Amazon has made an announcement that CloudFront, AWS WAF, and Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration have all been updated to support IPv6. more
In just the last two weeks, there were three major DNS outages between Google, Microsoft Azure, and Fonality. But only one of these companies was able to make even bigger waves with the way they handled their blunder. Fonality, who sells VoIP services and business phone systems, offered a very rare and transparent analysis of their outage. In a detailed statement from Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Valentine, readers were given crucial insight on how to prevent the same mistakes from happening to other companies. more
2016 has seen a steady flow of announcements on successful Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Proof-of-Concept deployments, mostly focused on virtualizing Customer Premise Equipment (vCPE). This has been a relatively straight forward starting point because unlike many other NFV applications, the vCPE use case does not involve complex activities like having to scale in or out individual services. more
Google's enterprise business is officially rebranded as Google Cloud, the company announced today at a San Francisco event. more
Cloud computing is on the rise. International Data Corp. predicts a $195 billion future for public cloud services in just four years. That total is for worldwide spending in 2020 - more than twice the projection for 2016 spending ($96.5 billion). As a result, companies are flocking to both large-scale and niche providers to empower cloud adoption and increase IT efficacy. The problem? Without proper management and oversight, cloud solutions can end up underperforming, hampering IT growth or limiting ROI. more
Cloud is a new technology domain, and data centre engineering is still a developing discipline. I have interviewed a top expert in cloud infrastructure, Pete Cladingbowl. He has a vision of the 'lean' data centre and a better kind of Internet for users to reach it. He also has a roadmap for how these can be practically realised. The key is to apply established theories of value flow from more mature industries. more
Back in early 2012, the media was all over stack wars that reportedly were taking place between Cisco and VMware. This culminated in VMware's Nicira acquisition in July 2012, paving the way for the coming of software-based networking. Four years later, the market still remains in development mode. Many service providers and enterprises are trying to come to grips with Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN). more
If you are passionate about ICT policy, Peering, and Interconnection, then the Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) is the place to be. The 7th annual AfPIF takes place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from 30 August – 1 September 2016. AfPIF is a multistakeholder forum organized by the Internet Society that brings together a diverse range of business leaders, infrastructure providers, Internet service providers (ISPs), Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), international financial institutions, policy-makers, and regulators from all over the world. more
In a recent talk at Black Hat, Apple's head of security engineering (Ivan Krsti?) described many security mechanisms in iOS. One in particular stood out: Apple's Cloud Key Vault, the way that Apple protects cryptographic keys stored in iCloud. A number of people have criticized Apple for this design, saying that they have effectively conceded the "Going Dark" encryption debate to the FBI. They didn't, and what they did was done for very valid business reasons -- but they're taking a serious risk... more
Iran has officially launched its first cloud data center in Tehran during a ceremony attended by the Minister of Communication and Information Technology," according to reports from local news sites. more
China's home grown firms are not only grabbing domestic businesses but also venturing to different countries across the world. On the other hand, foreign players face regulatory walls that make it difficult to tap businesses in China." Saibal Dasgupta reporting today in VOA more
The world of networking tends to be bistable: we either centralize everything, or we decentralize everything. We started with mainframes, passed through Lotus 123 hidden in corners, then to mini's and middleware, then to laptops, and now to the cloud, to be followed by fog. This particular cycle of centralization/decentralization, however, has produced a series of overlapping changes that are difficult to decipher. You can somehow hear someone arguing about disaggregation and hyperconvergence through the fog -- but just barely. more
A press conference in West Des Moines, Iowa, revealed Microsoft has chosen the city to build an estimated 1.7 million square feet data center, dubbed Project Osmium, spanning two counties (160 acres in Warren County and 40 acres in Madison County). more
Public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings are rapidly gaining acceptance among enterprises as a viable alternative to on-premises hardware for IT infrastructure, According to new IDC study more
I have spent the day here in Berlin attending my second advisory board meeting for the EU research project reTHINK. I'm chewing over what I learnt about the possible future of the telecoms and cloud industry. There has been a decades-long tussle between the communications and computing parts of the ICT industry. Both sides wish to exert power over the digital economy. Sometimes this tussle works for the common good, sometimes not. more