The two-day event will host an impressive lineup of top cloud computing industry speakers, including Jeff Dean, Google (Topic: Behind Google’s evolutionary leaps), Jay Parikh, Facebook (Topic: Keeping a billion users happy), Pat Gelsinger, VMware (Topic: Is the future software-defined everything?), Kevin Scott, LinkedIn (Topic: Metamorphosis – Everything must go first), Werner Vogels, Amazon (Topic: AWS Amazon’s winning strategy), and Aneel Bhusri, Workday (Topic: The CEO, the investor and the future).

One of the highlights of GigaOM’s Structure 2013 will be the introduction to 10 Cloud Trailblazers who are changing the future of cloud computing. These up and coming innovators will present their ideas on stage at the event and demonstrate to the audience why GigaOM recognized them as new leaders who are reshaping internet infrastructure.

This year’s LaunchPad competition will spotlight six promising startups in cloud computing, internet infrastructure and data. The startups are given the chance to present their business plans on stage in front of an audience of VCs, industry executives, and journalists. They will compete live at the conference on June 20 at 11:05am PDT.

Structure 2013 audience will also have the opportunity to attend Mapping session led by GigaOM Research titled “Understanding the multi-cloud opportunity.” The session will focus on the next year of the cloud and explore the motivations behind adopting a multi-cloud strategy.

This once a year conference is designed for the top executives, investors, entrepreneurs, and technology executives leading the cloud computing industry. Structure 2013 is happening June 19-20, 2013 in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference Center. For those unable to attend the event in person, you can watch a live stream of the event here.

To see a full list of agenda and participating companies visit GigaOM’s event site.

Determine Your Business Requirements and Assess Your VoIP Readiness

Your hosted VoIP PBX system should enable your company to increase business agility and ensure consistent effectiveness necessary in today’s fast-paced business environment. You should look for a solution that is not only affordable, but meets your requirements for availability, quality, scalability and reliability. It all starts with defining your unique business requirements by examining factors such as call volumes, how many lines or extensions you will need, and which specific features and functionalities you’ll require from a hosted VoIP system. Once you identify your requirements, you’ll also need to make sure that your existing Internet service and network has the bandwidth and reliability necessary to support implementation of VoIP. We know your phone system is critical to your business. We have expert advisors available to you to help you maximize the value of your current network and facilitate a smooth transition to VoIP.

Hosted Business VoIP Service

Assess the Provider’s Technology Infrastructure

You want to make sure that your provider has the right technology in place, including underlying software and platform, to ensure your system will run smoothly after it is deployed. Your hosted VoIP PBX provider should have enterprise-grade equipment and redundant systems in place to ensure that your VoIP service will remain operational in case of network or power outages. It is also highly important for you to check if the core technology is developed by the VoIP provider or they are licensing it from a third party vendor. If the technology is licensed, you’ll be opting for a service that is less flexible, limited in functionality and more expensive. Aitonic is a scalable, reliable and highly secure technology platform to deliver robust VoIP services to our customers. By having complete control over our core technology and all of the platform development, we can adapt it to match your specific needs.

Assess the Vendors’ Customer Support

Great customer support is something that separates competent VoIP providers from shaky ones. Customer support quality can differ between hosted VoIP providers. Therefore you should make it a priority to assess the provider’s customer support level when transitioning to a hosted VoIP PBX system. Your provider has to provide a proactive and personalized support during system implementation as well as on an ongoing basis for standard and unforeseen support events.  For Aitonic, we place a strong focus on our included Guardian Customer Support to make sure our technically talented customer service personnel are available to quickly and efficiently respond to any issues that may arise.  We welcome you to speak to our customer support personnel to get a sense of their commitment to your success.  There is no better way to do this than by testing the service through our no risk 30-Day Satisfaction Guarantee, which you can do without disabling your current phones.

Understand the Hosted VoIP Provider’s Service Plan Pricing

When shopping for a hosted VoIP system you have to pay extra attention to service pricing as some VoIP providers make their calling plans deceptive and confusing. Before signing up for a particular hosted VoIP PBX service you need to be perfectly clear on how you will be charged (per seat/per month and/or per usage) and ask your provider if the cost of equipment, maintenance and system upgrades is included in your subscription fee. Also, don’t forget to ask about advanced features and any add-ons that can augment your service cost. With Aitonic, we created an all-inclusive subscription pricing structure that is simple and predictable, providing our customers with the business phone features they need for a flat subscription fee.  The add-on “pagan” pricing approach is avoided.

It is imperative that you select a hosted PBX service provider that can meet both your company’s current and future needs, along with providing you with a scalable and flexible business phone system to support growth and facilitate change. Your VoIP provider has to be able to provide a service that excels in all the areas we have mentioned here and be willing to go the extra mile to accommodate your specific requirements. We would be happy to answer all your questions regarding hosted VoIP PBX.  Just drop us a line or call to talk to one of our customer support agents.

About The Author:

DeAnna Jernigan is Director, National Sales Support of Aiton Caldwell, Inc., which nationwide provides Aitonic, a hosted VoIP PBX business phone service.   Since 2003 in Europe Aiton Caldwell S.A. serves 750,000 end points including 15,000 businesses.  Ms.  Jernigan previously held management positions with MCI and Verizon, and has her B.A. from University of California, Riverside.

“The last mile of big data will be built by a new class of software applications that enable everyday users to get real value out of all the data being created,” Jay Parikh, VP of infrastructure engineering at Facebook and Big Data Advisory Council member said in a statement. “Today’s entrepreneurs are now able to innovate on top of a technology stack that has grown increasingly powerful in the last few years – enabling product and analytical experiences that are more personalized and more valuable than ever.”

In its recent whitepaper, Accel adds another “V” to the 3Vs of Big Data (volume, velocity, and variety) which stands for end user value. The firm points out that this fourth V has not been properly addressed so far, and sees allot of potential for development of DDS that directly serve business users in the coming years. Big Data Fund 2 is making investments in companies that build such data driven applications, and one example is RelateIQ, a startup which came out of stealth mode last week. Its product is redefying CRM in a data driven way, pulling information from email, calendar and various public data sources to automatically enter different data about people or businesses thus helping users keep better track of relationships as they evolve over time.

Accel’s existing portfolio of big data investments also includes Cloudera, Couchbase, Lookout, Nimble Storage, Opower, Prismatic, QlikView, Sumo Logic, and Trifacta.

Likewise, legacy providers of business VoIP lure prospects by promoting an unrealistically low basic monthly subscription price. They fail to mention that this price does not include some universally required features, and ballooned special fees to complete their phone service. Late in the sales process, in a la carte fashion, they add features and fees to ratchet up the price 50 to 200 percent. The prospect is so far into the process that they cannot turn back. So they succumb to “pagan” pricing.

With affordability as one of the loudly touted benefits of hosted VoIP PBX systems, providers have been reluctant to raise this pricing problem. There has been apprehension that calling attention to this problem could taint the entire business, and pressure margins for all providers.  But customer interest eventually rises to the top. Now, with the different pricing approach of Aitonic™, it is time to pull back the temple curtain. Pagan pricing is a key factor that you must carefully beware of, insisting on the entire story, comparing apples with apples, before choosing your business phone system. Asking yourself key questions to pinpoint your needs is a great way to differentiate between VoIP systems. Does the provider charge extra for teleconference lines, or a fax line, or call queuing? For porting numbers or other install tasks? For system changes, e.g. adds and deletes of users? Do they have a large regulatory recover fee to pad their profit? Are there per minute usage charges exorbitant? Are they not strictly SIP phone compatible, locking you into using only their proprietary phones? Such price-hiking idols are taken off the altar with Aitonic.

Aitonic’s pricing is comprehensive. With Aitonic, there is a lot of thought put into designing cost-based, transparent, all-inclusive subscription pricing to provide small and medium-sized businesses with a distinctive alternative to add-on pricing models.   It is the only pricing that is easily calculated, prominently and clearly shown on a service’s web site, www.aitonic.com/product/plans-pricing. To calculate the total monthly subscription price, there is only one parameter – number of users. Typical users must also pay a slim $.03 per minute for usage of the included toll free line and included teleconference bridge. Extras are unusual – for example extra lines per phone, extra fax lines, extra toll free lines, and vanity numbers.   Lastly, telecom taxes and fees are based on actual usage and are typically 10 to 15 percent of underlying charges, with no Aitonic profit scheme in them.

The time has passed for paying financial homage to multiple feature deities.  Customers can move ahead.   For the hosted VoIP PBX faithful, we must replace pagan pricing with all-inclusive economical pricing.

About The Author:

Clay A. Bullwinkel is Chief Executive Officer of Aiton Caldwell, Inc., which nationwide provides Aitonic, a hosted VoIP PBX business phone service.  Since 2003 in Europe Aiton Caldwell S.A. serves 750,000 end points including 15,000 businesses.  Mr. Bullwinkel previously held management positions with 3Com and Hewlett Packard, and has his B.A. and M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Other top-line findings from Antenna’s 2013 Benchmark show that:

• Mobile apps for employees are growing priority for enterprises: 60% of respondents indicated they are currently working on a mobile app for employees, up from only 42% last year.
  • Don’t worry, customers aren’t being left in a lurch – 67% of companies also said they are currently working on mobile apps for their customers, which is up incrementally from 43% last year.
• Business process improvement through mobile is the top priority (for now): Two thirds of the executives interviewed told Antenna that either all, or the majority of their deployed/planned mobile projects addressed ‘current’ business processes, rather than ‘transformative’ or innovative initiatives.
• Cost and speed are still a major point of frustration when mobilizing the enterprise: When asked what the most frustrating aspects of mobile projects were, almost half of the respondents (48%) reported “cost,” followed by speed to market (43%), security (39%), and integration (36%).  So it was no surprise when asked what three factors ‘most influence their choice’ of technology/technology provider, cost came in on top again (56%), followed closely by security (35%), speed to market (33%), and the ability to integrate (32%) with backend systems – indicating a strong correlation between past experiences with mobile deployments and future plans and priorities.

“The findings from this year’s Mobile Business Forecast indicate that as mobile apps spread across the enterprise – to enable both employees and customers, alike – there appears to be a growing concern over the lack of control and management businesses seem to have with this mobile tsunami,” said Jim Somers, chief marketing and strategy officer for Antenna.  “While public app stores certainly serve a purpose for consumer apps, we’re seeing a growing number of businesses deploying their own app stores as part of a broader need for cost, speed, security, and reusability.”

The Antenna report has also revealed that enterprise investment in mobile is quickly on the rise, despite the fact that many enterprises report they are getting little to no reuse from previous mobility investments:

• Close to 20% of enterprises are rewriting or will have to re-write between a quarter and half of the apps they have deployed to date, and 1 in 10 organizations have already retired 25-50% of their apps.
• In 2012, the average amount companies had ‘currently’ invested in mobility projects over the past 12-18 months was$422,000, compared to $510,000 in the 2013 report – a 20% increase.
• Businesses are planning to spend $565,000 on mobile projects in the next 12-18 months, with US companies planning to invest almost twice as much on mobile projects as their UK counterparts in that time.
• 1 in 5 of the IT and business executives interviewed by Antenna reported that their companies have spent between$750,000-$1.5M on mobile projects in the last 12-18 months – up from 14% as reported in the 2012 report.

But not everything has changed. In 2012 the average enterprise was building, managing, or implementing four (4) mobile projects simultaneously, and utilizing an average of three (3) different solutions providers to do so. The 2013 Mobile Business Forecast shows these figures as being unchanged.

In the wake of media frenzy about the PRISM program, Apple published a “Commitment to Customer Privacy” statement on its website on Monday, thus joining other tech companies in doing all in their power to clear their image and deny involvement in such program. Apple was first asked about its involvement with PRISM on June 6 when the company denied any direct access to their servers, and explained that release of private customer data requires a court order. Apple is now going public with information on how many data requests they have received from the NSA and how they’ve handled them.

According to the statement, from December 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013, Apple received from U.S. law enforcement agencies between 4,000 and 5,000 requests for customer data. Those requests specified between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices, and the requests “came from federal, state and local authorities and included both criminal investigations and national security matters.”

The statement notes that Apple’s legal team evaluates each request and provides only the narrowest possible amount of information to the authorities. Apple also says that it sometimes refuses to fulfill inconsistent or inaccurate requests. The company outlined the categories of data it does not provide to authorities and those include FaceTime and iMessage conversations which are encrypted and can be read only by the sender and receiver. The company says it chooses not to retain that data. According to Apple, customer Information related to location, Maps searches, and Siri requests are not stored in any identifiable form.

Gartner pointed to the fact that email is still a primary collaboration tool, while team sites and communities are also gaining importance. However, email is typically a determining factor in deciding whether or not to move to cloud office systems. Gartner estimates that by the end of 2017 a minimum of one third of enterprise email seats will be based on a cloud or SaaS model.

Gartner says that the typical knowledge worker now uses up to four devices to access their organization’s office system capabilities in one week.  An increase in the number of devices per user could drive some organizations to cloud office systems as they can reduce the IT burden of software installation, maintenance and upgrades of locally installed office software.

Gartner says that number of devices is an important consideration for organizations looking to move their office systems to the cloud. If an organization has workers who are increasingly using multiple devices, moving to a per-user payment model which is typical for cloud services can lead to substantial savings, eliminating the need to purchase subscriptions or licence for each device under per-device licensing model. However, companies with many devices shared between employees, such as in the banking industry, may be better off licensing by device.

Current levels of cloud office systems adoption differ greatly across industries. Gartner found that organizations in industries at the leading edge, such as higher education, discrete manufacturing, retail and hospitality, are significantly more likely to adopt cloud-based office systems at present. Those in the intelligence and defense sectors, and in heavily regulated parts of the financial services and healthcare industries, are among the least likely to be early adopters.

The Hortonworks and Red Hat engineering effort has three main focus areas and is expected to increase the breadth of storage offerings that integrate and interoperate with Hadoop, making it possible to analyze data in place anywhere within the enterprise.

The first focus area is to enhance the Apache Ambari project, the open source project to monitor and manage Apache Hadoop to support the management of Hadoop-compatible file systems, such as GlusterFS. With this integration, users will be able to provision, deploy, monitor and manage alternative file systems with Ambari. The source code is 100 percent open and available to the entire Apache community, allowing participants to leverage these features to enable the implementation of many of the leading file systems and object stores available today.

The second focus area is the creation of generic test suites to validate compatibility between Hadoop and alternative file systems. Hortonworks and Red Hat will contribute these extensive testing blueprints to the open source community for use by any developer looking to test file system compatibility with Hadoop.

The third focus area is both companies are working to integrate Hortonworks Data Platform with Red Hat Storage so that enterprise customers will be able to process stored data on Red Hat Storage. Since Red Hat Storage is POSIX-compliant, it makes it easy to connect to the enterprise applications and run Hadoop analytics on enterprise data to reduce duplication of data and save costs.

“Red Hat, Hortonworks, and the entire Apache Hadoop Community have a tremendous opportunity to help customers bring Hadoop analytics to a larger portion of the big data residing in the enterprise, Greg Kleiman, Director, Strategy at Red Hat Storage said in a statement. ”This collaboration will focus on developing open software-defined storage from Red Hat as a Hadoop-compatible file system managed with Hortonworks’ Data Platform including the open Ambari framework, which we expect to be an absolute game-changer by providing an easy, fast and cost-effective solution for enterprise big data customers.”

The latest BigQuery update brings support for large results, enabling users to run queries that return “arbitrarily large numbers of rows and save them as a new table for follow-up analysis.” Prior to this update, BigQuery could output maximum of 128 MB of compressed data per query. Another new capability is support for windows functions like Rank and Partition giving users different ways to rank results, explore distributions and percentiles, and traverse results without the need for a self join.

Google has also added query caching capability to its hosted big data analytics service. According to a posting on the Google Enterprise Blog “recent queries that are re-run return a cached result when the underlying table is unchanged, providing more cost-effective analysis.” Queries are also cached on a per-user basis for privacy reasons. Reading cached results is free, but each query still counts against your queries per day quota.  Google said it also introduced a number of improvements to BigQuery’s user interface, including the ability to validate a query and estimate costs prior to running it, and to save frequently used queries.

Google is also cutting down the cost of its services. Starting July, the cost of BigQuery data storage will go down from $0.12 per gigabyte per month to $0.08 per gigabyte per month. Ju-kay Kwek, BigQuery Product Manager, said that in addition to the existing on-demand rate for interactive queries, customers with higher-volume usage will soon be able to opt in for tiered query pricing. This will allow for more affordable and predictable cost for interactive queries.