Nov 06

EMC: Large Enterprises Reduce Investments in Public Clouds

By Cloud Computing, IT Strategy No Comments

By 2016, Only 12% of Workload Will Run On Public
Cloud Infrastructure

This was the surprising perspective offered by Adrian McDonald, EMEA President at EMC, addressing the audience at EMC Forum 2013 that took place on November 4 in Tel Aviv, Israel. McDonald maintains that public cloud architecture is not the right solution for large enterprises, and, in fact, CIOs are reporting that when considering the investment in security, compliance and business continuity, public cloud infrastructure is more expensive than the alternatives.

According to McDonald, market research conducted by EMC shows that large organizations are gradually reducing application deployment on public clouds. EMC forecasts that by 2016, 12% of the workload will run on a public cloud and 12% will be using a private-virtual cloud, but 76% of the workload will require internally managed infrastructure.

McDonald estimates that organizations can cut as much as 38% of annual IT expenses through virtualization and cloud deployment. But he cautions that this is an aggressive goal that requires both IT organizations and cloud infrastructure and services providers to offer new ways to deliver flexible and agile solutions and services, such as supporting customer self-provisioning.

As reported by Ran Miron http://www.pc.co.il/?p=135820

Nov 03

HP and the Future of 3D Printing

By Additive Manufacturing, Mergers & Acquisitions 3 Comments

HP to Enter 3D Printing in 2014

On October 23, HP CEO Meg Whitman told the Canalys Channels Forum in Bangkok that HP plans to enter the 3D Printer market in the middle of 2014. HP plans to pursue ways to make 3D printing faster and cheaper, and while Whitman acknowledges that “3D printing is in its infancy”, she also sees great market opportunity for HP and is leading HP to ask “how do we commercialize to print faster, at lower price points? to enable service providers?”

Whitman believes, and many analysts agree, that 3-D printing is a natural extension of HP’s traditional 2D printing business. The logic is that as a longstanding market leader of 2D printers, printer inks and paper, HP can use its existing expertise, R&D resources and supply and distribution chains to innovate in 3D printing.

There is some merit to the analogy, as long as we keep it within the scope of where the concentration of 3D printing is today and will be in the near future: fabricating trinkets, fashion accessories, and small volume of specialized parts consumed primarily by small specialty manufacturers and hobbyists. This “makers” market is small, and Whitman acknowledges in her remarks that she did not expect 3D printing to become a big business quickly. Read More

Oct 30

Ford Car Owners are More Loyal than Toyota’s (or Mercedes, or BMW)

By Automotive No Comments

The charts below show U.S. Consumers’ loyalty during the fourth quarter of 2012, as reported by Experian Automotive. While Ford leads in customer loyalty, GM and Toyota loyalty rating are very close. Furthermore, Toyota is slowly recovering from customer defection following a series of quality issues in 2009-2011, and might eventually regain its place at the top. Another factor that might change the balance going forward is the increased loyalty in the luxury brands market, but seems to have skipped Lincoln, Ford’s high end brand.

OEM LoyaltyBrand Loyalty
Source: Experian Automotive

OEM loyalty indicates the percentage of car owners that purchased a car from the same OEM, but not necessarily the same brand. For example, if Ford Focus owner buys a Ford Fusion, or an Audi owner buys a Volkswagen.
Brand loyalty indicates a new purchase of the same brand, such as a Chevrolet or a Lexus.

Oct 18

Connected Cars: Conduit vs. Content

By Automotive, Internet of Things (IoT), Telematics 3 Comments

In the Oct.-Nov. issue of Connected World Magazine, Dorothy Glancy of Santa Clara Law offers a point of view regarding potential privacy concerns related to connected cars.

With the hype and the hope surrounding connected cars technologies and the autonomous driving, the author is correct in identifying potential privacy and data usage issues concerning vehicle operational data and vehicle location information, other observations are hardly clear-cut and are lost in technical particulars, not all of them accurate.

In order to understand potential data privacy risks and devise appropriate remedies, we need to differentiate between data acquisition (sensors), data storage (EDR), data transmission (vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communication and some telematics) and services (more telematics and location-based services). The potential for exposing private information increases as we progress in this process. Read More