Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Driving in Detroit’s Rut, is the Media Business Next?

By Tony Greenberg /Alex Veytsel

Media firms have been my clients for years. Most IT firms complain that media firms prey on IT services firms by offering to “reference them” for larger enterprise deals. WRONG. Media firms, much like adult entertainment firms, are the spaghetti slingers and early adopters of new tech. You have to love them for taking the arrows in their backs and mounting themselves on the fireplace altar as trophies.

Media firms are actually IT Heroes. While banks and automakers wax poetic about risk and return on investment, Disney, ABC, News Corp., Viacom, CBS, and Sony–all past or current clients–pave the yellow brick road. Hats off to you all for “boldly going where no man has gone before”. For now, let’s ponder what lessons we can learn from the carnage of auto and the future demise of IT. (more…)

Posted in Data Center & Colocation, IT Market, Managed Services, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Will users force the door open on the walled gardens of private Internets?

By Alex Veytsel and Tony Greenberg

In the hubbub over the Google and Verizon new net neutrality plan, a couple of things stand out:

1) There is no actual deal, just a proposed compromise that no one actually likes

2) Everyone seems to be confused about the new,  private Internet

While more viable than its critics suppose, this solution will implode in a wave of mistrust. Even if implemented, there is no equilibrium state possible between the public and private Internet. That’s because the new private Internet is not new – it’s what used to be called a walled garden.

When there is a free and open alternative (think AOL versus a typical modern ISP), the garden eventually withers as every able-minded user scrambles over the wall. When there is no alternative (think iPhone’s app store), it’s a monopolistic cash cow. Either way, sustained equilibrium between the two is rarely achieved. Each side is likely counting on the loss of that balance betting on their own models of the wall between private and public. And that gets us back to the wave of mistrust that will sink this ship before it leaves harbor.

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Posted in CDN & Streaming, Cloud Computing, Content & Content Devices, Network & Bandwidth, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Why online gaming will be the biggest casualty if ISPs prioritize packets

Synopsis

The debate over net neutrality1 has often focused on video as the dominant medium that made the prioritization of packets either crucial or harmful. However, video is not the offering that will suffer the most if net neutrality becomes a wistful memory. Rather, the users that are likely to be most materially disadvantaged are those that utilize the Net for interactive communications – particularly voice over IP (VOIP) and online gaming. Of these two finalists for the dubious title of “innovation most likely to be stifled to the detriment of everyone by loss of net neutrality,” gaming is by far the more irreplaceable and senseless loss.

Unlike video and voice, ISPs are unlikely to have or be able to obtain a viable material stake in the gaming business and have no replacement for the service. As a result, consumers stand not only to lose their choice of the source of this product, but the very value of the gaming service itself.

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