Grazed from Lexology. Author: Rosemary Wallis and Thomas Huthwaite.

Several news reports in the past week have referred to Kim Dotcom’s new website, Mega, as a “file sharing” website, saying that Dotcom’s company has received “file sharing infringement notices” and mentioning the Mega website alongside reports on the recent decision of the Copyright Tribunal on the infringing file sharing legislation. These reports appear to be confusing two different aspects of the copyright legislation: there are some important distinctions to be made.

File hosting vs. file sharing

In the colloquial sense, Mega is a ‘sharing’ website. However, it is not a “file sharing” website as defined by New Zealand’s infringing file sharing legislation. Under the legislation, file sharing occurs only when material is uploaded via, or downloaded from, the internet using software or a network that enables the simultaneous sharing of material between multiple users. Examples of such software include BitTorrent and uTorrent…

Grazed from DigiTimes. Author: Joseph Tsai.

Driven by booming demand for new data center services for mobile platforms and cloud computing, shipments of micro servers are expected to more than triple in 2013, according to an IHS iSuppli Compute Platforms Topical report. Shipments of micro servers are forecast to reach 291,000 units in 2013, up 230% from 88,000 units in 2012. Shipments of micro servers commenced in 2011 with just 19,000 units. However, shipments by the end of 2016 will rise to some 1.2 million units.

The penetration of micro servers compared to total server shipments amounted to a negligible 0.2% in 2011. But by 2016, the machines will claim a penetration rate of more than 10% – a fifty-fold jump. Micro servers are general-purpose computers, housing single or multiple low-power microprocessors and usually consuming less than 45W in a single motherboard. The machines employ shared infrastructure such as power, cooling and cabling with other similar devices, allowing for an extremely dense configuration when micro servers are cascaded together…

Grazed from Datamation. Author: Scott Allan Miller.

Private clouds, hosted or on-premise, are rapidly becoming commonplace. More and more businesses are learning of cloud computing and seeing that running their own cloud is both feasible and potentially valuable. But due to a general lack of cloud knowledge, it is becoming more and more common that clouds are recommended when they do not suit the needs of the business at all. Often this happens when people confuse private clouds with traditional virtualization management systems.

The Differences Between Virtualization and Cloud Computing

A cloud is a special type of virtualization platform and fills a unique niche. Cloud computing takes traditional virtualization and layers it with automated scaling and provisioning that allows for rapid, horizontal scaling of applications. This is not a normal business need…

Grazed from Chip Design Magazine. Author: Editorial Staff.

Chip design engineers face a myriad of challenges in their work, be it brainstorming ways to implement a certain feature set, figuring out how to meet performance requirements (and still stay within budget), or running enough simulations and compilations to verify functionality and test coverage before manufacture. These are the processes that bring our smartphones, smart TVs, industrial robots and most other electronics to life. Over the years, much thought and hard work has also been put into improving design methodologies, software tools and computing hardware for chip design, in order to shorten product time-to-market and lower development costs. Today, the cloud can help with this, by dramatically accelerating chip design workflows.

Cloud computing has steadily made inroads into the enterprise; therefore it comes as little or no surprise that a compute-intensive endeavor such as semiconductor chip design will find practical applications for the cloud. The prospect of scaling computation resources on-demand and running simulations and compilations in parallel is attractive–both for IT departments and for design teams…

Grazed from Technorati. Author: Geoff Simon.

Druva software just announced a new private cloud option for it’s unified endpoint management platform inSync, that lets enterprise clients safely deploy solutions to manage and protect data on the numerous devices used by the new mobile workforce. Designed with enterprise needs in mind, Druva’s private cloud solution offers the flexibility and scalability of the cloud, as well as the ability to host infrastructure behind company firewalls, to take advantage of cost savings as well as security and compliance issues. The platform can be managed in-house by IT staff or delivered as a managed service by Druva. inSync protects company assets from the usual risks associated with consumer-grade file sharing apps, as well as transferring files between their own devices while on-the-go.

It also allows an increasingly mobile workforce to take advantage of the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend, and securely access files remotely. Automated backups of laptops, smartphones & tablets, data loss prevention through geo-tracking, remote wipe capabilities, along with full reporting and global search including a complete audit trail of all file sharing activity round out some of the other features…

Grazed from ITBusiness.ca. Author: Jeff Jedras.

Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) used its second annual Global Partner Conference in Las Vegas to announce an expansion of its Partner Advantage partner program to include two key new revenue opportunities for partners: services and cloud computing. The program, which launched in 2012, now supports more than 12,000 global partners, and is being expanded to include cloud offerings, as well as new support, maintenance and professional partner services.

"Last year at the Global Partner Conference, Juniper Networks announced the most significant investment in our partner organization since the company launched into the channel. Throughout 2012, our partners have leveraged the program to enhance their value and drive profitability through new opportunities with their customers,” said Emilio Umeoka, senior vice-president, worldwide partners and alliances for Juniper, in a statement…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Juan Carlos Perez.

A new partner program from Box could help its end customers by making the cloud storage and file sharing service more broadly and easily integrated with third-party enterprise Web and mobile applications. The new program, called Box Partner Network, is designed to let Box increase and deepen its relationships with ISVs, developers, resellers, and systems integrators. By turbocharging its partner ecosystem, Box hopes to advance its ambition to become the file and document repository for all its customers’ cloud applications.

Box’s goal is to simplify for end users the process of storing documents from a variety of applications in a central cloud-based container, and from there sharing them internally and externally for improved collaboration among employees and outside parties…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Bridget Botelho.

One of the most common questions potential cloud customers have surrounds data ownership. In the case of Microsoft’s Windows Azure, customers own their data — but there are caveats around data use. Microsoft uses language in its cloud data privacy policy to reserve rights on customer data that companies need to carefully consider when deploying to Windows Azure, said Rob Sanfilippo, analyst with Directions on Microsoft, an independent analysis firm based in Kirkland, Wash.

"Organizations should consult with their lawyers when planning solutions to be hosted on Azure, especially when those solutions contain customer data, intellectual property, trade secrets and any other sensitive data," Sanfilippo said. Even though customers own their data on Windows Azure, Microsoft can still use it for various reasons…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Doug Bonderud.

A recent TechNavio study predicts a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for global cloud computing of 6.2 percent between 2012 and 2016, informed in large part by the decreasing costs of cloud ownership, but tempered by potential security and legal concerns surrounding data use. Some experts believe the cloud represents not just a global IT improvement but argue this growth signals the rise of a "4th utility," one that will stand alongside other utilities like roadways, water, and electricity.

Overall Market Growth

According to a press release at PR Newswire, the TechNavio report includes an in-depth market analysis from market experts and growth predictions for global cloud computing as well as the market’s key vendors, which include Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft. The report cites a reduced total cost of ownership as a well emerging hybrid approaches for the growth prediction. Simply put, the cloud market is now broad and deep enough that its technology is a business necessity…

Grazed from BizTech2. Author: Editorial Staff.

SAP AG has announced that the SAP PartnerEdge program now supports an expanded portfolio of SAP cloud solutions. As a result, more than 500 partners of SuccessFactors, an SAP company, will be transitioned into the program in 2013. SAP PartnerEdge has been designed for partners that resell, build or provide implementation services for SAP solutions across the SAP portfolio. The integration of SuccessFactors partners is another step in strengthening the overall partner ecosystem and underlining SAP’s commitment to making it easier to partner and collaborate with the company.

By enabling existing SAP PartnerEdge members to resell, service and build solutions on top of SAP Cloud, these partners now have the opportunity to tackle the fast-growing cloud market and offer best-of-breed cloud solutions and suites to their installed base customers and prospects. SAP also supports partners’ economic models, enabling partners that sell cloud solutions to boost profitability by offering quarterly payments in arrears for cloud solutions from SAP…