act.

The companys solutions include backup, disaster recovery, data privacy, business continuity services and security risk assessment and remediation services. They also offer support for BYOD security; secure email; collaboration tools; security Risk Assessment and Remediation Services; desktop-as-a-service and archive-as-a-service.

End-to-end deployment services are available, reducing the workload on a providers IT staff during migration and deployment, and speeding up the process of moving into the cloud.

Learn more about ClearData

Google Cloud Platform

Since the last time we wrote about its cloud platform, Google added more support for healthcare applications. At HIMSS17 in February, Google announced support for the HL7 FHIR Foundation to help advance development of data interoperability standards.

Googles public network takes advantage of more than 100 global points of presence to reduce latency. To provide enterprise-grade connections with higher availability and lower latency than existing Internet connections, the company offers Google Cloud Interconnect and supports direct network peering for customers that can meet Google at one of many peering locations.To enhance security, Google developed its own hardware, Titan, to authenticate legitimate access at the hardware level. Titan uses a hardware random number generator, performs cryptographic operations in the isolated memory, and has a dedicated on-chip secure process.

For application security, Google provides a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API to find and redact sensitive data stored in your cloud environment. The API makes it possible to inject data-sensing intelligence into legacy applications or build predefined detectors into your new apps.

To reinforce support for HIPAA standards, Google is providing a guide to HIPAA Compliance on GCP which offers best practices for healthcare security on Google cloud. Google will enter into Business Associate Agreements with its customers and notes that it has a 700-person security engineering team and regular independent third-party audits to provide external verification. Among the standards for which it has been audited are SSAE16 / ISAE 3402 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 27017 Cloud Security, ISO 27019 Cloud Privacy, FedRAMP ATO for the Google App Engine and PCDI DSS v 3.1.

Learn more about Google Cloud PlatformIBM Cloud

IBM Cloud provides a full range of infrastructure-as-a-service options starting with basic block storage, public virtual servers and bare metal servers that compete with the cloud-only vendors. Big Blue also provides a range of more advanced platforms that directly support application development in a number of areas including big health data, analytics, and cognitive capabilities.

Its Bluemix platform is based on an implementation of the Cloud Foundry, an open-source application development platform that supports Java, Python, Ruby, custom frameworks and a range of applications including MySQL, PostgreSQL and more. The IBM Cloud is integrated with the Watson Platform for Health, which provides solutions for collecting, normalizing, and analyzing data from diverse sources. Watson IoT Platform Connect supports device management and the new Blockchain-as-a-Service platform enables the creation of a dynamic distributed network that functions according to logic embedded to define assets and manage transactions.

Security includes end-to-end encryption, role-based access, event monitoring and alerting. The HIPAA-enabled cloud foundation is supported by IBM SoftLayer. Data governance tools are available for managing patient consent and identity masking.

Learn more about IBM Cloud

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure has supported healthcare through its cloud infrastructure platform since 2011. Today it has 40 data centers and the company says it now has over 25,000 health organizations on its cloud services in the U.S.

One of Microsofts selling points is flexibility. It claims that its architecture simplifies the process of moving resources out of data centers and onto Azure to meet peak demands, and that it maintains more data centers in more regions than any other cloud provider. It also has the benefit of supporting Microsoft Office applications through its Office 365 cloud platform, which is provided in a Software-as-a-Service offering.

Microsoft claims more security certifications than its competitors with ISO/IEC, CSA, CCM, ITAR, HITRUST, HIPAA/HITECH and CIS certifications. And more BAA-covered services with agreements available for Microsoft Office 365, Dynamics 365, Power BI, Azure, Intune and Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services. And it offers a site recovery program.

It also claims an advantage with a $1 billion annual budget for security research and development. The companys cyber threat intelligence is based on over 450 billion authentications processed per month and 400 billion emails scanned. The company says this results in quick detection of emerging threats and delivery of responses.

Learn more about Microsoft Azure

VMware Cross Cloud Architecture

VMware is in a transition with its support for cloud infrastructure. It recently sold its VCloud Air service to OVH, one of the largest hosting providers in Europe. VMware, part of Dell Technologies, is now focused on providing Cross-Cloud Services to work through any cloud platform. The strategy is designed to provide a simplified operational management structure for IT managers who can use the same set of VMware tools theyve used at their data centers in managing their cloud platforms.

VMwares partners, who include AWS and Microsoft Azure, will run the VMware software stack in their cloud to provide a platform that supports a VCloud network.

VMware will manage the operational layer, including security, so customers can concentrate on managing their own application layer. The strategy will allow healthcare IT teams to extend into public cloud providers using the same tools and operational processes they use on premises in their data center.

Learn more about VMware Cross Cloud Architecture

Comparing cloud services: Understanding your options

Cloud solutions arent a one-size-fits all product. In fact, there some key technical and pricing details to consider. Below is a primer on the key elements of cloud architecture:

Block Level Storage: Raw disk space formatted to support a required file system, typically deployed in a SAN (storage area network) environment. Useful to support a specific application.

File Level Storage: Generally less expensive to maintain than Block Level Storage, files are stored in a hierarchical structure (ie, folders) such as Unixs Network File Storage (NFS) or Windows Server Message Block (SMB).

Desktop as a Service: A virtualization service in which a cloud service provider supports desktop applications remotely.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service: A cloud platform that provides a hosted environment that can be used to deploy applications or data transfer. Examples are AWS, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

Hybrid cloud: A platform providing infrastucture-as-a-service that combines cloud services hosted at the clients data center and remotely at the vendors data center.

Hyper-scalars: A cloud platform that can dynamically provide more computing resources as demand increases.

Latency: The delay between the time a data request is made and the data is delivered.Platform-as-a-Service: A cloud environment that provides services to run specific applications, development kits, database tools, and application management tools. Examples are IBM BlueMix, Oracle Cloud Platform-as-a-Service and SalesForce App Cloud.

Public cloud: Hosted remotely at a vendors data center, a public cloud provides service to all of the vendors clients. Your applications and data will be hosted on servers shared by other enterprises.

Private cloud: Your enterprise is provided with a dedicated space providing cloud infrastructure that can be used for running your applications and data transferred. Your space is dedicated to your enterprise and is not shared with others.

Software-as-a-Service: Applications are provided remotely in a cloud environment that is maintained by the vendor. Examples are athenaClinicals, Salesforce Health Cloud, and PracticeFusion.

Throughput: The amount of data that a system can support in a specified time period.

Twitter:@GusVendittoEmail the writer: gus.venditto@himssmedia.com

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Amazon: Earnings Are Not The Holy Grail – Seeking Alpha

August 16, 2017 | Author: admin

Amazon (AMZN) is a company that has made quite a name for itself in the area of cloud computing, after having come to dominate the e-commerce space. Its AWS (Amazon Web Services) platform is currently seen as the leader in the area of big data storage and cloud computing, and its other offerings in this space have also proven competitive to rivals such as Microsoft (MSFT).

Despite this, that didn't stop earnings from falling 77% in the most recent quarter. The more important question to be asked, are such lower earnings a concern?

In the long-term, clearly a drop in earnings is not a good thing. However, it's important to put such lower earnings into context. Amazon has become heavily cloud-focused in its business model, and maintaining the servers and IT infrastructure for such technology requires large amounts of capital investment. Moreover, software is subject to high levels of depreciation due to upfront investment which results in depreciation lowering earnings over time.

According to Amazon's Q2 2017 Financial Results, while operating income decreased to $628 in Q2 2017 (down 51% from the same quarter last year), net sales increased by 25% to $38 billion over the same period. With higher operating expenses having placed pressure on net income, it is understandable why earnings are lower under this circumstance.

Part of Amazon's competitive advantage is that it maintains the largest cloud ecosystem of all technology providers. According to Gartner, Amazon Web Services has maintained its lead in the "Leaders" quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for the seventh year in a row, in recognition of the size and technological capabilities of AWS compared to its rivals:

Source: Gartner (June 2017)

The general takeaway from this is that Amazon is a company that you buy with expectation of growth - looking at valuations becomes virtually meaningless for this company. The idea is that if sales continue to grow, the revenue from sales will eventually outweigh the large amounts of capital expenditure needed to maintain Amazon's technological infrastructure.

On the other side of the fence, there are those investors who argue that Amazon is a company that is ultimately set for failure since large amounts of capital expenditure are preventing the company from ultimately turning a profit. Amazon is ultimately pursuing a market share strategy in cloud computing, aiming to further increase its dominance as a major provider in this space.

Admittedly, I am long Microsoft (MSFT) myself - the reason being that Microsoft is less of a "risky" stock that pays a good dividend - but that's more to do with factors such as my own individual appetite for risk, and is out of the scope of this article. A company like Microsoft has focused its Azure offering on a more focused corporate market in particular, and are not particularly targeting a maximum level of market share for its offering.

However, Amazon by contrast does not pay a dividend and is "going all in" by reinvesting heavily into upgrading its cloud computing infrastructure. Granted, there is more risk in holding a company like Amazon, but the potential payoff in terms of growth is far greater.

To conclude, earnings are not the holy grail when it comes to a company like Amazon. Amazon is reinvesting heavily to maintain its lead in the cloud computing space, and for investors who are willing to take more risk in terms of banking on such future growth, the rewards have the potential to be significant.

Disclosure: I am/we are long MSFT.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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XenData Launches Hybrid Cloud Storage Appliance Optimized for Media Files – Broadcasting & Cable

August 16, 2017 | Author: admin

XenData

Walnut Creek, Calif. August 16, 2017 XenData, the global provider of high capacity data storage solutions, launches its CX-10 Appliance, which can manage a single hybrid file system across two storage tiers: 10 TB of on-premises RAID and unlimited Microsoft Azure blob storage. The appliance allows existing file-based applications to use cloud storage without the need for modification.

The CX-10 has highly configurable RAID retention policies that determine which files are written to the cloud, local RAID or both, allowing users to set policy rules for different file types and folders. The RAID retention policies keep frequently accessed files on local storage, which maximizes restore rates and minimizes both cloud access costs and Internet bandwidth usage. For example, current projects can be stored on local disk with a data protection copy on Azure. Once a project is completed, retention policies may be updated to replace the project files held on disk with sparse files (stubs), freeing up local disk storage while maintaining immediate access to the content from the cloud.

The CX-10 runs XenData Cloud File Gateway software on a Windows 10 operating system. The hybrid file system is presented as a logical drive letter, which can be accessed locally or as one or more Windows network shares. Optimized for media files, it includes certified integration options for a wide range of media applications, including many media asset management systems, and supports partial file restore, which allows clip creation from large video files without downloading the full file.

The gateway also provides the following:

The CX-10 is a smarter way to implement cloud storage for media professionals. It combines high performance and continuous backup for files that are often accessed together with unlimited storage in the cloud for less frequently accessed content, said Phil Storey, XenData CEO and co-founder. It is perfect for organizations that need to manage large volumes of creative video files, image files or files from a wide variety of scientific and engineering applications.

The CX-10 is a compact 1U rack mount unit with two mirrored enterprise class 10 TB disks for the on-premises storage. These keep the system running even in the event of a disk drive failure. It also includes a solid-state boot volume and two USB 3.0 ports, which are ideal for direct connecting USB drives with content to be offloaded to the CX-10 hybrid storage. The base model has two 1 GbE network ports and options for additional 10 GbE ports are available.

The CX-10 is priced from $6,950, including 12 months of onsite support and subscription for the XenData Cloud File Gateway. It will be demonstrated for the first time at the IBC Expo in Amsterdam on the XenData booth in Hall 7, from 15-19 September 2017.

About XenData

XenData is a global provider of professional data storage solutions optimized for creative media and video surveillance applications. Its products include high-capacity storage systems that provide secure long- term retention of video assets on RAID, LTO, optical cartridges and/or the Cloud.

XenData has customers in over 90 countries, including government organizations, large corporations, TV stations and media production companies. For more information visit: http://www.xendata.com.

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XenData Launches Hybrid Cloud Storage Appliance Optimized for Media Files - Broadcasting & Cable

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Lima Ultra: Tiny, personal cloud storage which just misses the mark – ZDNet

August 16, 2017 | Author: admin

The Lima Ultra, a tiny device which allows you to create and run your own personal cloud, has hit the mainstream.

The Lima Ultra is geared towards consumers who need a file access and backup system, regardless of which device or OS they are using.

Once connected to a router, the Lima Ultra acts as a personal cloud system which can be accessed from anywhere in the world, while users retain full control over their data and do not have to pay any kind of subscription fee to use a cloud service.

With a price tag of $129, the Lima Ultra is the successor to the original Lima with an improved CPU and hardware designed to increase the power and efficiency of the device.

Now sporting a quad-core 1.5GHz processor, Gigabit Ethernet port, and more RAM than its predecessor, the Lima Ultra is now capable of improved transfer and streaming speeds.

But is the device worth the investment?

The Lima Ultra comes as a kit with the device itself, an Ethernet cable and power cable, as well as an instruction guide. You must provide an external hard drive for storage, which connects to the Lima via USB.

For the purposes of testing, I used a Seagate Expansion 4GB hard drive, although anything up to 8TB is supported.

The device is compatible with the main ecosystems, including Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. If you are a Chrome or Windows Phone user, you can access Lima through the web application.

An additional strength of the Lima is that installation takes no more than a few minutes and the instruction manual is no more than a page long. Once you have visited the Lima website to download the installation application -- roughly 111mb and closer to 280mb once unpacked on Mac -- you are asked to accept the Lima T&Cs before either logging in or creating an account.

To create an account, you need to input an email address and password. To boost security, Lima will require a mixture of numbers, letters, and capital letters, and will award you a security "percentage" to outline how secure your password is. Transfers and communication are protected by TLS security.

Lima will then search for available devices, so you need to make sure your product is plugged in and ready to go. At the same time, you need to use the Ethernet cable to connect Lima to your router and your external hard drive to Lima via USB.

Once the device has been discovered, the automatic setup and update process will begin and it takes no more than a few seconds to complete.

At this point, once you click the next prompt, you are at the point of no return when it comes to your hard drive. In order to associate the drive with Lima, anything currently stored on the drive will be erased -- so make sure you have backed up any data on your drive you wish to keep.

You are given the option to back out of the installation if you need to save content. If happy to proceed, the external hard drive is then configured automatically, a "health check" occurs, and you then have the option to authorize Lima on both your PC and mobile device.

Lima also asks you to input your mobile phone number if you wish to give your smartphone access to the cloud storage device.

The service then automatically sends an SMS message. After an hour, however, no message appeared during testing, and so I skipped this step and was eventually able to connect Lima to my Android smartphone at a later stage.

The Lima will now appear as a mounted disk, complete with folders already set up for pictures, video, and music which you can access as long as you have Wi-Fi or mobile broadband available.

There is a reason the Lima Ultra is considered by some a Dropbox alternative. The ease of use and of transferring files between systems in order to access them through others is certainly reminiscent of the web cloud storage service.

The Lima Ultra's core strength lies in its user friendliness, and as a way to backup and store files, it is a valuable device to own as a consumer if you just want to view content over multiple systems. However, some may ask: why not just use Dropbox, or connect an external hard drive directly?

The product does eradicate storage limitations on your mobile devices and gives you the option to access your files remotely, which could certainly prove useful not only to the average consumer, but also business clients. Lima calls the process "Hologram Files Technology"; in other words, you are streaming content directly from your personal cloud rather than storing them locally on your devices.

If you have more than one Lima Ultra or original Lima devices to hand, you can also set them up to backup your data automatically -- and so if one is damaged or breaks, another is waiting in the wings with the same stored files.

However, what could have made this product special was support for UPnP and DLNA streaming.

If you are trying to entice consumers to pay over 100 dollars for a bolt-on device, especially considering how many of us own smart TVs and use services such as Plex and Kodi -- and already have cloud-based storage services to hand -- this functionality would open up the device to a new group of consumers.

Over a year ago, a Lima engineer said in a forum post that UPnP and DLNA streaming support "is a feature that is not available as of now but we certainly intend to add it in a later firmware update."

However, nothing has been heard about this addition since.

According to the product's roadmap, file import improvements, web file sharing, and the ability to change the hard drive are all anticipated in the next firmware release. There is no mention of UPnP and DLNA support as of now.

ZDNet reached out to inquire further, but at the time of writing, there has been no response.

If you wanted to use the Lima Ultra as a network-attached storage (NAS) alternative to more expensive models capable of streaming, you are out of luck for now. Should this feature be included in the future, the Lima will have a place -- and likely a successful future -- in households worldwide.

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Lima Ultra: Tiny, personal cloud storage which just misses the mark - ZDNet

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