Is Nicira really worth this much or it is just an extension of hype..

I have very high regard for VMware and some of the founders of Nicira like Scott Shenker. I love VMware's products and really believe that they are big time game changer and real catalyst for growth of next generation of data centers and so called cloud. Scott Shenker on other hand is great technologist with super cool ability to convey them to masses like me. I loved his talk in Ericcson conference on SDN. For those who are interested can view it on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVs7Pc99S7w

Coming back to this latest acquisition.. All these terms like Cloud, Virtualization, SDN (Software Defined Networks) etc.. are really hot as of now.. I see this acquisition more of extension of the hype surrounding these terms.. SDN is great concept and in my view has great potential.. So is NVP (Network Virtualization Platform) which is already foundation of existing Virtualized Data Center. But SDN is more or less in infancy and key thing there is execution and marriage of software and generic enough hardware. NVP alone is not going to be big enough driver to change the game. Current VMware and other companies' products work fairly well already.

My point is... One Billion Dollars is lot of money.. What ever Nicira has done so far can be easily done (execution) with couple of hundred million dollars of investment or development in even big companies like VMware.. I think there is got to be some premium for talent and what is already available vs. being development effort in big company like VMware.. However.. I am still not convinced that it is right thing for VMware shareholders. It is more of whims and fancies of Sr. Execs which determines these exorbitant purchasing prices.. These type of acquisitions are the mostly responsible for slower or lethargic growth as these companies mature. There is hardly any accountability.. Nobody will be ever fired if VMware is not able to realize even half of the dollars they had spent. We have seen that in many other companies... actually, for that matter, this is really small amount to be bothered in a company like VMware.. but still, if you look from Share holder's perspective.. it is not change.. In my view they should fix some accountability issues.. also.. explain why and how they need Nicira.. how they are going to realize commercial value out of it..

NETWORKING

VMware to buy Nicira for close to $1.3 billion

By Patrick May

pmay@mercurynews.com 

PALO ALTO — The burgeoning field of computer “virtualization,” which enables a single computer to function like multiple machines, took a great leap forward Monday with word that Palo Altobased business software maker VMware was buying computer networking specialist Nicira for nearly $1.3 billion.

With its announcement on the same day it reported second-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates, VMware is making a head-turning bet on a 5-yearold, privately held company, also based in Palo Alto, that raised a relatively paltry sum of $50 million from its early investors.

With its NVP, or network virtualization platform, Nicira (pronounced “nice era”) will ostensibly do for networks what VWware has done for computers — magically create multiple virtual networks that work together in tandem but unleash much more computing power than a single network could ever achieve. 

VMware will pay $1.05 billion in cash, plus assume responsibility for $210 million in stock awards that Nicira had given its employees. The purchase of Nicira, whose early customers include AT&T, eBay, Fidelity Investments and the Japanese telecom giant NTT, means a handsome payoff for its investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and NEA. 

“VMware has led the server virtualization revolution, and we have the opportunity to do the same in data-center and cloud networking,” CEO Paul Maritz said in a statement. “The acquisition of Nicira adds to our portfolio of networking assets and positions VMware to be the industry leader in software-defined networking.” 

In a statement that described its efforts with Nicira as creating “the architecture for the cloud,” VWware said “managing networks and network services to support cloud architectures is complex, time consuming,” and the company praised Nicira for its cutting-edge work in boosting the power of data centers. 

“Nicira helps customers dramatically improve business velocity and efficiency by transforming how networking works in the cloud era,” Nicira CEO Steve Mullaney said in a statement. “I’m thrilled to be joining forces with VMware to help build the software-defined data center.” 

Analyst Trip Chowdhry with Global Equities Research said that while the move provides a way for VWware to broaden its virtualization efforts into software, the price it’s paying for the young company raises troubling questions. He said the offer suggests “that we are in a valuation bubble,” mentioning a previous big-ticket purchase that another valley giant recently announced. 

“This purchase is as irrational if not more irrational than Facebook buying Instagram for $1 billion,” Chowdhry said. “VMware should not be throwing shareholders’ hard-earned money at unproven companies with unproven concepts. What’s the business model here? I don’t know, do you?” 

Strategically, Chowdhry said, the acquisition does make sense. “But when you pay a billion plus, that tells me you’ve lost your senses,” he said. “And that’s very scary.” 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689; follow him at Twitter.com/patmaymerc. 

Oh.. Come on.. Not again.. Wake up Yahoo..

These type of news diminish our goal and push towards cloud.. Come on.. at least we don't expect this from company like Yahoo.. that too using the vulnerability like SQL injection which I have been hearing at least from last 10-12 years if not more.. if this is true then Yahoo needs to be ashamed of themselves.. and fix things up and say that publicly that they are no longer above average web company..

NO Cheers for this..

Yahoo user passwords hacked

Some Gmail, AOL, Hotmail and other accounts also stolen

By Nicole Perlroth

New York Times

Yahoo confirmed Thursday that about 400,000 user names and passwords to Yahoo and other companies were stolen Wednesday.

A group of hackers, known as the D33D Co., posted online the user names and passwords for what appeared to be 453,492 accounts belonging to Yahoo and several other websites. The hackers wrote a brief footnote to the data dump, which has since been taken offline: “We hope that the parties responsible for managing the security of this subdomain will take this as a wake-up call, and not as a threat.”

The breach comes just one month after millions of user passwords for LinkedIn, the online social network for professionals, were exposed by hackers who breached its systems. The breaches highlight the ease with which hackers are able to infiltrate systems, even at some of the most widely used and sophisticated technology companies.

Security researchers at Rapid7, a security company, analyzed the dumped account information and found that it included account information not just for Yahoo users but for Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, MSN, SBC Global, Verizon, BellSouth and Live. com users. Marcus Carey, a researcher at Rapid7, found that among the data were some 106,000 Gmail accounts, 55,000 Hotmail accounts and 25,000 AOL accounts.

Dana Lengkeek, a spokeswoman for Yahoo, said that the compromised accounts belonged to Yahoo’s Contributor Network, previously Associated Content, and that fewer than 5 percent of the passwords posted were still valid.

The hackers claimed to have stolen the passwords using a hacking technique called an SQL injection, which exploits a software vulnerability.

“We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo users and notifying companies whose user accounts may have been compromised,” Lengkeek said in the statement. “We apologize to affected users. We encourage users to change their passwords on a regular basis.”

Carey said it was unclear whether Yahoo’s breach had been contained and noted that hackers could still be inside its systems.

Computer security experts recommended that Yahoo users also consider changing their passwords to other sites for which they might have used the same password, as hackers tend to test those passwords across multiple sites.

The top five passwords in the stolen batch were “123456,” “password,” “welcome,” “ninja” and “abc123,” said David Harley, senior research fellow at security firm ESET.

Is it a killer Cloud Drive?

Is it time to ditch Dropbox? Are you be ready to move to Google Drive or pay them say $60 per year for 100GB of secured anywhere accessible data. I think I will move to Google..

I started using Dropbox recently. Mainly to keep my folders synched between different machines and to some extent upload important files which I might need to refer any time anywhere. It worked seamlessly and I loved it. I just took very basic 2GB account which I grew up to 3.5 GB by referring some of my friends. I love the concept of Dropbox.. it is such a simple concept.. however, it is executed flawlessly.. amazing app on iPhon, iPad, MAC, PC.. behind firewalls or front of firewalls.. any where.. it works like a charm..

At the same time, if I want to upload my photo library it will be really expensive solution as I have close to 60 GB worth images. All thanks to Digital cameras first, then to iPhone.. size keeps on growing.. I think I bought my first Sony Digital Camera in 2003. Now after almost 10 years later I have around 60 GB. Almost 6 GB per year.. that is 500 MB per month.. that is almost 20 MB per day.. which is around 6-7 pictures per day!!! that is a lot!!!    All thanks to Picasa, Facebook and now Google+ ... most of the good images are in cloud already.. but mostly in format which can only be viewed on computer.. can't be printed (when was the last time I printed photos).

Any how, with Google also getting into this cloud storage business for masses, I think prices will come down for sure. Google can leverage their ultimate Networking/Storage technology to do this job much better than any one else for sure. So they are going to be force to reckon with in this area.. Doesn't matter if they are entering late. As long as they execute it they should be fine. If they can't execute properly then they should buy Dropbox.

Search is the biggest advantage with Google.. They are not only going to provide you with storage space, but along with it their built in search capabilities will make it really great product. I will buy their cloud storage drive for sure.. Moment they enable it on iPhone/iPad I will be there customer. Till that time I am happy with my Dropbox service!! or may be Dropbox will make their prices competitive to Google.. I won't mind staying with them.. or I will change to Google... good thing is that it will be piece of cake to change my storage provider!!!


http://www.siliconvalley.com/personal-technology/ci_20468361/google-drive-cloud-launches-storage-collaboration

‘THE ULTIMATE ATTACK’

‘Google Drive’ vies for spot in the cloud

Users can sync files between PCs and phones, but analysts wonder if product is too late to the game

By Mike Swift

mswift@mercurynews.com 

Google is taking the wraps off a long-anticipated product that it views as one of its most important launches of the year, as the Internet giant continues its push toward a future in which users’ photos, spreadsheets and other data primarily live on the Internet “cloud” instead of a PC or some other device.
The launch of “Google Drive” Tuesday has been a poorly kept secret in Silicon Valley, with the name and a rough description of the online storage product widely circulated in recent weeks as Google has worked out the final bugs. Drive will open up to millions of users around the world starting Tuesday, allowing them to sync their files between PCs, smartphones and tablets.
But the success of Drive will ride largely on whether Google can differentiate its offering from already established fast-growing cloud storage startups that were in the market first, such as Dropbox and Box, as well as Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service, and big consumer media competitors like Apple’s iCloud and Amazon’s Cloud Drive.

“At the heart of it, Google is about cloud computing — letting people live on the cloud and get things done on the cloud,” said Sundar Pichai, the Google executive who heads the company’s Chrome browser and cloud apps efforts. 

By offering a wide menu of software apps that will run on Drive, as well as the ability to store volumes of data that will increasingly rival what can be stored on a hard drive, some say Google is taking a big step toward making native operating systems like Windows and Apple’s Mac OS a less central element of personal computing. 

“This is like the ultimate attack by Google on Microsoft and Windows,” said Jostein Svendsen, CEO of WeVideo, a Sunnyvale startup whose video-editing application was one of the apps selected as a launch partner with Drive. “You are removing the importance of the underlying operating system.” 

Existing Google Docs files, the centerpiece of Google’s existing cloud storage offering, will move to the Google Drive service once users download apps and install the new service. Google will offer users up to 5 gigabytes of storage for free, and up to 25 gigabytes for $2.49 a month. 

Still, Google has a problem. Since Apple launched the iPad two years ago, more and more people have needed to sync their data between many devices, and a growing number of people and companies have been using cloud services like Dropbox, which according to comScore data has seen its monthly traffic triple to 3.6 million users over the past year. 

At the same time, Apple and Amazon can leverage their strength in music, books and other media to drive users to their cloud services. 

“I wouldn’t completely write them off, but I definitely feel that Google is late to the game,” said Jesse Lipson, the founder and CEO of ShareFile, a cloud-based file-sharing service aimed at business users that now has more than 5 million users and which was acquired last year by Citrix. 

Liz Conner, an analyst with the research firm IDC, said Google will also have to deal with the fact that millions of consumers have already uploaded their files to Dropbox, Box, Sugarsync or other cloud services. “Most people, if they love Dropbox, I’m not sure they are going to rush out to join Google,” she said. 

Other users, she said, are not yet comfortable storing precious photographs or sensitive private data on the “cloud” — a metaphor for the vast network of Internetconnected servers that can be networked by big companies like Google, Amazon or Microsoft to run software or store data. 

Like Dropbox, Google Drive integrates into the operating system of a Windows PC or a Mac, or an Android mobile device, meaning that one copy of a file is stored locally on each synced machine, along with a copy that is stored on the cloud. Google is working on a version for Apple’s iOS mobile operating system that powers iPhones and iPads, but that is not quite ready. 

A user who downloads the Drive app and syncs their devices through the cloud will see their files automatically updated between devices each time they change a file in one location. 

“To me at the crux of it, it’s a way to live your online life, available to you wherever you go,” Pichai said. 

Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/swiftstories or facebook.com/mike.swift3. 

Future of Cloud

Will it keep raining or not?

Just kidding.. I was talking about future of Natural, real and Authentic Cloud services.. I think natural cloud services are getting really aggressive and we can see all the super twisters in mid-west.. However, this article is about our man made technological cloud services.. More I am reading and getting involved into man made cloud services more I am getting impressed and more inclined to learn.. First of all we should really thank VMware, Amazon and Sales Force.. they are the real heros and champions of getting cloud services to marketplace and setting path for numerous other pioneers in this field... Like Netflix (who was originally snow/hailstorm service by delivering DVDs to your home), Cisco and now Apple as well..

I am particularly impressed with VMware products and they seems to be really magical and working like charm.. their ESX/i infrastructure is really amazing.. I wish it was more popular and easy to use.. What if, Dell/HP starts shipping home PCs with ESXi  and then option of multiple OS copies on it pre-installed with demo licenses on it.. User can try different OS and pay/use which ever they like... In this case, they can easily put all data in shared folder structure accessible to all the OS thus it won't matter which OS user ultimately keeps or rejects.. This way instead of creating separate user account for my son, I can create another OS for him and put all restrictions on it.. With Disks so cheap and Processing so powerful that we can plan and prepare multiple moon missions on single PC.. We should be able to some thing more magical in this space.. There are tons of other use cases and I am sure we will see more strange ideas in this field..

Apple has already started fire in consumer space with their iCloud service.. which I am sure is just a beginning like original iPhone ;-)

Cheers!!!