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eGuide

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presents

Content Delivery Networks
in the Cloud World
With the explosion of content in our hyper-con-

present some fixes needed to get the network

nected world, as one writer in this eGuide puts it,

ready for the IoT revolution, what to consider as

“CDNs are blossoming like tulips in Holland.” But

organizations shift more business-critical applica-

as more and more of the world moves to the cloud,

tions to the cloud, how personalized online content

and user expectations of content access and quality

is changing internet performance requirements, the

continue to grow, infrastructure changes are ahead.

importance of your website or online content being

In this eGuide, InfoWorld and Network World

reachable and more.

feature

cloud chronicles

The 3 fixes needed
to get the network
ready for the
IoT revolution

Netflix is (not
really) all in on
Amazon’s cloud

5 questions to consider
as you shift more
business-critical applications to the cloud

Rain clouds ahead:
10 bold predictions
for the cloud
industry in 2016

Many traditional
networks are still
manual, static and
complex, which isn’t
ideal for IoT.

Netflix has completed
its migration to AWS,
with one big caveat:
Netflix operates its
own Content Delivery
Network outside of the
Amazon cloud.

Consider these five key
questions before making
any decisions about
the cloud.

Warning signs for the
cloud heading into 2016.
(#7 on the list: Content
distribution networks
meet NFV.)

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tech primer

opinion

8

IDG contributor network

column

How personalized online
content is changing
internet performance
requirements

My website is up,
but is my content
reachable?

The internet
isn’t ready for
really big news

As more websites personalize content for users,
optimization efforts need
to adapt.

Tracking metrics within the
cloud will give you valuable
insight to help keep your
applications up and running, but what’s important
is whether your website or
content is reachable.

A worldwide, globally
gripping news event
would likely crash the
major media providers, sending us back
to our TVs and radios.

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feature

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IDG Enterprise is

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The 3 fixes needed to get the network ready
for the IoT revolution
Many traditional networks are still manual, static and complex, which isn’t ideal for IoT.
BY JACK WATERS, CTO OF LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS | Cisco

has to do with fiber-optic networks. Getting cities—and

estimates 50 billion devices and objects will be connected to the

consumers—hardwired with fiber will be a necessity of the

internet by 2020. And that estimate may be low. If consumers

future. The term “Smart City” has been used to character-

count every device that draws power in their home—lamps, light

ize these communities that are investing in infrastructure

bulbs, kitchen gadgets—and then factor in objects at work, there

and advancing science and technology efforts to securely

may be many more billions of connected devices by then.

collect and use data to do everything from decrease energy

But the problem is, many traditional networks are still manual,

consumption to cut overhead costs and improve the life of

static and complex, which isn’t ideal for IoT. To realize the prom-

residents. The White House stepped into this arena last Sep-

ise of a hyper-connected future, three shifts must take place.

tember when it announced a Smart Cities Initiative to invest
more than $160 million in the concept.

1. Fiber
The bandwidth needed for the onslaught of IoT connected
devices should be enough to make anyone think about the

Right now, we aren’t actually seeing an overwhelming adoption

fiber. At the Consumer Electronics Show, a lot of coverage

of IoT devices in personal homes or offices. Cisco stated in

focused on this because of the emergence of 4K ultra-high-

its same report that more than 99% of things in the physical

definition television. But there were poignant examples

world remain unconnected. However, it’s only a matter of time

as well, one involving a medical use case in Cleveland. An

before every single aspect of our life is internet dependent.

organization helped deploy a fiber-optic network capable

In today’s environment, if consumers want their devices

of 100Gbps data transfer speeds to support high-definition

to be accessed outside of their homes or private networks, a

video so remote neurosurgeons could assist in operations,

user has to go into their Wi-Fi router and portmap it to an out-

because obviously buffering and delays are not acceptable.

side network. This is complicated and not very user friendly.

The underlying conversation around 4K and 100Gbps

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2. IPv6

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The fix: Give public IP space to all of the “things.” Great

Getting cities—and
consumers—hardwired
with fiber will be a
necessity of the future.

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in theory; however, the rate of new “things” is growing at

up today, we’re going to have a serious security situation.

such a rapid pace, the current method of assigning ad-

Right now, many companies are making internet-connected

dresses won’t be able to accommodate the volume. In order

devices that aren’t able to be patched or easily updated with

to provide addresses for every device, the internet will need

new security rollouts. Considering many IoT devices collect

to transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

personal data, security should be a concern for all.

So what’s the hold up? Right now there isn’t imminent

A few months ago we saw a nonmalicious hack of a chil-

financial motivation or competitive pressures for broadband

dren’s toy company. The hacktivist, a Grey Hat, was able to

providers to transition. As long as the market can efficiently

exfiltrate photos and personal information of young consum-

broker the remaining, sellable IPv4 address space to those

ers. The Grey Hat took these actions to show the company

that require it, the pressure to migrate to IPv6 will not fully

how unsecure they were and teach the industry a lesson.

materialize.

This wasn’t the first time a child’s toy was in the spotlight

Over time, as the number of IoT devices increases and
IPv4 addresses grow more scarce, financial and competitive
pressures will rise accordingly, eventually leading to eco-

for having security vulnerabilities, and probably only illustrated the tip of the iceberg.
It goes without saying that IoT developers should do

nomic incentive for IPv6 transition. Consumers will demand

more to secure their products. For organizations using

the ability to interwork with every device seamlessly with

IoT, it is essential to do a rigorous analysis of the security

speed and ease, and expect that the “internet” will continue

controls built into IoT devices and services they wish to use.

to be the ubiquitous, any-to-any network they grew ac-

At a minimum, an audit of an IoT device’s communications

customed to in its IPv4 origins. An IPv4 and IPv6 internet,

channel; use of encryption; an analysis of the type of data it

patched together with transitional technologies such as

collects, stores and transmits; and the security of the end-

Network Address Translation, won’t be able to scale to the

point(s) with which it communicates, is paramount.

levels forecasted for IoT devices—not without cumbersome

Given IoT’s growth rate, and the resulting broadening of

constraints. This perfect storm of consumer expectations

the cyber-attack surface, organizations must be ever more

and financial incentive is what is required for IPv6 to be-

vigilant in conducting comprehensive risk analyses and in

come a reality after all of these years.

the implementation of proper governance structures. A riskbased approach is the best way to balance the risk of using

3. Security

IoT with its unlimited productivity benefits.

There is a lot of concern about what it will mean for the
threat ecosystem to have millions of connected devices—es-

3

The promise and lure of IoT is exciting for both consumers

pecially those managed by consumers—available for mali-

and the industry. If these three areas become a focus, we can

cious activity. If we don’t address the security issues rearing

move toward an “Internet of Everything” connected future.

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Netflix is (not really) all in on Amazon’s cloud
Netflix has completed it migration to AWS, with one big caveat: Netflix operates its
own Content Delivery Network outside of the Amazon cloud.
BY BRANDON BUTLER, NETWORK WORLD | Publications

of all of its users, their preferences, what they watch, what they

across the Internet have praised Netflix on the triumphant

click on; and the company organizes its massive catalog of

migration of its operations into Amazon Web Services’

content in the cloud. Netflix remembers exactly where you last

cloud. But there’s one caveat: Netflix isn’t quite all in on

stopped watching something and picks it right back up from

Amazon’s cloud.

there hours, days or even weeks later. It seems like magic. And a

Perhaps the thing Netflix is most known for—streaming videos
to users around the globe—is not done in Amazon’s cloud.
Netflix is a big user of Amazon’s cloud—no one can argue

lot of it is run out of Amazon’s cloud.
But there’s a whole lot of other magic that happens that’s not
run out of Amazon’s cloud. Netflix operates its own Content De-

that. It’s been a poster-child example of how to use AWS, and

livery Network, named Open Connect, in which it stores the video

even open sources tools it has built for Amazon’s cloud. Com-

content it streams to users in data centers around the world to

pany executives—including co-founder and CEO Reed Hast-

be as close to its end users as possible.

ings—have been on stage at AWS’ re:Invent conference since

“The best way to express it is that everything you see on

“The best way to
express it is that
everything you see on
Netflix up until the
play button is on AWS;
the actual video is
delivered through
our CDN.”

2013 chronicling their impressive journey of migrating away from

Netflix up until the play button is on AWS; the actual video is deliv-

Joris Evers

managing data centers and relying more and more each year

ered through our CDN,” Netflix spokesperson Joris Evers said.

Netflix Spokesperson

on AWS’ cloud. It published a blog post earlier this month titled
“Completing the Netflix cloud migration.”
Netflix uses AWS for a wide variety of features: It keeps track

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So while Cloud Chronicles congratulates Netflix on its use
of AWS, just keep in mind, the company’s isn’t quite ALL in on
Amazon’s cloud.

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5 questions to consider as you shift more
business-critical applications to the cloud
Consider these five key questions before making any decisions about the cloud.
BY SCOTT HILTON, NETWORK WORLD | The migration to the

quality degradation, your IT team must know how to monitor for

cloud is well underway. More than half of the CIOs polled at

these issues and how to optimize performance.

last year’s Gartner Symposium IT Expo said they would be em-

Another thing to consider is knowing your “mean time to in-

ploying a cloud-first strategy moving forward. Verizon’s State

nocence”—how to quickly and with precision determine whether a

of the Market: Enterprise Cloud 2016 report found that 84%

customer-impacting issue is the result of your application, data or

of enterprises say their cloud usage has increased in the past

compute environment, or an issue with internet routing, outages

year, and half of enterprises said they will use cloud for at least

or a cloud/SaaS provider. While cloud providers, CDNs and accel-

75% of their workloads by 2018. Even more telling, half of the

eration services may claim to be “always up,” that does not mean

respondents use two to four cloud providers.

they’re always reachable by your customers.

Whether you’re looking to move to the cloud, considering the
pare performance and value across clouds, consider these five

2. If you are a global company, how do you
ensure global availability on the cloud?

key questions before making any decisions:

If you have end users accessing your internet assets at all hours

diversification of your cloud portfolio, or simply looking to com-

of the day from points around the globe, you need to ensure your

1. How do you monitor your internet infrastructure?

end-user experience is equal no matter where or when a custom-

While you may be monitoring your internal infrastructure and ap-

er accesses your website, app or content. Determining availability

plications, what information do you have about external internet

means understanding if your service is available to customers and

connections your customers rely on to connect to your business?

partners. This is especially important to understanding the con-

If connections to a specific data center go down or a cloud pro-

nection performance to your selected cloud providers and CDNs.

vider can’t reach important markets, your system admin should

A 2015 Google cloud outage that lasted for almost two hours

have the tools necessary to route traffic to another center to keep

was related to a software issue inside its virtual network traffic

your services operational. And if you’re experiencing latency or

routing. If your business was using a single cloud instance and

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a Google cloud client and you were not monitoring for network-

traffic as quickly as possible to ensure minimal interruption. As an

wide availability, you would have experienced this outage and

added bonus, having multiple CSPs can help protect against prob-

your availability would have been impacted.

lems before they even occur by allowing you to deploy apps and

So how does your business ensure that you have strong
availability no matter the condition of the internet locally or in a

services to two (or more) cloud instances so they can back each
other up using a global load balancing or failover architecture.

region halfway around the world? Distributing hosting on mulsingle regional outages. It is also recommended that you monitor

4. What are the biggest risks to optimal
internet performance?

your global network to determine load levels. Should you notice

The biggest risk is simply in not knowing the real-time state of

performance issues, there are tools available to balance these

your performance—where are the internet latency issues, what is

loads and ensure that availability remains strong regardless of

global availability and reachability like, and how is the real-world

the time, day or situation.

performance of end-users. Between the time a potential cus-

tiple cloud vendor sites protects customers from single site or

tomer enters a domain and a page opens, a tremendous amount

3. Is using just one cloud provider sufficient or
should you consider using multiple providers?

happens. Errors can occur within the network, at the CDN or ISP

While not all cloud providers are created equal, using multiple ser-

website can be slow for many reasons as well, and most consum-

vices is the only foolproof business continuity and risk mitigation

ers—and companies, for that matter—have little insight into the

strategy. It also can be an effective strategy to manage cloud costs

“how” and “why” of their performance issues.

based on peak usage, cost spikes and global load balancing.
Using a variety of CSPs gives your company access to multiple

level, with your SaaS providers or with a customer connection. A

Pipeline failures, routing anomalies, latencies, packet loss and
security threats (like man-in-the-middle attacks and DDoS) are

cloud instances (locations), allowing you to meet customers in

just a few of the common risks to a smoothly operating network.

local markets and leverage local connections. Using an advanced

Understanding your connections—and monitoring, controlling and

DNS-based Traffic Management solution with geo-location, you

optimizing them—is the true test of internet performance and in

can control which cloud instances serve which customers, and by

understanding and mitigating against weak spots in your network.

working with the right tools you can manage this from one place.
ibility and value, allowing you to scale and deliver an always-on

5. How do I keep my site up in the event
of an outage?

impression. The ability to access different pathways also comes in

Outages are game changing for your business and they happen

handy when there are outages or slow load times—whether due to

with surprising regularity—upwards of 3,000 times every day

a traffic routing problem or a malicious attack. Working with mul-

on the global internet. And it is difficult for most companies to

tiple providers will help you circumvent these issues by rerouting

detect an internet connection failure without a way to measure

Working with multiple clouds gives your business more flex-

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Distributing hosting
on multiple cloud
vendor sites protects
customers from single
site or single regional
outages. It is also recommended that you
monitor your global
network to determine
load levels.

eGuide

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between your customers and your assets.
Constant monitoring of your internet-facing architecture is the

COMPUTERWORLD

the risk in a loss of sales, revenue and brand confidence and loyalty. Working with the right partner with true visibility into your

only true way to ensure you will not be affected by outages for

infrastructure will allow you to mitigate the risk of an outage,

a prolonged period. If you cannot properly detect outages your

by identifying it before or during a disruption and making near-

business will not be in position to manage a response, mitigating

instantaneous rerouting decisions.

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Rain clouds ahead: 10 bold predictions
for the cloud industry in 2016
Warning signs for the cloud heading into 2016. (#7 on the list:
Content distribution networks meet NFV.)
interrupting anyone’s business plans in particular, I have a

2. Digital encryption divides will cause
massive cloud exception handling

jaundiced eye toward how clouds are bringing us rain, and how

As the SHA-1 encryption protocol is retired, websites will be

in 2016, the rain will drench us and try to drown us in data.

pushing users from the cliff of dead encryption. SHA-1 doesn’t

BY TOM HENDERSON, NETWORK WORLD | While I don’t like

take much computing power to use, and its users are gener-

1. More cloud services shakeout/shakeup

ally those with old phones, ancient operating systems on slow

Already we’ve seen the shakeout begin. HP Helion is now ad-

desktop and notebook hardware, and even early (and cheap)

junct to HP’s old ally Microsoft and its Azure Cloud. Microsoft,

tablets. Will users of low-value equipment be able to success-

which is in turn now scared to death of unlimited storage and

fully transition back to the web?

the resources it’s chewing up, imposed strictures to OneDrive.
No more happy terabytes with a license of Windows 10.
Portals as a business investment are down. Yahoo tried to

Once the lights are turned off on SHA-1, easy-to-do encryption
by millions of older devices will be eliminated. So will those users’ ability to run simple https web pages.

do things with Flickr, but now seems poised to sell much of its
in the game, but Facebook, the world’s greatest time suck, chal-

3. Chromebooks become the cloud
access device of choice

lenges all.

As cloud app savvy increases, the need for huge notebook stor-

non-Alibaba holdings. There are many minor portal players still

Here’s where I believe that something will happen: Cloud stor-

age and processing power is in decline. Instead, we have cloud

age will grow slowly, but steadily, (see No. 3) because as we all

apps, simplicity and generally less stuff to worry about being sto-

know, nobody erases anything, and data will grow to fill the space

len or replaced. It becomes much more troubling for companies

allocated to it. How much junk is snoozing in your SAN? Been on

that make traditional stuff, as production lines shift rapidly toward

Pinterest or Instagram recently?

Chromebook sleekness as the alternate device to a smartphone.

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Here’s where I believe
that something will
happen: Cloud storage
will grow slowly, but
steadily, (see No. 3)
because as we all know,
nobody erases anything,
and data will grow to
fill the space allocated
to it.

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4. Your television now rats you out to the
cloud (and maybe IoT, too!)

Stir Fry, Seasoning Salts, and the infrastructure bits.

Huge unsorted piles of data are being generated by your

zation harmony will be given more than superficial lip service, as

holiday gift of digital ears in the living room. Yes, that cute

each release of OpenStack requires even more studied intimacy

little Samsung television is trying to take as much data as is

at the API levels. Glue apps and components will do their best to

rationally possible and transmit it to motherships for purposes

become stickier and stickier as the elements of OpenStack look

of analysis.

less like a stack and more like a homogeneous methodology. My

At Best Buys or the Big Box, you’ll need to carefully read the

This also means that the dreaded specter of interstack organi-

prediction: OpenStack Releases actually slow down as adoption

terms of service (oh, right, it’s in the box) prior to connecting

climbs, and more cooks get into the OpenStack kitchens, poten-

that TV to your Wi-Fi. And wear your bathrobe, please.

tially causing drain sludge.

Great piles of data grub might be something you’ve actumyriad new verbal assistants that not only are incredibly handy,

6. New for 2016: Huge Organization-as-aService (or, HOaaS)

but which know your location and are dutifully listening for your

Huge-Organization-as-a-Service (HOaaS) like the Dell-EMC-

next command.

VMware merger will become commonplace, as Oracle, IBM,

ally enabled yourself via Amazon’s Echo, Siri, Cortana and the

When will the temptation for organizations to just, well,

Dell, Microsoft and even Rackspace attempt to eat Amazon’s

analyze everything you do commence? How are you sure it’s not

lunch. Dazzling, dizzying and absolutely opaque-to-compare

happening right now? Plenty of people put black tape over the

offerings will emerge, with price lists published biweekly (daily

cameras on their tablets (perhaps for good reason, too) knowing

in Washington, D.C.) in an attempt to spark a cloud services

that the cloud is like a sieve for your personal information. And

market share war, if only for stockholder visibility as everyone

IoT analytics will strengthen as an industry. My stepson once

tries to remain relevant.

wore tinfoil for a short period of time, carefully on his head. He
was a pioneer.

The HOaaS idea, time-honored, is that organizations that are
busy, resource-challenged or in need of that certain propellant
that takes them either wholesale or a little bit into the cloud

5. OpenStack recipes for cloud containers
become dominant

sometimes need to obtain all of their kit from just one contact

So you wanted to cook in the cloud, eh? You’re not alone. Now

expand it all. The One-Stop-Shop approach has merit for many

that there’s an Open Container Initiative with seeming teeth,

reasons, and in the cloud, captivity may not be as difficult, due

battles over deployed systems security provenance may be

to an increasing number of cloud transport/mirroring apps.

quieted, at least for a while. Value-added pieces evolve, with
Food Channel-like organizations booming to provide Container

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that they can scream at when things go awry—or they want to

This is a space where some organizations will put on bright,
shiny new clothing, dubbing themselves newly evangelized (and

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Suddenly Agile!) service providers, while behind the curtains,

COMPUTERWORLD

Why? Chromebooks, tablets and other generally cloud-serviced

the same old smoke and dance will fail to enchant all but their

devices will continue to dominate sales. People hate to back up.

leaden client base. HOaaS will need to be fleet-of-foot to survive

Some have never done this. Worse: Some businesses never do

the tracks laid down by the leaders.

this. Still worse: Some government agencies don’t either.
As HTML5 grows up, web services—oops, “cloud services”—

7. Content distribution networks meet NFV

will continue to grow. Consumers, finding that a 16GB iPhone

CDNs are blossoming like tulips in Holland. They’re the only

or 32GB NextBook are simply too small for their storage needs,

way that many cloud providers are surviving, as NetFlix,

will be happy to avail themselves of network storage, backup and

iTunes and even captive CDNs from Microsoft and Amazon

archiving, and not having to take out the trash.

attempt to service their clientele. But the ability to rapidly
reconfigure and take advantage of regionalized content distri-

In some ways, the cloud is like computational crack: Once addicted, walking away might be murderous.

bution for cloud-to-branch and Safe Harbor quarantine means
rapid configurations as situations warrant.
Open a pack of NVF—network virtualized functionality—sprin-

9. The international data blockade year begins
Without new treaties, cloud services and providers will now

kle across your network bottlenecks, and suddenly intercarrier

need to sequester data into various new international geo-

operations and network reconfigurations become a cinch!

graphic regions. The European Union now bars many kinds of

OK, perhaps it’s not going to be prevalent in 2016 or even 2017,

international data transfers, allowing Safe Harbor agreements

but the primitives are starting to emerge that allow large cloud cli-

that once permitted such transfers to push cloud providers

entele to do rapid network reconfigurations that permit major CDN

into dividing data—and data business locales.

functionality changes—especially within the spreading circuits of
major cloud providers done in minutes, not months.
Will NVF and SDNs mean the difference between servicing all the
queues or extreme network cloud constipation? We’ll soon find out!

Data must now have provenance, kind of like fish and wine, so
that we know varying rules and regulations—largely meeting the
needs of privacy—aren’t violated. Many cloud hosting organizations are opening multinational hosting sites for nexus, so as to
comply with privacy regulations. How does a German traveling

8. 2016: The Year of the Consumer Cloud

in Aruba deal with data sequestering? How about my upcoming

Although Microsoft and phone service providers have begun

trip to Barcelona? Can I email home? What about those ads I’ll

to impose constraints on the concept of “unlimited,” the

click on while in Catalunya? Does my click stay in Catalunya, or

number of online streaming and storage services will rise and

is it MY click, and can it go home with me? Must Cortana speak

clog networks like no time in history, I predict. Whether social

Catalunyan and not Castillian Spanish? Can I use sign language?

media, services applications or raw storage, consumers are
adapting to offloading their lives into the cloud.

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The devil of the details of what Safe Harbor and data sequestering mean must become the crux of policy—not easily negoti-

CDNs are blossoming
like tulips in Holland.

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ated in a U.S. Presidential election year. In the interim, many in

COMPUTERWORLD

What’s woefully apparent is that car cloud security is as primi-

the cloud services sector are looking very closely at outcomes as

tive as a bad password on a good day. It’s become the crux of

infrastructure becomes replicated into the EU, but also Canada,

lots of laughter and mayhem at BlackHat. So gruesomely bad are

and soon, great walls of data will become the norm … until

the minimums—car door locks—that key replicators pop up in

something else happens.

disguise on eBay frequently. And nothing talks to nothing.

10. Cars meet cloud

of whom traditionally invents its own secret sauces, and with

Although a slow maturation in automobile (and service vehicle)

luck, OEMs them to each other. Once automotive cloud sites are

data has been around for a while, virtually all cars today have a

breached—which they inevitably will be—the hardwired-thinking

There is little interoperability among car manufacturers, each

transponder built in to them. Whether it’s autopilot or GPS sug-

and design of automotive cloud technology will be devilishly dif-

gesting the nearest Starbucks, cars will talk to the cloud, each

ficult to repair, recall or retrofit. Worse, at 80 mph on a Wyoming

other, hoarders and sifters of big data and perhaps emergency

freeway, it could mean death and litigation, the size of which

responders (as some do now). There is money to be made. As

must cause insurance company actuaries to awaken in cold

usual, it’s money first, and not security and safety. This fact will

sweats in the middle of the night.

become amplified in 2016, I predict.

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But hey, it’s the cloud. Damn the security; full profits ahead!

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How personalized online content is changing
internet performance requirements
As more websites personalize content for users, optimization efforts need to adapt.
BY ZEUS KERRAVALA, NETWORK WORLD | Content delivery

years, but an even bigger driver is personalized content. Content

networks (CDNs) have been the de facto standard method of

personalization comes in many different forms, but it revolves

improving internet content for years. CDNs work by prefetch-

around the segmentation of the audience the business is trying to

ing content and putting it as close to the user as possible. The

capture. This includes:

closer a user is to a CDN point of presence (POP), the better
the performance.
However, as the great poet and song writer Bob Dylan once

• Location information: Everything from apparel to cars to
coupons can be personalized based on location. The clothing

said, “the times they are a-changin’,” and the way internet con-

needs of someone living in Winnipeg will vary quite differ-

tent is optimized needs to change as well. CDNs have been effec-

ently from those of a person living in Arizona. This is why so

tive because most of the content flowing across the internet was

many websites now try to capture location information as a

somewhat static, meaning it is cacheable. Today, that’s not the
case, as more and more content is becoming personalized and
dynamic, and therefore noncacheable.
The challenges behind optimizing static content are well

first step in a personalized experience.
• User behavior: Online marketers are starting to study how
visitors to a website behave, and then capture this in real
time. Traditionally, email campaigns relied heavily on past

understood today. This is content that doesn’t change very often,

behavior, but the personalized web depends much more on

and when it does, the changes are predictable. JavaScript and

current data and analytics.

images are great examples of static content that can easily be

• Unique interests: Not everyone has the same interests, so

cached. CDNs came into existence specifically to address static

it’s important to capture the motivating factors behind each

content as it’s cached and served from the edge of the network.

visitor to a site. For example, on a travel site one person may

Over the past few years, the industry has seen an explosion

always be searching tropical destinations, while another may

in content that is uncacheable. Dynamic objects and AJAX calls

be on the prowl for great ski resorts. The travel site’s ability

have been increasing the amount of dynamic content for a few

to understand this and personalize the information gives

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eGuide

IDG Enterprise is

COMPUTERWORLD

them a significant advantage over sites that push the same

congestion. Many of the use cases I highlighted were for bidi-

content to everyone.

rectional content, such as media and gaming, and the company
has had some early success with file sharing and backup and

I’ve discussed this topic with a number of marketing professionals, and almost all of those I interviewed agreed that content

recovery services.
At first glance, these use cases may seem quite different, but

personalization was a critical success factor moving forward.

the one point of commonality is that these are all highly person-

However, almost all of the businesses I interviewed expressed

alized, and therefore uncacheable services. Personalized content

a lack of understanding of how to optimize the performance of

is growing in popularity across almost all verticals and company

personalized content.

sizes. Any organization that has a digital strategy today should

So, if CDNs aren’t the answer here, what can improve the

be thinking about personalized content, and I believe this will be

performance of the highly personalized internet? In October

the low-hanging fruit for companies like Teridion that can solve

2015, I wrote about a startup called Teridion. The company’s

the challenge of optimizing personalized content.

Global Cloud Network was also featured in a Network World new
product roundup.
In my post, I compared Teridion to being Waze on steroids,

The internet is continually evolving, and the digital era will
change the internet experience into something that becomes
increasingly personalized. Businesses should look beyond CDNs

inasmuch as the company continually computes the fastest

to ensure that customers have an experience that keeps them

path between two points and creates a virtual overlay to avoid

coming back.

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The internet is continually evolving, and the
digital era will change
the internet experience into something
that becomes increasingly personalized.
Businesses should look
beyond CDNs to ensure
that customers have an
experience that keeps
them coming back.

eGuide

IDG Enterprise is

COMPUTERWORLD

My website is up, but is my content reachable?
Tracking metrics within the cloud will give you valuable insight to help keep your applications
up and running, but what’s important is whether your website or content is reachable.
BY MATT LARSON, NETWORK WORLD | I recently read an article

you can’t control whatever outages or downtime the customer’s

in InfoWorld by David Linthicum entitled, “Good Cloud Ops Need

ISP or other ISPs in their path are experiencing.

Good Cloud Metrics.” It caught my attention for two reasons.
First, Linthicum is correct in his assessment that metrics are

Measuring performance across the network, however, is the
first step to help mitigate issues for your customers. With that in

as important in cloud operations as they are in any other aspect

mind, let’s take a look at Linthicum’s three points about cloud

of your operations. To paraphrase Lord Kelvin, “to measure is to

metrics:

know.” And knowing lets you do something about it.
rics he describes are important, they are only part of what you

1. “You can trend data and spot issues with
recent operations.”

need to measure to fully understand your internet performance.

You need to measure network performance continuously to under-

Linthicum focuses on measuring the performance of the systems

stand the baseline and detect deviations, and there are different

and applications within the cloud provider. But as I’ve discussed

mechanisms for doing so. One is Real User Monitoring, or RUM,

before, system and application performance is only part of the

where you instrument your web pages to send code to run in the

story—network performance across the internet between the

user’s own browser to take performance measurements (there’s

cloud and end users is a huge factor, too. Because, of course,

an entire JavaScript API for this purpose). You can also infer user

those end users are your customers.

performance from “synthetic measurements.” For example, if you

But second, it caught my attention because while the met-

Another way to look at it is that tracking metrics within the

know performance from a given network provider in a certain city

cloud will give you valuable insight to help keep your applications

to a particular cloud provider’s data center is degraded, and you

up and running, but the most important point is not whether your

host content in that cloud provider’s location, you can reasonably

website or online content is up and running. Instead, what’s most

assume performance for users of that provider in that city will

important is whether your website or content is reachable (i.e.,

suffer. You can set up and run your own RUM or synthetic mea-

can a customer connect via her local internet service provider?).

surements or use a vendor who specializes in such measurement.

Optimizing the customer experience can be challenging, since

And don’t limit yourself to cloud providers; you should be mea-

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Measuring performance across the
network is the
first step to help
mitigate issues for
your customers.

eGuide

IDG Enterprise is

suring performance to anywhere you have content, such as CDNs
and hosted data centers.

COMPUTERWORLD

3. “You can make your systems in the
clouds self-healing.”
So once you have the network performance data and are finding

2. “You can use the data to provide
predictive analytics.”

patterns in the data, what can you do? There are multiple ways

Once you have enough network performance data to the places

an obvious action is shifting traffic from a poorly performing

where your content and applications live, you can explore to find

path to a better one when you detect a degradation or outage.

patterns and make predictions. Does performance change on a

Having worked for a long time with and around DNS, I need to

regular basis? You might be surprised at how often this is true.

point out that using DNS answers “steered” by performance

Many systems used by humans follow a diurnal pattern (showing

data is a simple and effective way to route your users to the

the same changes every day). For example, the end of the busi-

best-performing path.

ness day on the U.S. East Coast is evening in Europe and early

to take action. Since we’re talking about network performance,

So start measuring—not just within the cloud, but the entire

morning when people are waking up in Asia, and this busy time

network path starting with the users. Once you have the data,

can affect traffic and change performance.

you know. And once you know, you can take action.

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eGuide

IDG Enterprise is

COMPUTERWORLD

The internet isn’t ready for really big news
A worldwide, globally gripping news event would likely crash the major
media providers, sending us back to our TVs and radios.
BY PAUL VENEZIA, INFOWORLD | One thing you can say for

that content is sent to me and only me as it streams. It may be

traditional broadcast media: They scale really well. If you put an

cached somewhere along the way, but ultimately, that stream is

analog signal on the air or on a wire with enough repeaters and

unicast and not shared. Also, the content provider must accom-

amplifiers, it will serve every client that connects. That’s not the

modate the bandwidth required for that stream, as well as the

case with most of the network world, unfortunately. Sure we have

resources necessary to deliver it.

multicast, but that’s not on an internet scale—and the internet is
where the problems lie.
First, let’s define multicast as used in IP networks. This is a

Clearly, this isn’t usually a problem. With a suitable broadband connection on a normal day, accessing content around the
internet is a relatively stable and consistent experience, depend-

method by which a single source stream can be accessed by

ing on how adept the provider of that content may be in actually

multiple clients simultaneously, without increasing the load on

delivering the content.

the source itself. Thus, this functions much like an analog broad-

However, if it’s not a normal day, things go south quickly—

cast: You have a single source that a client can connect to at any

and how far south they might possibly go, I don’t think we

time. The downside is that the client is a silent subscriber of the

know. We have never truly seen the impact on our modern

content and cannot control the stream; there’s no rewinding or

broadcast infrastructure of an unexpected event of worldwide

restarting on a per-client basis. This is content broadcast over IP,

significance. I would guess that the internet itself would be

and it’s what television networks use to distribute video streams

fine, but the content providers would get crushed, which could

through their networks, financial institutions to receive stock

potentially lead to a cascade of events that effectively amount

quotes, and so forth.

to an internet media blackout.

On the other hand, the world is rapidly moving to a demand

I clearly recall the events of Sept. 11, 2001. I had a huge net-

model—the younger generations are already there—where

work forklift overhaul scheduled for that day, and as we started,

streaming content is controlled by the client, and the client forms

the world turned sideways. People gathered in front of the only

a one-to-one connection to the content source, versus multicast’s

available television and stayed there for hours. Few people, if

one-to-many approach. If I’m streaming video from a news site,

any, were turning to news websites for 911 updates, and certainly

16

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If it’s not a normal day,
things can go south
quickly—and how far
south they might possibly go, I don’t think we
know. We have never
truly seen the impact
on our modern broadcast infrastructure of
an unexpected event of
worldwide significance.

eGuide

IDG Enterprise is

COMPUTERWORLD

none were loading information on their mobile phones. Univer-

television, and certainly broadcast television would be available.

sally, the terrible events of the day were carried by broadcast

However, the communications resources underpinning the pro-

television and radio.

duction of content distributed over those mediums would likely

The world is a vastly different place today, geopolitically and

be sluggish, if not also down hard. We would effectively return

technologically. An event of similar magnitude would gather a

to the days of 2001, and information would spread mostly via

suitably massive audience, but they would not immediately turn

broadcast radio and television.

on their television. Rather, they would open an app or browser

We have built a unicast-centric communications infrastructure

on their phone, tablet or computer. Those events would not be

in order to deliver astounding functions and services tailored to

broadcast. Instead, they’d be streamed on-demand—and those

the infinite needs of internet users. These infrastructures work

streams would eventually fail.

extremely well when the world is normal, but when the world

The internet and internet services work on economies of scale.
Large websites function with the knowledge that they will have

tilts, that model may collapse under the weight, especially when
only a few large companies provide most of these services.

peaks and valleys of usage, and if they have 10 million users,

We need to hope that we have enough time to build out and

no more than perhaps 1 million will be actually engaged with

spread around the underlying resources to a level where this isn’t

the site at any one time. Never would all 10 million attempt to

a threat. We need more competition and broader

connect at once. And with the advent of adaptive cloud services,

dispersion of internet media resources around

large sites can spin resources up and down to handle the peaks

the globe. Until then, keep a set of

and valleys.

rabbit ears and an FM radio

But a singular event that captures the attention of almost
every connected human on Earth is a spike we’ve never seen. It
would produce a resource load on large news sites, aggregators
and discussion forums like never before. And now that we have
these fantastic cloud services, many of those sites and services
will be hosted with the same providers, in the same data centers,
all vying for finite resources at the same time. If the event and attention is big enough, it could take down entire providers, which
would in turn pull down unrelated sites.
The end result would look like a complete internet blackout,
even if the actual damage were the loss of a few huge cloud
CDNs and providers like AWS. At that point, assuming the cable
providers can still manage their systems, we might have cable

17

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handy, just in case.

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