A social network of devices is how IBM’s Scott Burnett described the oncoming onslaught of machine to machine connectivity. His comments, made at the 2011 Parks Associates’ Connections conference, echoed those of Glenn Lurie, President of Emerging Devices, Resale and Partnerships for AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, who suggested that, “Everything will be connected.” He anticipates growth of connected devices to easily reach 300 to 500% of the population within two years. We will be posting an interview with Mr. Lurie in an upcoming issue.
The human user interface/gesture recognition, multi-screen access to content and the cloud were three things that made an impression on Kurt Scherf, VP of Parks Associations, at the 2011 Connections Summit. Demonstrations of these technologies at the Tuesday night panel set the tone for this multi-day event. As Scherf points out, the value of the various devices within the home is being enhanced by the broadband connections made possible by networks outside and within the home. Click here to view.
Bill Ablondi of Parks Associates provides an overview of some of the key take-aways from the 2011 Connections Conference in Santa Clara, CA. From “Funding Pollution”, to the idea of shifting a product or service from a “nice to have” to a “must-to-have”, Ablondi provides kernels of the knowledge shared at this year’s event. Click here to view.
Opportunities & Obstacles to Cloud Adoption by Alan Weissberger
The just concluded Cloud Leadership Forum (June 20-21 in Santa Clara, CA) brought together CIOs, IT managers, vendors, and analysts to discuss the current status, future directions and important caveats of Cloud Computing. All but the largest companies appear to favor Public Clouds because of lower cost, advantages of scale, and faster deployment. Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft and now Fujitsu all offer public clouds for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). However, HP was touting Hybrid Cloud (mixture of both public and private) as the way forward. HP plans to introduce their own public cloud later this year. Click here to read the entire article, as well as Weissberger’s analysis.
Last week’s announcement by Affinegy of their Home Portal v2.0 software and related announcement that Cablevision is deploying it, is further evidence of the growing importance of the converged home to service providers’ business plans. We caught up with Affinegy CEO, Melissa Simpler at the Parks Associates Connections conference, where she discusses Home Portal v2.0. Click here to view.
Some Tweets and Short Thoughts
- What I am learning on my summer vacation – This wisdom from a 12 year old Swedish Boy, “You don’t learn from books, you learn from YouTube.”
- Nice story of expansion plans for this “Silicon Valley of the Midwest” – our take on Mitchell, South Dakota
- Entone-NECA partner to bring OTT video solution to NECA members
The first day of the Connections conference was greeted with something very unusual for late June in the area formerly known as the Valley of the Heart’s Delight – rain. Oddly, Silicon Valley received more rain in June than it did in January, the same month that I stumbled upon a cool invention at CES that I thought would be appropriate summer outdoor gear for the tech enthusiast – 3D sunglasses.
A concern of mine regarding 3DTV has been what happens if I am at a friend’s house to watch a program and I don’t have 3D glasses. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, would I really want to borrow a pair of glasses from someone who would be a friend of mine (or vise-versa)? Who knows what sort of germs might be squirming around on a well-used pair of 3D glasses?
Of course, my experience carrying glasses was never positive. as I would lose them or sit on them and end up with a loose-fitting, tape-repaired set of specs that left me open to light-hearted fun from family members.
So, when I ran into Marchon at CES 2011, I was excited that they might have a product that would be useful for those of us who are careless with our glasses, but might want to watch an occasional 3D program. Their new line of passive 3D sunglasses are RealD certified for 3D viewing. At the same time, the lenses change opacity automatically will change to sunglass in less than 30 seconds. Marchon manufactures sunglasses for a number of major brands, such as Nike, Nautica and Calvin Klein.
This could be a great gift for that tech person who loves their entertainment and wants to protect their eyes from harmful UV radiation.
