4 Min read
Internet of Things network to launch in UK next year
Talk of the IoT continues, with ever more people becoming familiar with the concept of having connected devices which communicate for the betterment of the community. Forecasts range from estimates of seeing 25 billion to 50 billion connected devices worldwide by 2020, the main benefit being the massive energy and cost savings. UK-based communications company Arqiva announced plans on May 16 to build and run a national low-power, battery-preserving network to connect smart devices in 10 UK cities next year, in support of the IoT. The rollout starts with Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Sheffield. The network will use “ultra-narrowband” technology. UNT allows you to transmit small amounts of data , radically expanding the number of things you can connect.
“You can also have a battery life that is 15-20 years long, so you don’t have to worry about having power to all the connected devices that you put out there, which is obviously a real problem with some of the mobile technologies which don’t have such long battery life.” said Wendy McMillan, managing director of small metering and machine-to-machine solutions.
SIGFOX has “ultra-narrowband-based radio technology” which enables long-range two-way wireless Internet connections for devices, promoting it’s network advantages of eliminating cost and energy-use barriers to the implementation of IoT and M2M solutions.
Rodolphe Baronnet-Frugès, vice president of network and business development at SIGFOX, said that “our partnership with Arqiva is a significant part of SIGFOX’s plan to establish a global cellular network dedicated to the IoT.”
Read more at Phys.org
Why YouTube wants to buy Twitch?
YouTube has agreed to buy Twitch for over $1B in an all cash deal. Twitch was the keynote at Streaming Media East, giving out impressive data in their own business, as well as the eSports market (see infographic below).
Here are some highlights from Twitch in 2013:
- 45 million+ Unique Viewers per Month
- 1 million+ Unique Broadcasters per Month
- 106 Minutes Watched per Person per Day
- 68% have decreased their television consumption
Free-to-play games have dug roots into the space as both established and emerging markets. Countries such as Russia and Poland show increasing interest in F2P games. Titles like LoL and World of Tanks are expected to show substantial growth in both audience and revenue in the next two years.
Check out the full article at StreamingMedia.
Chrome on top, Safari now second
Chrome is the world’s top browser and Safari is number two, according to Shareacholic’s recent report. The data is collected from a base of more than 250 million users and over 200 000 publishers. Chrome owns 35% of the Web Browser usage trends, with the competition behind for more than 9%. Safari came in second with 24% (mobile and desktop share combined).
You can check out Shareacholic’s report at this link.
Internet Explorer and Firefox have both lost ground, mostly due to Microsoft’s mobile weakness and their failure to catch up. Mobile growth has helped Safari peak at number two position.
For the full article go to MarketingLand.
Why Dyn just bought global-Internet-monitoring firm Renesys
Renesys is the Internet monitoring firm, founded in 2000. It notifies customers when the Internet transmission goes dark. They recently announced that they’re being acquired by Dyn, which monitors and manages its customers’ Internet traffic. Internet outages have become more noticeable, with entire countries sometimes going off the map – or traffic getting mysteriously rerouted.
Dyn grew out of a project at the Worcester Polytechic Institute. It initially focused on dynamic domain name service technologies, until 2008, when they decided to shift gears and sell premium service aimed at performance assurance for Web traffic and messaging.
Dyn now employs more than 300 people – 200 of them at its New Hampshire headquarters, with additional offices in San Francisco, Britain and Australia. It expects to open up offices in Latin America by the end of the year. The company plans to integrate Renesys’ global-monitoring data into the services, giving customers insight into where there could be potential problems and finding the most effective ways to re-route.
Full article at WashingtonPost.
Cloud Computing Adoption Continues
The term “cloud computing” comes from network diagrams in which cloud shapes are used to describe certain types of networks. All the computing of more than one computer via a network or the service gained from the host computer via a network is considered cloud computing. Cloud represents a union of two major trends – IT efficiency and business agility in information technology, with IT referring to using computing resources more efficiently through hardware and software resources, and business agility being the ability of a business to use computational tools rapidly, adapting quickly to the changes in the business environment. Cloud computing can remove traditional boundaries between businesses, making the company more agile and responsive, reducing the operational costs.
A study from Borgman, based on the factors influencing cloud computing adoption (security and privacy, identity management standards, and the need for sharing and collaboration) have a positive effect on using and adopting the cloud computing. Cloud solutions for a data breach involve a storing data and computing in a shared multi-user environment.
Some of the strategies to help decision makers improve could security would be
- Ensure effective governance, risk and compliance processes exist
- Audit operational and business processes
- Manage people, roles and identities
- Ensure proper protection of data and information
- Enforce privacy policies
- Assess the security provisions for cloud applications
- Ensure cloud networks and connections are secure
Cloud computing has become ubiquitous in recent years. The many advatanges of cloud computing improving the quality of business operations, performing tasks more quickly, increasing productivity, cost savings, and providing new business opportunities) can effect it’s adoption. Decision makers should systematically evaluate these factors before adoption of cloud computing environment.
Full article at CloudTweaks.
