Author: elegant

The 4th International Conference and Exhibition, Cloud Slam’12, is slated for May 30 – June 1, 2012 in San Francisco, California. We have no doubt that clouds will play a major role the way we store data in the future.

However, there is very limited effort at the time for globalization of clouds. It is any ones guess who will lead the field. It is anticipated that telecom giants are primed to take the lead. Telecoms such as AT&T, Verizon, BT Global Services and others are in discussions with third- party data centers and public cloud services.

Telecom services see the opportunity that clouds could contribute to their bottom line. They may not want to let it go and would like to keep their hands on any new development. They see the expansion opportunities in retail, software and other business models.

Industry is leading towards what is known as “everything-as-a-service (EaaS). This can be seen in Verizon’s recent efforts.

It is somewhat difficult to read the tea leaves at this early stage. But cloud is here to stay. The global spread of clouds will continue to benefit the customer, enhance the IT services, support new cutting-edge computing and promote affordable businesses.

On January 20, 2012, the New Zealand police arrested German born computer programmer Kim Dotcom (previously Kim Schmitz) along with three other co-workers. At the time of the arrest he was living larger than life. He lived in a $24 million mansion just outside Auckland, New Zealand. Police seized 18 luxury vehicles and froze $9 million worth of accounts. This is not the first time that he got into trouble. In 2000 he was convicted in one of the largest insider trader scheme in Germany.

This time it is copy right infringement which earned him an estimated $175 million a year. U.S. authorities accused him and his colleagues of willfully and repeatedly violating the copyright law and request that he be extradited to U.S. for prosecution. He founded the online storage service Megaupload.

Jury is still out there. Some say this case will injure investors as well as entrepreneurs that predict a bright future for cloud computing. Some even say that the government action is over reaching which will curb the growth of an industry. The recording industry on the other hand acknowledge legitimate businesses like Dropbox and say the threat from piracy cause far more greater damage to the industry due to lost revenue.

Light emitting diodes or commonly known LED lights are actually cool burning, light emitting computer chips. Will replacing your house bulbs to LED pays off? Here are few things to consider.

• They cost more than other bulbs such as incandescent or halogen bulbs. But use 90% less electricity than what you are using now. So, they are more environmentally friendly.
• They last longer than other bulbs. Some estimates indicate up to 15 years or up to 100,000 hours. So, you will save by not having to replace bulbs more often.
• The Federal Government in September, 2012 is scheduled to implement a ban on incandescent bulbs.
• There is no heavy metal or mercury in LEDs, so they are recyclable.
• Consider the warranty. GE bulbs come with 5 years and 50,000 hours warranty.
• They are super bright.
• Available in many colors to suit your vehicle if you are considering changing your vehicle lights.
• If you are using fluorescent lights, consider cost to convert those light holders.

LED industry is growing fast and at the same time consolidating. Whether this will help to lower the price of a unit is anyone’s guess.