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Turkey Revenge
The turkeys are pissed this Thanksgiving they are seeking revenge.
Germs Infest 60% of Americas Phones
60% of Americans sleep with their phones, harboring germs. Cleaning regularly with UV sanitizer or alcohol wipes can help keep your phone and bed germ-free.
Smartphone Sanitizing: A Practical Guide
Securely erase personal data from your old smartphone before recycling. Protect your identity from hackers—easy steps to follow.
Why Soft Skills Matter in Today’s Job Market
Boost your career with essential soft skills like communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence. Learn why they’re crucial for workplace success.
Data Centers Expand in the D
Online Tech continues its data center build-out in the Metro Detroit area. The new data center, formerly a Sprint-Nextel facility will expand Online Tech’s total Michigan footprint to 100,000 gross square feet. The firm’s $10M renovation of the Westland, MI site will create a 34,000 square foot facility with 18,000 square feet of raised floor space with a total IT load capacity of 1.2 MW. The Metro Detroit data center will feature fiber connectivity to eight different telecommunications providers. The firm will add 15 new jobs in the data center over the next five years to run the facility according to Whir.
The firm operates three other Michigan data centers, two in Ann Arbor and one in Flint. The new facility will bring its total data center footprint to 100,000 square feet. It is the market leader in the Detroit Metro with the top market share in multi-tenant data center space in Michigan, according to 451 Research. Yan Ness, co-CEO of Online Tech called the new data center a milestone for the firm.
This new facility is a major milestone for Online Tech because it is our fourth data center and it brings us to an overall total of 100,000 square feet of gross data center space. This facility will allow us to serve the large Detroit market, where we see strong demand for the secure, compliant cloud and hosting services
Mike Klein, co-CEO of Online Tech explained to Whir that the firm’s advantage is it focus on compliance.
Our data centers deliver secure colocation and cloud hosting services to clients whose IT operations must comply with regulations like HIPAA, PCI, and Sarbanes-Oxley. Our data centers, including the new Metro Detroit Data Center, reflect our commitment to protecting our clients and their sensitive data
In anticipation of further growth, the firm expanded its Ann Arbor headquarters in September 2013 to meet its rapid growth after doubling its employee count to nearly 50 over the past 18 months.
In October 2011 the company opened a 20,000 square foot data center with 10,000 square feet of raised floor in the Avis Farms complex minutes away from Online Tech’s headquarters and original data center in Ann Arbor. The Tier 3 data center has a fully redundant power and network infrastructure to maintain availability for colocation, managed server, and cloud computing hosting business according to reports.
Online Tech invested more than $1 million in upgrades and expansion to its Flint, MI data center during August 2011. The 2011 update enabled 1 megawatt of power to the Flint data center floor. Whir says the Flint site was built in 1986 as a disaster recovery center for General Motors (GM). Online Tech took over the facility in 2005 with its acquisition of Gentech. Separated by more than 50 miles, the Flint data center is on a separate electrical grid to provide clients with production and disaster recovery data centers in Michigan.
Online Tech has plans to grow beyond metro Detroit. Co-CEO Ness told Whir,
… our growth won’t stop there We see similar opportunities for us in other markets in the Great Lakes region and the Midwest, and we expect to continue our growth strategy by expanding our portfolio of data centers into other cities in the near future.
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- New York’s data centers have a vacancy issue, while Seattle co-lo is on the rise [GigaOM] (gigaom.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2013, Ann Arbor, Cloud computing, Data center, Flint, HIPAA, Metro Detroit, Michigan, Mike Klein, Online Tech, PCI-DSS, SOX, Westland, Yan Ness
Son of SOPA
There is a secret treaty that has wound its way through global governments. The secret treaty is called TPP. What is TPP? TPP is short for the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, or the evil Son of SOPA. The TPP agreement is between Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, and the United States.
The secret treaty was even kept from the U.S. Congress. However, the Washington Post reports that Verizon (VZ) and Cisco (CSCO) have had access to the secret treaty and they seem to be supporters. Many argue that a number of the terms that the U.S. inserted are unreasonable.
InfoSecurity-Magazine.com explains that a detailed analysis of the intellectual property chapter of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement is similar or worse than SOPA or ACTA. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) were halted largely by popular activism.
Copyright owners
The author says the common factor in both was the potential for copyright owners to force their will on the internet. Two of the key issues were to make ISPs liable for infringing content, and the ability to suspend the internet accounts of repeat infringers. A further criticism of ACTA is that it was negotiated in secret, and both the public and the national parliaments expected to simply accept the deal.
The article goes on to analyze the TPP IP chapter provided by WikiLeaks. The analysis shows that TPP is following a similar, but potentially more severe, path to that of ACTA or SOPA. Dr. Monica Horten, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics & Political Science says the secret treaty, is the Holy Grail for big content.
…the Holy Grail for Hollywood and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).’ “It’s what they tried to do with the EU Telecoms Package, as well as in ACTA and in SOPA. It is Hollywood’s Holy Grail for online copyright enforcement”
Secret proposal
The blog reports that the U.S. and Australian government’s secret proposal supports efforts to make ISPs primarily responsible for removing copyrighted content from the internet. But the secret proposal also includes search engines, linking sites, and possibly even cloud computing services. Dr. Horten says TPP enforcement would be carried out by,
…disconnection of users (termination of Internet accounts), blocking and disabling of content, and even some level of monitoring obligation.
The US proposals also include a demand, that upon request, (rb- not surprisingly) any ISP would be obligated to provide details on their customers. Michael Geist, a Canadian law professor at the University of Ottawa told the author, “would require an overhaul of Canadian copyright law and potential changes to privacy law.”
Extending corporate copyrights
The U.S. is also planning to change copyright laws to benefit big pharma. TPP would extend corporate copyrights up to 120 years. Through manipulation of the process, big pharma could prevent affordable medications from ever being available to treat cancer, AIDS/HIV, or the common cold.
Opposition to TPP
Thankfully InfoSecurity Magazine says the secret TPP is not yet a done deal. Dr. Horton points out a brewing Internet cold war between the US and Canada. “The Canadians oppose it,” she added. “… Canada seems to be joined at least partially by an assortment that includes Mexico and Malaysia.”
Meanwhile, 80 U.S. law professors sent a letter to President Obama, Congress, and Ambassador Michael Froman to object to the secrecy of the TPP. The lawyers warn that the “TPP is following a process even more secretive than ACTA, which is amplifying public distrust and creating an environment conducive to an unbalanced and indefensible final product.”
Internet freedom advocacy group The EFF analyzed the TPP also. The EFF’s review of the “temporary copies” language found the U.S. proposal would make anyone who ever views content on their device could potentially be found liable of infringement. The TPP language follows:
Each Party shall provide that authors, performers, and producers of phonograms have the right to authorize or prohibit all reproductions of their works, performances, and phonograms, in any manner or form, permanent or temporary (including temporary storage in electronic form).
The Free Press said, The chief negotiators are congregating in Utah on Nov. 19–24 to hammer out key details — and President Obama has signaled his intention to move the treaty forward.
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Click here to tell Congress and the White House to reject the TPP.
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- thinksquad: Secret TPP agreement, SOPA on steroids, may be the… (priceofliberty.tumblr.com)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Miami Pauses Tablet Project
Finally some sanity in the rush to push iPads into schools. Miami-Dade school district Superintendent Alberto Carvalho decided to put a hold on the district’s $63 million 250,000+ tablet project. Mr. Carvalho cited problems in LA, Texas, and North Carolina as good reasons to slow down. “Those events put us in a position to say ‘we best pause and learn from their mistakes?” Superintendent Carvalho said according to the Miami Herald.
The article cites Leslie Wilson, CEO of the Michigan-based One-to-One Institute, which advocates successful digital convergence policies. She says that larger iPad efforts have seen a “high rate of failure,” which she blamed on a lack of planning.“We see precious little of that,” she said. (rb- I wrote how about the failure of leadership on these projects here and here.) Ms. Wilson applauded Mr. Carvalho’s decision to step back and look at others’ pitfalls. “When Miami-Dade’s superintendent says ‘I’m pushing the pause button,’ I say bravo. There’s no reason not to get this right,” Ms. Wilson said.
Troubled school tablet projects
Despite the troubled school tablet projects across the country, The Herald says board members push Superintendent Carvalho to move forward. “I hope we will not be delayed in terms of getting devices into kids’ hands as soon as possible,” said School Board Member Carlos Curbelo.
LAUSD’s Apple iPad experiment still seems in shambles, costs have just jumped 14%. The LA Times reports that the Apple (AAPL) iPads will cost nearly $100 more apiece — or $770 per tablet. The earlier lower cost estimate for each iPad “preceded the actual procurement process,” the district said in response to questions from The LA Times. “The negotiated discount [i.e. $678] does not go into effect until the district has reached the $400-million spending threshold. “This sticker shock can be avoided, but only after the L.A. Unified School District has spent at least $400 million for the devices. In other words, the district would have to buy nearly 520,000 iPads before getting lower prices.
Other cost increases announced included classroom carts, that charge the iPads and keep them secure, cost rose for this first phase rose from $2.6 million to $3.2 million, according to the paper. The iPad curriculum from Pearson Education Inc. (PSO) is still being developed and not available to those schools that have received their iPads. It is unclear if LAUSD will receive a credit from Pearson for late delivery or if it will ever be available.
Another topic at the same meeting was the progress in preparing the schools for iPads. The district reported less than half a percent (40 of the over 1,000 school network) of the schools’ Wi-Fi infrastructure was upgraded for the iPads – so far. (rb- I wonder if they have addressed the proprietary Apple Bonjour issue, and how they are going to limit the number of devices (Apple TVs, Printers, other iPads, Mac’s etc.) that can be selected.
LA parents also have expressed confusion about their responsibility for the devices. And officials have yet to purchase mechanical keyboards that will be necessary to use the iPads on new standardized tests.
Budget shifts
To keep the overall budget in check the board shifted iPad project costs to the general fund, which is used for basic operations. That shift is relatively small, about $550,000 at this point, although it’s unclear whether more expenses would be transferred in the future. The price per device, higher than retail, includes a protective case, a limited three-year warranty, technical assistance and training, and one Apple TV setup per 20 students.
The LA Times also reports that these problems have prompted four LA schools to opt-out of the troubled program. Another LA Times article seems to show that the iPad debacle may cost controversial LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy his job.
rb-
Like I said in my last post on this issue, the LA iPad debacle is driven by the politicians with no real sense of the work required, and I am sure not enough budget to do the work. When I spoke with educational “leaders” about what they were going to do with the iPads they wanted to implement them without solid articulated plans. As is always true in education, there were no plans or funds on how to sustain their projects, they spent all of their money to get the iPads in never mind a plan.
Despite doing the right thing in Miami, the politicians are pushing the Superintendent to just throw the expensive iDevices at the students without any planning.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Tablet computing |
Tags: 2013, AAPL, Apple, Fail, iPad, LAUSD, Miami-Dade County Florida, Pearson Education, Planning, Project, Wi-Fi
Cloud Exit Plan
Another cloud services provider seems to have closed up shop. NetworkWorld reports that MegaCloud.com, a consumer cloud storage provider has been inaccessible. Users started complaining on social media that they have not had access to their data since at least October 30th. (rb- there is likely lots of enterprise data as well. FierceMobileIT reports that 72 percent of workers are using free file-sharing services without authorization.)
MegaCloud had offered customers up to 8GB of free cloud storage, with another 8GB of free backup storage. That 16GB of free cloud storage was one of the largest giveaways of cloud storage from a consumer cloud provider. MegaCloud offered a desktop client, as well as mobile apps for Apple (AAPL) iOS, Google (GOOG) Android, and Microsoft (MSFT) Windows phones.
At the end of September, San José, CA-based Nirvanix cloud provider gave their mostly business customers 2-weeks notice to get their files back before they went dark, taking all the data with them. There are reports that Nirvanix hosted around 40 petabytes of data. Getting their data out in time must have challenged Nirvanix customers.
Charles Babcock at InformationWeek explained in an intriguing article that data movements in the cloud are dependent on the speed with which the service provider can write data to an external source and the amount of bandwidth made available to do so. He cited tests by Nirvanix competitor, Nasuni, which found that moving 12 TB of data from one Amazon (AMZN) S3 bucket to another took four hours. Moving the same amount from Amazon S3 to Microsoft Azure took 40 hours, and from S3 to Rackspace (RAX), just under one week. Moving data from Rackspace into Amazon took only five hours.
In a Data Center Knowledge article, Gartner (IT) analyst Kyle Hilgendorf reinforces my point that cloud meltdowns should prompt cloud users to get serious about contingency planning. Gartner’s Hilgendorf wrote in a blog post:
“Cloud exits are not nearly as sexy as cloud deployments – they are an afterthought … It’s analogous to disaster recovery and other mundane IT risk mitigation responsibilities. These functions rarely receive the attention they deserve in IT, except for immediately following major events like Hurricane Sandy or 9/11.”
“If you are a customer of any other cloud service (that is basically all of us) – take some time and build a cloud exit strategy/plan for every service you depend upon,” he added. “Cloud providers will continue to go out of business. It may not be a frequent occurrence, but it will happen. ”
Nicos Vekiarides, co-founder and CEO of Natick, MA-based cloud storage provider TwinStrata told NetWorkWorld that in the long-term, the economic draw of the cloud should overcome the fear and hesitancy of many businesses considering cloud storage solutions He predicts that the shut-downs will drive businesses toward larger, better-known cloud storage brands instead of to smaller, newer providers. He says:
The storage needs of businesses haven’t gone away. Organizations’ data storage requirements still are growing at 40 percent to 60 percent a year … What will change is how CIOs shop for and deploy cloud services, in that everyone still wants choice, but they’ll be much more wary. There’s always the need for choice among a number of vendors, and CIOs will want the best of breed. That might mean they will gravitate toward more established vendors.”
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These events may put a few firms off the cloud, but not all. These events should point out the need for due diligence when planning what to do with their data.
Barb Darrow at GigaOM said it most 
poetically, “cloud storage offerings have multiplied like rabbits over the past year, and the notion that you could entrust business data to a company that appears to be well-funded only to see it shutting its doors could be more paranoia-inducing than the NSA spooks.”
IMHO, continuity plans need to account for data in the cloud. Cloud providers can offer better availability and redundancy, but still pose risks. But do they guarantee your data? Continuity plans need to protect complete business services, including parts that may rely on a cloud piece. Some of the questions I would ask:
- Does it make sense to have all data in the cloud?
- Is the firm’s data categorized so that when another cloud provider folds, IT can spend any time they have moving data to another provider? Mr. Babcock demonstrated that move would not be instantaneous.
- Can the data even be brought back in-house? Did you throw out your old SAN when the data was moved to the cloud?
- What format is the data in? You did check your contract right?
- Will a firm going under even worry about contractual obligations?
- Can IT and legal get together to make a deal with another cloud provider fast enough?
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
How Tough is an iPhone 5s?
According to some reports, the Apple (AAPL) iPhone 5s is the greatest iPhone ever. But how tough is it? Apparently, the iPhone 5s does pretty well when dropped on the sidewalk and does not object to a quick dip into the water.
But can the iPhone 5s defeat a .50-Millimeter rifle?
RatedRR answers the question. Click below to see the results.
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I could go on a sociological rant about the modern-Americas need to put heroes (or their representation) on a pedestal only to gleefully knock them down later.
But – today seemed to be the day for some random destruction.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.