Cloud Data Protection Offerings for eDiscovery
July 24, 2012
I would have thought that eDiscovery vendors would have stayed away from cloud based storage due to cybercriminals vamping up their attacks, but if you can make the cloud secure enough to protect client data it could work. MarketWatch reports “Lighthouse eDiscovery Deploys Riverbed Whitewater to Improve Cloud-Based Data Protection.” Lighthouse eDiscovey has selected Riverbed Technology and their Whitewater cloud storage gateway to replace its very old tape-based backup disaster recovery system. The change will allow Lighthouse to improve their eDiscovery practices, securely accelerate backup, and recovery options to the public data for better data protection.
As I guessed Lighthouse was a little weary of the cloud, until they could verify its security:
“`While cloud storage was an attractive option for us due to its immediate availability, Riverbed was a critical component of making disaster recovery in the cloud a reality. We were able to configure the Whitewater gateway in about an hour without having to replace our existing backup tool, Symantec Backup Exec,’ said Marc Larkin, System Administrator at Lighthouse. ‘Our data protection strategy is much more reliable than with tape and our backups feel local!’”
Secure data protection is one the most important aspects when researching eDiscovery and litigation support software. If data are not protected and backed-up, clients rights could be violated and evidence could possibly be lost. The fancy math and predictive outputs may be for nought, if the source is compromised.
Stephen E Arnold, July 24, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Amazon Creates A Stir on Twitter and in the Blogosphere
July 23, 2012
Benjamin Coe spent a recent Friday night dealing with the AWS outage. Based on the article he wrote on his blog entitled “My Friday Night with AWS,” it seems he may have spent quite a bit of time on Twitter checking the pulse of AWS users as well.
He chalked up his experience as a testament to the infrastructure of Attachments.me. However, those on the twittersphere either complained about how awful AWS is or they complained about how no one builds appropriately redundant infrastructure. His thoughts are that redundancy comes with a cost.
He states:
“The only way to ensure close to 100% up time is replicating your entire infrastructure. Ultimately it’s a trade off. Are the risks associated with parts of a system not having redundancy offset by reduced infrastructure costs and complexity? It’s obvious that Pinterest, Instagram, Heroku, and many other sites (cough, attachments.me), had parts of their sites that were not redundant. I can almost guarantee that in many cases this was a conscious choice. From my perspective, a lack of total redundancy can sometimes be an acceptable risk if approached responsibly.”
We have to hand it to cloud technologies to keep things exciting. No local data? no problem. Uptime, reliability, and great communication are characteristics of some of the new cloud services. The problem is, “Which service? and when?”
Megan Feil, July 23, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
One Vision of the Future of Enterprise Architecture
July 22, 2012
SYS-Con Media recently published an article detailing the impact of Cloud, big data analytics and mobility on enterprise architecture in the article “The New Enterprise Reference Architecture.”
For those who do not already know, the term Enterprise Architecture refers to the process of moving business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise’s future state and enable its evolution.
This article is based on the assumption that a lot has changed over the past couple of years regarding the ways that enterprises chart their enterprise architecture. It provides readers with a diagram of “the new enterprise reference architecture” along with accompanying text providing a detailed explanation of the role of each layer.
When discussing the enterprise search layer, the article states:
“While the data virtualization layer provides a common layer to access all the disparate data sources, we still needed robust searching capabilities on top of it and hence this layer is important. Some of the attributes of this layer are :
- Keyword based search
- Auto Correction
- Thesaurus expansion
- Relevance Ranking
This layer works closely with the context aware content layer. Products like Microsoft FAST Search Engine, Google Search Engine will fall under this category.”
While the new enterprise architecture is more complex than the old one, it also is filled with more possibilities. Our only question is what happened to enterprise search as a platform?
Jasmine Ashton, July 22, 2012
Sponsored by IKANOW
With 40 Million in the Bank Meraki to Expand
July 17, 2012
Josh Constine of Tech Crunch recently reported on wireless provider Meraki’s plans for expansion in the article “Meraki Plans to Conquer Enterprise Wi-Fi, Hire Like Crazy With $40 M in New Funding.”
According to the article, Meraki, a retailer of wireless LAN devices, security appliances, and the cloud architecture software, is using the $40 million that it has raised from investors and debt financing to keep a cash cushion, pay for its new headquarters, and aggressively hire in sales so it can break away from competitors.
Constine writes:
“A source close to the company says Meraki was spending around $65 million a year, and Q2 2012 saw the company rake in over $20 million — more than it was shooting for. The $40 million cushion will protect it in case expenditures rise for supporting its 20,000 customer networks or if it wants to rapidly pursue a new market as it competes with dedicated companies like like Aerohive and giants like Cisco.”
Our own Stephen Arnold, wrote about Meraki back in 2010 in one of his for fee columns “Google Broadband: Is There an Enterprise Angle?” At that point, the company was an unknown start-up that had received interest from Google.
After discussing the pros and cons of Google investing in Meraki and offering high-speed wireless connectivity with bundled applications at a competitive price, Arnold concludes:
“Another likely impact is that telecommunications companies, network equipment vendors and enterprise software vendors like Microsoft, Oracle and their partners will have to respond. Increased competition is often a benefit, setting off even more innovation. Bottom line: Google, Kansas, may only be the tip of a large, virtual iceberg floating in the cloud drifting toward the enterprise.”
Fast forward two years and it appears that Meraki is preparing for the very competition that Arnold predicted. Funny how things come full circle.
Jasmine Ashton, July 17, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Cloud Based Angle for Clinical Trial Text Mining
July 10, 2012
Reuters recently posted a news release on its Web site entitled “Linguamatics Launches Cloud-based Clinical Trials Text Mining Solution.”
According to the release, Linguamatics, a provider of cutting edge enterprise text mining software, is now providing access to clinical trials via their I2E text mining platform available on the Cloud. This solution has proven to be a valuable tool when mining clinical trials data for decision support in biomedical research, clinical trials study design, site selection and competitive intelligence. Users are able to extract valuable insights and monitor the progress of potential new medicines.
When discussing how I2E works, the article states:
“According to David Milward, CTO, Linguamatics, the company intends to further extend its hosted content sources to full-text patent applications and grants, and exploit links across the data sets. ‘Access to ClinicalTrials.gov is a strong addition to our existing content options. As well as each data source being valuable in itself, I2E provides the ability to link across diverse sources using natural language processing to recognize relevant concepts and relationships however they are expressed’.”
The medical field is certainly an industry where text mining solutions like 12E are bound to make a huge difference in new cutting edge research by allowing them to access information that was not previously available.
Jasmine Ashton, July 10, 2012
Sponsored by Ikanow
Oracle Positions RightNow Technology
July 7, 2012
Since Oracle bought RightNow Technologies last October, we’ve been wondering how their customer-service-cloud technology will be positioned under new management. Oracle’s blog gives us some insight in the post, “Oracle RightNow CX for Good Customer Experiences.” Besides detailing the uses of RightNow as they fit within the larger Oracle universe, the article lists Oracle University classes that can get users up to speed on the software.
Blogger Andreea Vaduva describes four tools available in the customer relations suite: the Knowledge Authoring tool; the Oracle RightNow Customer Portal; the Contact Centre Experience Designer; and Oracle RightNow access points. See the write up for details on each. She notes that marketing, survey creation and tracking, and sales tools are also included. Regarding the analytics tool, Vaduva enthuses:
“Cue Oracle RightNow Analytics – fully integrated across the entire platform – Service, Marketing and Sales – there are in excess of 800 standard reports. If this were not enough, a large proportion of the database has been made available via the administration console, allowing users without any prior database experience to write their own reports, format them and schedule them for e-mail delivery to a distribution list. It handles the complexities of table joins, and allows for the manipulation of data with ease.”
It sounds like Oracle is making good use of its purchase. RightNow Technologies was founded in 1997 in Bozeman, Montana. No stranger to the acquisition game, the smaller company snapped up HiveLive in 2009, and Q-go in 2011.
Cynthia Murrell, July 7, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Welcome Eucalyptus Back to Full Open Source
July 1, 2012
Open source beckons a stray back into the fold, we learn in The H Open’s “Eucalyptus Moves Back to Full Open Source.” According to Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos, Version 3.1 of Eucalyptus consolidates the company’s technologies into a single, open source version. Previously, Eucalyptus produced separate open source and enterprise editions. Source code is available through GitHub, where all new development will take place. The defect and feature tracking is to be publicly available so any community member can follow the progress of an issue.
Of the new version, the write up reports:
“The 3.1 release builds on version 3.0 which offered high-availability features, Amazon Web Services API extensions, rapid instancing, improvements to EBS (elastic block storage) and Windows image support, a redesigned administration console and better CLI admin tools. Eucalyptus signed a deal with Amazon in March which saw the companies agree to work on hybrid and on-premises clouds together. The company has been under increasing pressure with the visible rise of OpenStack and CloudStack projects which also offer IaaS [Infrastructure as a Service] cloud management.”
It seems OpenStack and CloudStack are making for some healthy competition. It will be interesting to see how that partnership with Amazon works out.
Eucalyptus supplies IT and tech-oriented businesses with the(currently) most widely-deployed cloud software platform for on-premise Infrastructure as a Service. The platform began as a research project at the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2007. Eucalyptus was commercialized in 2009, when it began to make its way through Linux distribution channels. Headquartered in Goleta, CA, the company also has an office in Beijing.
Cynthia Murrell, July 6, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
Rumor or Revisionism: Google to the Cloud!
June 23, 2012
I read with some amusement “Google to launch Amazon, Microsoft cloud rival at Google I/O.” The main idea is that Google is going to roll out cloud services to compete with Amazon but really the purpose is to compete with Microsoft. Read the GigaOM “real” journalist story and decide what is being reported.
My view is that Google has been a cloud vendor from its earliest days. In The Google Legacy I described some Google research which made Google the “cloud” and everything thing was within Google. I did a briefing for some wild and crazy telecommunications folks in which a diagram showed that a telecommunications partner offering Internet service would have content and services delivered from the Google cloud. Sharply reduced latency was part of the plan. Google served the digital goods from its servers to which the telco partner would be party to the plan.
The date? 2004. My sources included information dating back to 2001.
Google in the cloud? Yep. What seems to be mesmerizing folks is that Google may make a public announcement. Be still my heart.
My question remains: Why has Google delayed bundling its cloud services for years. The foot dragging allowed Amazon to deploy most of the services with which Google engineers were fiddling.
A second question: Why has Google not moved enterprise search to the cloud? Google touts that it is a hardware company, but the Google Search Appliance is out of phase with the shift some firms are making to hosted or cloud services.
My hunch as a non journalist is that Google does not have the ability to execute and, thus, finds itself tagging along after others are in the market and enjoying a modicum of success.
Why? What about management? What about the ability to do something about market trends before those trends ossify? Honk. (If you want to receive our free, registration required newsletter Honk!, write thehonk at yandex dot com. I am more blunt in the original essay which is distributed every Tuesday at 7 am Eastern.)
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2012
Sponsored by Polyspot
Amazon EC2 Pricing
June 8, 2012
Short honk. “Amazon EC2 Instance Comparison” provides some interesting data and pricing information about Amazon’s cloud services. Worth tucking away for reference. Taxi meter pricing is interesting. Like a ride with a New York City taxi driver from Kazakhstan, the cost of the trip can be surprising.
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2012
Oracle Chases Customer Support
June 6, 2012
Computer Business Review recently reported on Oracle integrating RightNow with Fusion in the article “Oracle Integrates RightNow CX Cloud Service With Fusion Sales.”
According to the article, Oracle has now integrated its RightNow CX Cloud customer experience suite with Fusion Sales in order to help organizations facilitate relevant cross channel customer interactions by improving revenue and making processes more efficient.
RightNow, a U.S. company that incorporates search technology, acquired Q-Go, a European natural language search system, in 2011. Since this acquisition the firm has been able to extend and improve its services. The additional $8 million in revenue helped make the CX Cloud experience suite possible.
The article states:
“The integrated applications also provides a cross-channel view of the customer to sales, marketing and service, allows sales to review service history in preparation for sales calls and empowers sales and service departments to collaborate to solve customer issues, using opportunities to provide purchase advice at the right time and with the right applications.”
This new suite of products will be able to allow organizations to deliver a more targeted approach to customer needs.
Jasmine Ashton, June 6, 2012
Sponsored by PolySpot
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