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Category: storage

Big Data Storage now Available on Google’s Storage Platform

Google just launched a data storage service that will allow multi-national corporations and big organizations to run big data analysis on its cloud service.

Google Cloud Bigtable is not an entirely new service, as Google has been using it internally for years to manage its core services, such as Google Analytics, Gmail, and Google Search.

Finance companies can use the new service to store petabytes of trading data for analysis of emerging trends. The service can also be used to store sensor data from internet-of-things monitoring system.

Other industries that stand to benefit from the service as well include energy firms, digital advertising firms, telecommunication companies, biomedical industries and other data-intensive corporations.

The Bigtable Google Cloud service is a hosted NoSQL data store. Users can read and write data using the application programming interface (API) for Apache HBase.

Users can use the cloud service with existing Hadoop software since the Bigtable can be accessed through HBase commands. The Hadoop is an open source data processing platform that allows users to work with extremely huge sets of data. The Bigtable will also work with other Google cloud services, including Google Cloud Dataflow and Google BigQuery.

Google fully runs the service offering encryption of data for security and backup through data replication. Additional storage is automatically provided as data grows.

The pricing for this service will depend on a number of things such as amount of storage used, number of nodes deployed, and network usage. The service is still in beta and those interested in using it can sign up for a free trial.

May 18, 2015
Toshiba Launches Application Processor Development Platforms For Wearable And IoT Devices
Toshiba has rolled out hardware and software development kits (HDK and SDK) for the Toshiba TZ1000 Application Processor Lite (ApP Lite) series of processors for wearable and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Together, the kits allow evaluation of devices in an environment closer to that of their final application. The TZ1000 processor can also be optimized for specific product characteristics, compared with the previous development environment.

Given the explosive growth of the wearable and IoT markets, customers need to be able to quickly and easily design application processors into their products. Toshiba’s new development platform allows them to do just that, enabling new products with short development cycles.

The company said it will supply a limited number of reference boards to select IoT device developers free of charge, under certain conditions.

Three elements make up the TZ1000 development environment:
- HDK, consisting of a main reference board embedded with a TZ1001MBG processor and a biometric sensor board that measures pulse waves and the heart’s electrical activities;
- SDK, comprising driver software that controls each component incorporated in the TZ1001MBG, middleware that measures activity and pulse waves, and application software that controls the overall system;
- supporting software development tools. Examples of supporting development tools available include Keil MDK-ARM and IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM.
First introduced in 2014, the TZ1000 series of ApP Lite devices integrate a sensor, an ARM Cortex-M4F processor, flash memory and a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) controller in one package.

Also included is a high-resolution ADC that can convert analog signals from external sensors, such as pulse wave and electrocardiogram, into digital data and deliver it to the processor. T

he single-device solution measures, processes, saves and communicates data required for IoT devices and wearables, operating at low power to enable long battery life.

ApP Lite
Toshiba ApP Lite processors enable raw data to be fed to the cloud, and also carry out high-performance and efficient signal processing. They extract necessary data through sensors and image recognition, contributing to a reduced data load.

The ApP Lite family consists of four series, each optimized for specific applications: TZ1000, TZ2000, TZ3000 and TZ5000.
May 12, 2015
Akamai Expands Business Operations in Canada

Akamai, one of the world’s biggest providers of Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, is expanding its business operations in Canada. The company has just announced the opening of its Toronto sales and services office. The new office will support employees focused on sales, services, engineering, and security, and will complement Akamai’s existing Ontario location in Ottawa.

Akamai’s growth in Canada has expanded in the areas of financial services, media & entertainment, manufacturing, health care, public sector, and commerce, with Ontario being the province with the Company’s largest customer base.

Akamai is hiring in both Toronto and Ottawa for engineering roles in the areas of Web Performance and Enterprise solutions.

Canada boasts 33 million internet users, with nearly 95 percent of its total population being internet-connected. Over the last five years, the country’s high broadband (connections greater than 10 Mbps) adoption rate has increased by 589 percent. During that same period, Canada’s 4K readiness rate (connections greater than 15 Mbps) has increased by 710 percent.

Akamai is currently serving and protecting the online presence for the six largest banks in Canada, many ofCanada’s most successful retailers, and has served as a force behind major online events for several of the national media broadcasters such as CBC/Radio-Canada during the Olympics, the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil, and for the upcoming 2015 Pan Am games in Toronto.

SHOP.CA is becoming Canada’s leader in online shopping, providing “a unique Canadian experience that combines an authoritative selection of products, unparalleled service and a social loyalty program that rewards members on every purchase.” Launched in July 2012, SHOP.CA has become the fastest growing retail site in Canada and a top 10 most-visited, Canadian-owned ecommerce site.

March 30, 2015
Security Study Shows Canadian Businesses Not Prepared For Security Threats
According to new research from Cisco, Canadian businesses are not equipped to respond to security threats within their networks. The study, which combines the views of Canadian businesses and consumers about security at work, also found there are discrepancies between the preparedness of large and small businesses.

Respondents were asked questions about security policies, practices and recent cyber-attacks at their business, including their security preparedness for new IT consumption models such as mobile and cloud-based applications.

Cisco’s findings indicate many Canadian businesses operate without any security strategy for their network, leaving them woefully underprepared to take advantage of new opportunities created by the Internet of Everything (IoE) and making them highly susceptible to threats such as data loss or theft.

With IoE driving the connection of people, processes, data, and things, the number and type of attack vectors will continue to increase exponentially, driving the mandate that security must become top of mind for businesses in today’s connected world.

Key Findings

Canadian businesses are unprepared for future security threats.
- 6 out of 10 businesses either do not have a security strategy in place, and/or are unsure whether their security strategy accounts for an evolving data centre and IT consumption model, or do not have a strategy to prepare for these changes.
- Nearly one in 10 (8%) of Canadian businesses overall are still unsure whether they experienced a security threat, attack or breach on their network in the last 12 months.
- 15% of Canadian businesses still do not have a security strategy in place.
- 1 in 5 (22%) Canadian businesses report they have experienced a threat, attack or breach in the last 12 months.
- Canadian businesses with less than 100 employees are the most likely to not have a security strategy (26%), while mid-sized businesses are the least likely to have a strategy in place for changing IT consumption models (25%).
- One in three (31%) of Canada’s largest companies are unsure whether their IT security strategy accounts for evolving data centre and IT consumption models.
Canadian businesses are slow to protect company data on employee-owned devices.
- Less than 60% of Canadian businesses have IT solutions in place to protect company data on employee-owned devices.
- Nearly a quarter (24%) of employed Canadians use a personal device for work despite being employed by a company that does not allow this practice. Another 11% do so without knowing if it is allowed by their employer or not.
- The Canadian businesses most prepared to protect company data on employee-owned devices are those with more than 1000 employees (64%). Those least prepared are businesses with less than 100 employees (44%).
- Almost half (48%) of employed Canadians believe they are allowed to bring and use personal devices on the corporate network, while 57% of Canadian businesses believe they have IT solutions in place to protect data on employee-devices.
Source: Cisco
March 20, 2015
You can now store up to 50,000 songs with Google Play Music

Google is now offering an additional space to accommodate 30,000 more songs and that is on top of the already subscribed for 20,000 song capacity. This is a free upgrade that is available to all Google Play Music subscribers. You can easily subscribe to the service by following the steps here and that is if you are not a member yet.

In case you want to listen to the music offline, then you can download your music to an iPad, iPhone or Android device. You can also access all your music via a computer on the web and the great thing about the service is that even when you upgrade to a new phone or computer, you will still be able to access all your stored music.

Though trends are showing a significant shift from downloading of music (moving towards streaming), there is a population that is unwilling to let go of their massive music collection and these are some of the people that Google is hoping to attract.

For easy use of the service it is best you use Chrome as it is already optimized for the service.

March 19, 2015
Vodafone and Dropbox Team up on Cloud Storage

Vodafone and Dropbox are partnering to provide the telco’s Android and iPhone users with free cloud storage for a year.

Starting this month, new Vodafone users will have 25 GB of cloud storage space on Dropbox. This service will be available to Vodafone’s Android and iPhone users. A majority of Vodafone’s Android phones will come preloaded with the Dropbbox app.

What’s the implication? Well, Vodafone users can now count on extra space that can also make switching over to a new phone a much easier process as all you have to do is save all your videos, photos, and all your files on your old phone to Dropbox and then just sign in to your Dropbox app in your new phone and all your files will be there waiting for you.

Vodafone also said that it will use Dropbox as its platform for its Backup+ service that allows Vodafone users to backup messages, multimedia content, and contacts on the cloud. The Backup+ service will start rolling out by the end of March, 2015 and will be ready for use over the coming months.

The partnership between Dropbox and Vodafone is not entirely a new concept as just last year around October 02 entered a partnership with Box to resell the cloud storage service to SMEs.

March 12, 2015
Alibaba looks set to Launch its Cloud Services in the U.S.

The Chinese commerce firm Alibaba is keen on launching its cloud computing services in the U.S. and this became clear after they announced the establishment of a data center in Silicon Valley.

The Silicon Valley data center (location still unknown for security reasons) is Alibaba’s first center outside China. The Chinese giant claims to have more than 1.4 million cloud services customers in China and its expansion to the U.S. is in line with its plan to expand to Southeast Asia and into Europe before the end of the year.

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services are among the leading cloud players in the United States and it will be interesting to see how Aliyun (an Alibaba development) will thrive since they are going to offer similar services as the aforementioned giants.

Some of the notable services that they are keen on offering include data processing and cloud storage, load-balancing for companies running websites, data security, and a virtual serve.

Aliyun is yet to announce its prices but they said that their services will be “cost effective”. They also added that there first target will be Chinese companies with American business interests, but they will later develop and ramp up their services to appeal to international companies as well by the end of the year.

March 6, 2015
Waitan’s StellaHunter: World’s First SSD with Remote Secure Erase and Self-Destruction

Waitan, a manufacturer of ruggedized solid state drives (SSD) and military grade SSD controller ICs, announced its StellaHunter series rugged SSDs with unprecedented methods of executing military secure erase and self-destroy function via remote control, access and command based on its proprietary technologies.

The StellaHunter series rugged SSDs are based on Waitan’s proprietary military grade NAND flash management algorithms and ASICs that also feature AES-256 bit hardware based on-the-fly encryption, on-the-board UPS, and ATA command based military secure erase methods.

It comes with unit capacity up to 4TB in 2.5″ SATA III (6.0 Gbps) form factors.

Based on users’ application scenarios and availability in different capacities, the remote controlled secure erase and self-destruction function can be executed via satellite communications, cellular communications, Wi-Fi communications, or combinations of two or more of these methods.

User can opt to pre-set an SSD drive to be reusable after secure erase, or to be permanently destroyed after self-destruction.

The StellaHunter product family is designed for military, defense and aerospace applications that require high security, high reliability, high ruggedness, and long endurance, such as:

– Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV).
– Military, defense, air force and marine systems
– Aerospace and aviation computers
– Rugged Computing, Industrial / Embedded PCs
– Disaster Recovery, Public Security, Government Systems, Fault Tolerant Applications
– Remotely operated outdoor and indoor stations for various type of applications

February 23, 2015
Zerto Hits Triple-Digit Growth Once Again
Cloud and virtualized data recovery company Zerto announced that it surpassed 2014 targets, recording 140 percent revenue growth while doubling its customer base to 800 customers in 38 countries.

To support this international growth, the company opened multiple new offices including offices in the United Kingdom and in Australia.

Zerto also increased its partner base to 500 worldwide channel partners and 170 cloud service providers.

In 2014, the company also reached the following milestones:
- Closed a $26 million round of Series D financing. New investor Harmony Partners led the financing, with participation by all current investors, which include Battery Ventures, Greylock IL (now 83North), RTP Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners.
- Introduced offsite backup capabilities, as part of Zerto Virtual Replication 3.5, a new model of data protection combining replication, continuous data protection (CDP) and long-term retention at the target site.
- Announced Zerto Virtual Replication for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Hyper-V, bringing the same level of enterprise-class data protection to customers regardless of their underlying infrastructure. Some additional features of Zerto Virtual Replication for AWS and Hyper-V include:
  - Hypervisor agnostic replication – including from VMware vSphere to Microsoft Hyper-V and from VMware vSphere to AWS
  - No snapshots – Zerto Virtual Replication uses continuous data protection to minimize impact on the production environment
  - Automated orchestration of disaster recovery processes for application consistency
  - Simple management interface for KPIs and reporting on DR failovers and tests
- Increased the number of channel partners in the Zerto Alliance Partner Program – which enables companies to implement this powerful approach to BC/DR – by more than 83 percent to 500.
- Launched online partner training empowering more than 1,250 channel partner training certifications earned; 810 technical, 440 sales.
- Launched new partner portal.
- Grew the channel team at Zerto to include Channel Account Managers and Field Marketing Managers worldwide helping to support the growing channel ecosystem.
- Expanded the Zerto Cloud Ecosystem to 170 cloud providers who are revolutionizing DR by using Zerto Virtual Replication to power their cloud DR offerings.
- Expanded its customer base across new verticals including finance, healthcare, manufacturing and oil and gas.
In 2015, the company is planning to focus on improving IT service continuity by supporting the ability for enterprises to move application workloads successfully between any hypervisor, cloud or storage environment.
February 13, 2015
Seagate’s New Inexpensive Cloud Storage Favors Small Businesses

Google Drive, One Drive, or Dropbox have all become popular with cloud storage but there is a new wave blowing – that of personal cloud data storage and to this end Seagate has stepped in to provide Personal Cloud service.

The storage giant showcased its new Iaas, Infrastructure-as-a-Service products at the CES 2015. According to Seagate, their aim is to provide storage services to individuals who wish to access music, photos, and videos anytime anywhere and they will be able to do so using their phones and tablets. Small businesses can also benefit from the service as they are able to securely store, retrieve and share data stored on the personal cloud drive.

Small businesses are bound to benefit from this service more than individual customers. Why so? For starters, the storage space. The personal cloud line offers 3-5 terabytes while the personal cloud 2 bay line gives 4, 6, and 8 TB.

Here is another reason, for security reasons. Personal cloud 2 bay can be set up in RAID( Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks) 1 mode or better yet, it is possible to use all storage for file storage.

The device is compatible with the Apple Time Machine and continously and automatically backs up windows and mac. Apart fom the storage devices being NAS, they can also compliment public cloud service when configured. Better yet, they can automatically back up to the popular providers like HiDrive, DropBox, Amazon S3, Baidu, Box, and Yandex disk. The device has an option where it can be synced to Google Drive, Baidu and DropBox.

Additional apps can be installed as the device has a built-in app manager. BitTorrent Sync, ElephantDrive and WordPress can all be installed. Also, the software development kit enables third-party developers to come up with their own services or to intergrate such with web based and other cloud services.

This service is benefitial to individuals but more benefitial to small businesses. Considering businesses are out to reduce their cost, this would work well for them as its inexpensive.`

January 26, 2015