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Attention SEOs: Bing is finally rewarding you for all your hard work. Starting today, new Bing SEO tags let you tell Bing exactly where your page should rank. Easy as that.

The new SEO tags cut out the middleman and let you insert a couple of tags into your page code that direct Bing as to where to place you on results pages. There are two new tags, “set to position” and “must be before.”

<link rel=”SEO” query=”weather” set_to_position=”2″ />

<link rel=”SEO” must_be_before=”*.mycompetitor.com/*” />

Now you can make sure that your page always ranks on spot ahead of your competitor’s page. It’s so easy!

Along the way, some SEOs abused the systems to try to game the results. Back and forth for years, the engines and so-called “black hat” SEOs have waged a behind-the-scenes battle to position content on the Search Results pages. It’s pretty easy for the engine to win this battle in the long run, though, as we own the pages.

As time has progressed, we’ve been able to tackle spamming issues at many levels. In most cases today, most websites follow the known best practices and simply do the right thing. They’re too busy running a business to try trickery to rank better, trusting we will sort the rankings properly. And now it’s time to reward that trust and your hard work.

For a year, you’ll only be able to use one “must_be_before” tag, so choose wisely. Bing says that next April 1st, they’ll give you 50!

“To ensure compliance with this request, should you insert more than one “must_be_before” tag this year, we’ll simply contact your host and arrange for the server hosting your site to be put into a low-earth orbit for the following 365 days.”

Harsh.

For more April Fools’ Day prank fun, check here.

Those hoping for an HTC One smartphone with 64 GB of internal storage may have their carrier options very limited in the U.S. A promotional YouTube video shows the higher storage capacity handset as an AT&T exclusive, although there haven’t been any official carrier announcements to confirm or deny. However, the video, found by Droid Life, is posted on AT&T’s official YouTube account, lending credibility to the information.

In most cases, this exclusivity on storage wouldn’t be a big deal, but the HTC One has no expandable memory slot. That means you’ll always be limited to the internal storage that comes with the handset; there’s no microSD card. Presumably then, all other U.S. carriers will get the 32 GB storage version of the HTC One.

I’ve been using a Galaxy Nexus with 16 GB of non-expandable storage for over a year without any issues as I lean heavily on the cloud. Even with my reliance on cloud storage, there are times when I can’t load a large app — typically a game — on the phone because there isn’t enough storage available.

Personally, I’m still not a fan of exclusives on handsets or specific configurations of them: I see no benefit to the consumer, just to the carrier with the exclusive. I’m guessing that some folks won’t be happy about this news as they’d prefer to have the option between a 32 GB and 64 GB HTC One on the network operator of choice.

And I don’t think this move will help HTC sell more phones, which is something the company desperately needs to do. Instead, it could lose some customers to a 64 GB version of Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 — or even a lower capacity GS4 since it has a memory expansion slot — due to this exclusive.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in mobile
• What to watch in mobile in 2013

As North Korea continues to release inflammatory statements about joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises on its border, tensions between the two Koreas are rising higher than they have in recent years.

North Korea has stated that it is now at war and will now no longer abide by the Korean Armistice Agreement, which ended the Korean war in 1953. The country has gone so far as to cut off communication with South Korea, including hotlines meant to stave off war. Communication with U.S. and U.N. forces have also ceased.

U.S. officials have been playing down Pyongyang’s rhetoric in recent weeks, likening it to the past posturing that North Korea is known for. However, chances are not being taken that the nuclear-armed country is merely bluffing.

According to a Reuters report, the U.S. has now deployed F-22 stealth fighter jets to South Korea. The jets will become a part of ongoing military drills, as well as a show of force to North Korea. The deployment of F-22s follows the deployment of B-2 stealth bombers to the Korean peninsula last week.

U.S. and South Korea have made it clear that any provocation by the North will result in a swift military response.

According to the Reuters report, North Korea this week convened a meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea. At the meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is reported to have stated that the country’s nuclear weapons will not be on the table for future negotiations.

Today, on April 1, Google announced Google Wallet Mobile ATM, a device that lets you get cash from your smartphone, ATM style.

This image pretty much says it all:

Google explains in a blog post:

The mobile ATM device easily attaches to most smartphones and dispenses money instantly and effortlessly– forever ending your search for the nearest bank or ATM. Just type in your personal pin code on your cell phone and access all your cash from the palm of your hand.

The Google Wallet Mobile ATM technology allows you to enter the amount of money you want to withdraw directly in your phone or use voice-activated dispenser.

Google notes that the product does some things that even traditional ATMs can’t do, such as dispensing rare two and fifty dollar bills, and even “more practical” one dollar bills.

One huge bonus of using Google Wallet Mobile ATM over a traditional ATM is that when your device is low on funds, a self-driving, armored, hybrid vehicle will be alerted and dispatched to your location.

Wow, Google is really making our lives easier these days. First Google Now, and now this.

Proximal Data, a provider of server-side caching technology for virtualized environments, has closed on $2 million in Series B round of funding, bringing its total funding to $5 million. Current investor Avalon Ventures is participating, with new investor Divergent Ventures leading the round, the company said.

PRESS RELEASE
Proximal Data, the leading provider of server-side caching solutions specifically designed for virtualized environments, today announced it has secured a $2 million series B round of funding, bringing its total funding to $5 million. Current investor Avalon Ventures is participating, with new investor Divergent Ventures leading the round. Divergent Ventures invests in early-stage companies with a focus on virtualization and storage and partners with them to help overcome market challenges.

Proximal Data will use the funds to increase its sales distribution channels and extend its current market success to include more global markets, as well as further advance the storage I/O caching capabilities of AutoCache, its fast virtual cache software.

“Proximal Data is leading the market with a server-side caching solution specifically designed to enable higher levels of server consolidation in virtualized environments by addressing limitations caused by I/O bottlenecks,” said Rory Bolt, CEO of Proximal Data. “Only AutoCache offers the ability to employ multiple caching algorithms to determine which performs best at any given time to address the dynamic and changing nature of workloads in virtualized environments. This helps data center managers create a more efficient and productive virtualized environment without impacting IT operations.”

Introduced in 2012, AutoCache eliminates I/O bottlenecks in virtualized servers with its adaptive I/O caching to increase virtual machine (VM) density up to three times with absolutely no impact on IT operations. AutoCache plugs easily into industry-leading hypervisors, such as VMware’s ESXi, and transparently works on all I/O without requiring agents in guest operating systems. By placing hot I/O onto a PCIe flash card or SSD, AutoCache intelligently supplies priority data traffic to VMs.

“Proximal Data is in the sweet spot of virtualization and I/O throughput with strong technological leadership and an innovative approach to speeding up applications,” said Kevin Ober, managing director, Divergent Ventures. “We look for leaders like Rory Bolt who identify ways to disrupt fast-growing markets and can lead talented engineering and sales teams to meet market demand.”

“Proximal Data’s technology is both groundbreaking and proven, given its significant market traction where customers have enjoyed performance gains with no change to their operational procedures or investments,” said Steve Tomlin, managing director, Avalon Ventures. “We are confident that Proximal Data will continue to be the thought leader in the virtualized server-side caching market moving forward.”

George Crump, president and founder of Storage Switzerland, an industry analyst firm, stated, “Proximal Data’s AutoCache offers a simple implementation and precise coordination at the hypervisor level, allowing customers to see benefits immediately. By continuing to provide a fast, efficient caching solution that boosts VM efficiency without draining critical system resources or requiring additional hardware, Proximal Data stands to become an important player in this market.”

Since its launch, Proximal Data has sold AutoCache to a global base of customers who have successfully used AutoCache to improve the performance of business-critical applications that are running in virtualized environments, realizing a tremendous return on their investment in AutoCache.

Additional Resources

Proximal Data AutoCache Data Sheet

Proximal Data AutoCache White Paper

Increasing VM Density With Server Side Caching: Proximal Data Briefing Report

Proximal Data AutoCache Video

Proximal Data AutoCache Tutorial

About Divergent Ventures

Divergent Ventures provides straightforward capital and advice for technical entrepreneurs. Divergent was founded in 2003 to make investments in early-stage storage, big data, infrastructure and cloud startups. In the technology startup world, the premium is on execution, not funding. Divergent’s managing partners Rob Shurtleff, Kevin Ober and Todd Warren have experience founding, growing and selling technology startups. They connect portfolio companies with global influencers in servers, storage, database and networking technologies to help them recruit talent, engage customers, add investors, grow and access more exit options.

For more information, visit http://www.divergent.com/.

About Avalon Ventures

Avalon Ventures is a venture capital fund comprised of former entrepreneurs driven by passionate people pursuing disruptive ideas in ever-changing market environments. Avalon’s long-standing and successful focus has been on seed and early-stage companies, including many it formed in the life science and information technology sectors. For more information, visit http://www.avalon-ventures.com/.

About Proximal Data
Proximal Data is the leading provider of server-side caching solutions specifically designed for virtualized environments. Proximal Data’s AutoCache software can dramatically increase virtual machine density by eliminating I/O bottlenecks with adaptive I/O caching. When coupled with PCIe flash cards or SSDs from our partners, Proximal Data’s fast virtual cache significantly improves the efficiency and performance of virtualized servers without disrupting IT operations or processes. www.proximaldata.com

The post Proximal Data Adds $2M Series B appeared first on peHUB.

During the month of March, Microsoft news dominated our reader’s attention, with a feature on its ultra-efficient Dublin data center topping our list of most popular articles. Another Microsoft story about a Hotmail outage also garnered interest. Other topics this month include eBay’s new monitoring dashboard, OVH raising funds for U.S. expansion and Brocade resisting a “zombie” attack. Here are the most viewed stories on Data Center Knowledge for March 2013, ranked by page views. Enjoy!

• Squeezing More Efficiency Out of Microsoft’s Cloud – March 21
• Heat Spike in Data Center Caused Hotmail Outage – March 14
• eBay’s DSE: One Dashboard to Rule Them All? – March 6
• Brocade Data Center Repels Zombie Attack – March 4
• OVH Raises $181 Million to Build Data Centers in U.S. – March 18
• Bringing Colo to the Customer: Modular Gets Local – March 19
• Apple Hits 100% Renewable Energy in its Data Centers – March 22
• As Cloud Wars Heat Up, Server OEMs Bet on OpenStack – March 26
• Old Gas Tower to Become Futuristic Data Center – March 19
• Gartner, IDC See Server Sales Turning a Corner – March 1

Stay current on Data Center Knowledge’s data center news by subscribing to our RSS feed and daily e-mail updates, or by following us on Twitter or Facebook. DCK is now on Google+.

Internap was the best performing data center stock in the first three months of 2013. Shares of the the Atlanta-based colocation provider soared 34.9 percent on the quarter, as strong earnings made it the standout performer in a decidedly mixed quarter for the data center sector.

Publicly-held companies on our Data Center Investor list were nearly evenly split, with six recording gains while five lost ground – an underwhelming performance in light of the strength in the broader market.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its best quarter in 15 years, gaining 11.25 percent, while the  S&P500 index rose 10.1 percent to end the quarter at record levels.

Only three companies beat the broader averages, including Internap (INAP), CoreSite Realty (COR) and CyrusOne (CONE), which received strong investor interest after its IPO on Jan. 18.

Here’s a look at the first quarter performance chart for our Data Center Investor list of stocks.

Shares of Internap surged after the company recorded a strong quarter, “indicating it is striking the right chords with its diverse portfolio of colocation, managed services and cloud,” as DCK’s Jason Verge noted in a recent profile. In recent years the company has focused on its colocation business, expanding its margins by concentrating on company-operated colo space.

At the other end of the spectrum is managed hosting and cloud computing specialist Rackspace Hosting. Shares of Rackspace (RAX) fell sharply after the company’s earnings report raised concerns that the rate of adoption for cloud computing services may be moderating. The slide reflects Wall Street’s high expectations for Rackspace, which saw its shares rise 72 percent in 2012 amid investor enthusiasm for cloud computing.

Gmail Blue is just what it sounds like. It’s Gmail, and it’s blue.

“Gmail launched nine years ago on April 1st, 2004,” says project manager Jonathan Zames. “Since then you’ve been able to use hundreds of new features that push the boundaries of what email can do and make it easier to get things done.”

“Starting today, you’ll get to experience the next big step for Gmail, Gmail Blue,” he adds.

You can see just how revolutionary this is by watching the video:

This is the latest example of “moonshot thinking” at Google, according to lead engineer Carl Branch.

It’s taken six years to develop the technology behind Gmail Blue, according to lead designer Dana Popliger.

“In trying to bring email into the 21st century, we are faced with a challenge: how do we completely redesign and recreate something while keeping it exactly the same?” explains project manager Richard Pargo.

Welcome to the future of email.

Introducing Gmail Blue. Beautiful. Fast. Powerful. goo.gl/uD2ME

— Gmail (@gmail) April 1, 2013

Future potential matters (much) more than past performance. That’s the new quantitative consensus reshaping professional sports worldwide. After looking hard at the numbers and algorithms, the smartest — and richest — general managers and franchises have made up their collective minds: They’re not paying a premium for yesterday. Period. Iconic athletes from Barcelona to Manchester United to the Chicago Bears to the New England Patriots to the New York Yankees have been effectively cut loose.

Thanks for the memories. See you at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, dude. We simply can’t — or won’t — afford you anymore.

Multivariate predictive analytics render “What have you done for me lately?” an anachronistic cliché. The questions now are, “How well will you do tomorrow?” and “How can we be sure?” The better the answers, the richer the paychecks. The past is, indeed, a foreign country, albeit one with a debauched currency. This next-generation “moneyball” ethos now transforming pro sports has enormous implications for how high-performance managers will incent and inspire tomorrow’s high achievers. The cultural values of loyalty and leadership are being redefined by the economic value of forecasting methodologies (PDF). “Yesterday” is a sunk cost.

“Yes, the trend is towards paying for future performance; by that I mean future ‘forecasted’ performance,” observed Daryl Morey, General Manager of the NBA’s Houston Rockets franchise and a pioneer in bringing moneyball statistical/quantitative analytics to pro basketball, in a conversation with me. “My job is to up our odds for winning games and winning championships, and those things happen going forward, not looking backward.”

Exactly. Where past performance was once the best and most reliable proxy for the future, says Morey (a friend who launched MIT’s successful Sports Analytics Conference), algorithmic and biomedical innovations increasingly give coaches, managers, and owners greater confidence in predicting which players have peaked and which ones will step up to greatness. “We have a luxury in sports,” says Morey. “We can so clearly measure success and failure; we can know when people start fading with age…we can make a better bet on someone with talent.”

Unlike for a Procter & Gamble or Unilever, Morey muses, there is no “aging curve” for marketing prowess: “We can’t say that, after 50, this guy won’t have another good marketing idea again.”

But why not? If you’re running Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Google, Exxon Mobil, or Ford, you have comparable concerns about making sure you’re getting the best possible returns from your talent and human capital investments. You should be concerned about the aging curves of your marketing people; you should want to know if your tech support folks will deliver better outcomes tomorrow than today; you should be predicting which sales teams will procure the most lucrative contracts with the minimum risks. Think of it as Six Sigma predictive analytics for talent.

The catch, which Morey freely acknowledges, is that it’s still very difficult to measure what role personal loyalty plays in inspiring extra efforts that yield better results. It’s still very difficult to assess the positive influence of an aging leader whose physical skills have demonstrably diminished but whose acuity and character gets everyone on the team to step up their game. No one denies the reality or importance of these organizational phenomena. But that’s not the direction that moneyball’s metrics have been going.

“All of my actions have to be on the individual level,” Morey acknowledges, while freely conceding that oftentimes a team’s greatest professional challenge is chemistry and cohesion. Of course, encouraging the kind of loyalties and leadership that enhance collaboration becomes inherently more difficult when performers fear they may fall on the wrong side of the aging curve. Similarly, coaches lose credibility with their players if they champion schemes and approaches that predictive analytics might undervalue or ignore come contract time.

The classic response, of course, is to insist that, ultimately, these decisions come down to human judgments rather than computational dictatorships. But that’s exactly why acknowledging the current trend is so important: The leaderships of the richest and (ostensibly) best-managed franchises in sports have effectively declared that the costs of preserving past values are too high relative to the potential for tomorrow’s performance.

Bill Parcells, the Super Bowl-winning coach, was famous for saying, “You are what your record says you are.” Today, that’s no longer true. You are what the analytics predict you will be. That changes the social — as well as the professional — contract.

Does anyone really think a 50-year-old marketer with a terrific track record is immune from the same economic and analytic forces affecting the career of a 40-year-old pro athlete who was a two-time all-star? Does that knowledge make the marketer a better leader or more loyal employee? Or doesn’t that matter anymore?

Do you know where you are on the aging curve? Does your boss?

Google loves to announce fake products and services on April Fools’ Day, and I’m fine with some products remaining pranks. Its latest joke product, however, would actually be pretty cool if it were real.

Google Fiber Poles is the first prank product to come out of Google Fiber, and it’s actually a pretty neat idea:

Google Fiber Poles actually presents a lot of problems that make this project impossible, but it would be great if Google made Fiber more ubiquitous around Kansas City. Installing more wireless access points would be the most obvious solution, but something similar to Google Fiber Poles that encourages people to work together in groups would be most welcome.

It’s kind of become a tradition as of late that every year, on April Fools’ Day, tech companies try to one-up each other on who can announce the craziest product and maybe catch some unsuspecting blog readers off guard. This year, Twitter’s entry into the April Fools’ prank pool is simply terrifying.

Today, Twitter has “announced” Twttr, the new no-vowel Twitter service that will now become the default service for all users.

If you want your vowels back, you’re going to have to pay $5 a month.

“We’re doing this because we believe that by eliminating vowels, we’ll encourage a more efficient and “dense” form of communication. We also see an opportunity to diversify our revenue stream,” says Twitter.

Don’t worry – you still get the letter “y.”

“Because our users come first, we believe that ‘Y’ should always be free to everyone — today and forever. You’ll notice in the Twttr example above, the ‘y’ is clearly visible. Also, the vowels in URLs will be also be free for everyone, forever. You can also Tweet in non-Latin characters based languages, like Japanese, Chinese, Arabic or Korean. These languages will remain unaffected by our service change.”

Twyttyr? Why byy vywyls whyn yyy gyt “Y” fyr fryy? Syckyrs! #nvwls

— Joan Rivers (@Joan_Rivers) April 1, 2013

Yikes. Twitter is already a minefield when it comes to navigating grammar – forcing 140 characters makes even the best of us resort to devious tactics. But no vowels? The mere thought is nightmare-inducing.

Alongside the no-vowel prank, Twitter also says that they’ve expanded Promoted Tweets to 141 characters, for an additional fee. One extra character is it, though. Don’t try to buy two.

Good thing this one is only a joke. If you want to get in an the fun, write your no-vowel tweets and include the hashtag #nvwls. Or, if you’ve decided to pay the fee to get your vowels back, you can tweet using the #icanhasvowels hashtag.

Who knew that all this time YouTube has just been one giant contest to showcase the best video on the Internet?

For April Fools’, YouTube announced that contest submissions will be selected at midnight (Eastern), and all YouTube videos will be deleted, except for the winner, which will be prominently featured.

“When we started out in 2005, we focused on rapidly increasing user engagement. We wanted an inventive way to draw people in and catalyze their creativity. The result? A contest for the best video on our site,” says competition director Tim Liston. “Nearly eight years later, with 72 hours of video being uploaded every minute, we finally have enough content to close the competition. We’ve started the process to select a winner and as of tomorrow at midnight, we will be closing the site to submissions.”

Watch this video (which features some familiar faces, and you’ll get a sense of what YouTube has really been all about.

This is only one of many of Google’s April Fools’ jokes this year. The tech giant has become known for putting out a slew of new “products” on April 1st each year. Last year’s YouTube contribution was the ability to order all of YouTube on DVD, Betamax, or Laser Disc.

Samsung (005930) knows that it’s pushing its luck by asking for a full retrial of its patent case with Apple (AAPL). FOSS Patents points out a recent Samsung court filing that acknowledges seeking a new trial against Apple could lead to Apple seeking “even more damages on these products” than the $1 billion that it originally won in the previous patent trial. Samsung’s acknowledgement of potential risks in seeking a retrial comes just weeks after Judge Lucy Koh substantially reduced the damages the company had to pay to Apple down to just under $600 million. All the same, it seems the company is willing to roll the dice if it opens up the possibility to paying Apple nothing in the ongoing patent dispute.

Ravi Rajagopal, Vice President at CA Technologies, has led and managed organizations that delivered innovative and practical technical and business solutions for corporations and governments around the globe.

Economic benefits almost always lead the argument for moving to cloud computing. We’re told many things: cloud is cheaper; cloud frees up IT resources; cloud reduces capital expenditures; cloud allows organizations to scale with demand.

Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. The only way to make an informed decision, backed by a solid return on investment (ROI), is to first understand the total cost of ownership (TCO) for your current and planned cloud infrastructure in advance of any cloud adoption.

This is obvious, right? But you might be surprised to learn that many large organizations commit to cloud computing without really knowing their TCO and projected ROI. It’s not that they’re irresponsible and ignoring this requirement. It’s that the tools most IT teams use to evaluate TCO and ROI are inadequate for application to the cloud.

An Improved TCO Model

That’s why I set out to create a better TCO model. In addition to my work at CA Technologies, I also teach at NYU. One of my classes is about managing the cloud. When I first taught the class three years ago, I heard lots of assumptions such as the cloud is not secure or it’s less expensive. These statements were nearly always based on opinions and word-of-mouth buzz.

I engaged the class in researching the topic, with an eye towards developing the tools IT leaders need to get objective insights about cloud computing. We worked to develop a complete view of the cloud, beyond just the technical pieces. The result is a new approach that takes a business view of cloud computing by considering the economics and measuring its business value.

Simply put, TCO changes for the cloud because the cloud changes IT’s business model. Cloud computing has taken the information technology silo and made it a business service. And from the standpoint of TCO analysis, this adds complexity, because the cloud can be both a function of, as well as an alternative to, in-house IT resources.

For example, in the pre-cloud era, IT was simply a department of function. You could calculate the IT department’s cost, break it down using whatever algorithm you wanted to, and allocate cost back to the business units.

But today IT, and its cost, is the function of many business units (including IT itself). The business units need to have visibility into their costs, plus a clear understanding of the value they’re getting from these expenditures.

Unless the organization understands its total IT costs across all domains in the organization, it’s hard to arrive at an apples-to-apples comparison between what you’re spending in-house versus what’s available in the cloud.

A Wide-Ranging Perspective

To analyze cloud TCO, you must use a comprehensive view of your entire infrastructure and all services being provided by it, for it, or running on it, whether in the cloud, on-premise, or legacy. Only then will you be able to make an informed decision based on an accurate understanding of your total IT costs.

Not long ago, McKinsey reported that moving to the cloud caused companies to spend around 25 percent more than they would otherwise for the same services. As you can imagine, this caused a controversy, as it ran contrary to what cloud service providers were saying.

Once the study’s methodology was explained, however, what was happening became clear. Organizations were moving to cloud while keeping their legacy infrastructure in place. That’s fine if you’re piloting cloud or want to keep your options open, but it’s not a strategy to reduce cost.

This is a key point about cloud TCO that many organizations miss. If you don’t make the right choices and changes when using cloud computing, you’ll end up adding services and cost to the infrastructure. Vendor promises of cost savings go right out the window.

What’s Your Embedded Costs?

It’s hard for many organizations to get a handle on the true cost of an application because there are so many embedded costs: servers, OSes, the network, electricity, the real estate, personnel, and more. Does moving an application to the cloud shave those costs? How do you remove the infrastructure cost from the total cost associated with the application?

Part of the cost of an application is a service cost, which is visible and obvious. You can go into Salesforce.com and measure it on a per-user basis. But what’s not obvious is the associated infrastructure cost that’s needed, and what’s being done in the legacy environment.

If you’re not diligent in removing that piece from your analysis, you’re going to run into cost issues. You would still be incurring part of the cost already in the legacy system which will not be eliminated, and you’re incurring additional costs from a SaaS perspective.

These are just a few examples of how a better model for cloud TCO can help managers get quantitative analysis of cloud costs with no subjectivity. And as I mentioned earlier in this post, we’ve taken these insights and have started building a new model for determining the total cost of ownership of cloud services.

Much of our research is now embedded in a spreadsheet which I am planning to make available to customers. I’ll be blogging about these efforts as we refine the model over the next few months, sharing what we’ve learned as well as your feedback on the findings. Stay tuned.

Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library.

Aaron Batalion, the co-founder of daily deals company LivingSocial, said Friday that he would leave the company. The news came by way of Batalion’s personal website, where he wrote that he was leaving to “pursue some new ideas.”

BLOG POST
What an incredible journey it has been since June of 2007, when the four of us knew only our direction, but definitely not our destination. After much soul searching, I have decided to leave LivingSocial to pursue some new ideas. No new adventure to announce yet, just a urge to go create… that there is more to do.

As I look back today, we have processed billions in commerce transactions and have sent tens of billions of emails on technology we created. We took a simple two-week prototype and scaled it to an international business with thousands of fellow employees around the world. We built a culture I am proud of and millions of consumers around the world have experienced their local cities because of our products. More importantly, we created an incredible team with many more strong moves yet to come. Knowing this makes me confident in LivingSocial’s future and the vision of local we have all been fighting for.

I am incredibly proud of what the team has accomplished to date and have been so fortunate to play a role in this amazing journey. My decision to depart has in no way been easy. The experience and, most importantly, the friendships… have been the best of my career.

Always live hungry,

Aaron

The post Aaron Batalion Will Depart LivingSocial appeared first on peHUB.

Personal assistants like Siri already hear and respond in spoken language. Nuance Communications, the company that powers the speech understanding technologies behind Siri and other digital assistants think the ads displayed in our phones should listen to our voices as well.

Nuance on Monday announced it’s expanding its speech interface expertise into yet another industry, advertising, launching a new service for app developers called Voice Ads. Yes, we’re talking about talking ads here – well, at least listening ads. Whether the ad responds via text, video or spoken word is entirely up to the ad creator. The key is that advertisers now have a new way of engaging with their audience rather than just mere splashy images, said Mike McSherry, VP of Advertising and former CEO of Swype, the predicative keyboard company Nuance acquired in 2011.

Say Jeff Daniels is the spokesman for your product. Instead of just flashing up an image of Daniels holding your widget in the confined space of an app banner ad, your ad could let you virtually ask Daniels questions about it and your company. Answers are pre-recorded, of course, but as we’ve witnessed with the depth and variety of conversational answers Apple has given Siri (try asking Siri if she believes in God), a committed ad agency could have some fun with the medium.

McSherry said that mobile app developers can embed Voice Ad technology into their apps through an SDK, which will allow ad networks like JumpTap, Millennial and Ad Marvel to serve up the new formats in those apps, either as banner or interstitial ads. Nuance is currently working with three agency partners to develop the new ads: Digitas, OMD and Leo Burnett.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated

As you all know, Fiat is working to obtain 100% ownership of Chrysler-Jeep-Ram this year. As negotiations continue, Fiat is beginning to prepare for 100% ownership in a few ways:

1. They’re continuing to restructure their holdings in Europe in an effort to balance world-wide manufacturing capacity
2. They’re holding “Lavoratore Indottrinamento” management meetings at all key facilities, with the aim of breaking down cultural barriers between American and Italian executives, engineers, and plant managers
3. Most incredibly, they’re working furiously to translate all Chrysler, Jeep, and Ram vehicle owners manuals into Italian, so that manuals can be printed in both languages by the end of the year.

Why, you ask, must owner’s manuals be in both English and Italian? There’s a little-known Italian law that mandates all Italian corporations must produce consumer materials in Italian, even if the materials aren’t for Italian consumers.

The law – known as “L’italiano è la lingua migliore mai” – was originally designed to keep Italian corporations from printing owners manuals, warranty agreements, etc., exclusively in French or English, a common problem in the early 90′s when Italy’s economy was an export powerhouse.

Today – 20 years later – this law is out-dated and unnecessary. However, because this law applies to ALL products produced by Italian companies, Chyrsler, Jeep, and Ram owners are going to have to shuffle a few more pages after the first of the year.

We’ve obtained an example of the owner’s manual translation – check it out:

What do you think? Is this bonkers or what?

Do you think a lot of Ram owners wish they didn’t have to buy Italian pickup trucks?

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• 2014 toyota tundra trd

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Amazon.com is snapping up Goodreads, a site where readers give recommendations that helps people find and share books. Terms were not released. Following the acquisition, Goodreads’s headquarters will remain in San Francisco.

PRESS RELEASE
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Goodreads, a leading site for readers and book recommendations that helps people find and share books they love.

“Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading,” said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon Vice President, Kindle Content. “Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world. In addition, both Amazon and Goodreads have helped thousands of authors reach a wider audience and make a better living at their craft. Together we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike.”

“Books – and the stories and ideas captured inside them – are part of our social fabric,” said Otis Chandler, Goodreads CEO and co-founder. “People love to talk about ideas and share their passion for the stories they read. I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity to partner with Amazon and Kindle. We’re now going to be able to move faster in bringing the Goodreads experience to millions of readers around the world. We’re looking forward to inspiring greater literary discussion and helping more readers find great books, whether they read in print or digitally.”

“I just found out my two favorite people are getting married,” said Hugh Howey, best-selling author of WOOL. “The best place to discuss books is joining up with the best place to buy books – To Be Read piles everywhere must be groaning in anticipation.”

Following the acquisition, Goodreads’s headquarters will remain in San Francisco, CA. Founded in 2007, Goodreads now has more than 16 million members and there are more than 30,000 books clubs on the Goodreads site. Over just the past 90 days, Goodreads members have added more than four books per second to the “want to read” shelves on Goodreads.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Subject to various closing conditions, the acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle Paperwhite is the most-advanced e-reader ever constructed with 62% more pixels and 25% increased contrast, a patented built-in front light for reading in all lighting conditions, extra-long battery life, and a thin and light design. The new latest generation Kindle, the lightest and smallest Kindle, now features new, improved fonts and faster page turns. Kindle Fire HD features a stunning custom high-definition display, exclusive Dolby audio with dual stereo speakers, high-end, laptop-grade Wi-Fi with dual-band support, dual-antennas and MIMO for faster streaming and downloads, enough storage for HD content, and the latest generation processor and graphics engine—and it is available in two display sizes—7” and 8.9”. The large-screen Kindle Fire HD is also available with 4G wireless, and comes with a groundbreaking $49.99 introductory 4G LTE data package. The all-new Kindle Fire features a 20% faster processor, 40% faster performance, twice the memory, and longer battery life.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.es and www.amazon.com.br. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

About Goodreads

Goodreads is the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. Founded in 2007, Goodreads is where readers find and share books they love. The site has 16 million members who have added more than 530 million books to their shelves and written more than 23 million reviews. Loved by avid and casual readers alike, Goodreads members can discover new books by seeing what their friends are reading or by using the Goodreads Book Recommendation Engine; share ratings and recommendations; track what they have read, and list what they want to read. Goodreads is also a place where more than 68,000 authors connect with readers. For more information, visit http://www.goodreads.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment and data center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

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In April 2010, V.R. Ferose became the managing director of SAP Labs India, one of fifteen global R&D centers of the German software giant SAP. At 35 years old, Ferose was the youngest-ever managing director of a global multinational firm in India — overseeing a staff of 4,000.

SAP’s senior management asked Ferose to shore up employee morale at SAP Labs India, where the attrition rate had reached a painful 19% in 2009. Ferose’s mandate was to reduce employee turnover to below 10% by 2012.

Rather than rushing into action, Ferose took time to identify the root cause of employee dissatisfaction by listening to and observing employees. He noticed that discontented employees were posting negative comments on the lab’s internal blog about the local management team, which they viewed as unresponsive to their needs. Frustrated employees were complaining about the lack of amenities — such as child care facilities — on campus and the stifling bureaucracy which, for instance, made expense reimbursment a time-consuming process.

Ferose realized that SAP Labs India had to engage its young employees — whose average age was merely 29 — differently. He believed that it is not the CEO’s job to find ways to make his or her employees happier. Employees already know what will make them happy. According to Ferose, the CEO’s job is to give employees the freedom to test and deploy their own solutions that will in turn make them happier at work.

This belief led Ferose to overhaul SAP Labs India’s hierarchical, ‘top-heavy’ corporate culture, allowing bottom-up creativity and innovation to blossom. In particular, Ferose empowered his 4,000 employees to experiment with bold new ideas during their work time. He requested that their managers free up time for their staff members to work on solving the very problems they were complaining about. He believed such a move would not only directly and positively impact SAP’s core business, but also improve employees’ level of engagement, working conditions and morale.

Ferose also encouraged his 4,000 plus employees — primarily engineers — to expose themselves to new environments and situations that would challenge their existing perspectives, unleash their innate ingenuity, and accelerate their learning. He believed that the most disruptive innovations don’t occur inside a single domain, but at the intersection of multiple diverse domains (such as the arts and the sciences).

In one instance, when a group of employees expressed an interest in brushing up on their communication skills, Ferose didn’t enroll them in structured training programs delivered in a formal classroom. Rather, he sent these employees to a theater located near the campus of SAP Labs India where they learned to extemporize and become better communicators by performing in live shows that they put on. To further broaden his employees’ worldview, Ferose launched a monthly lecture series that introduced employees to the unique perspectives of well-known personalities in the arts, culture, sports, and politics.

Motivated by Ferose’s participative leadership style, many self-organized teams at SAP Labs India have since tested and implemented dozens of innovative solutions to boost productivity. For instance, one small team has piloted and rolled out a system to expedite expense reimbursement: today, if an employee at SAP Labs India files an expense claim, he or she will get reimbursed within 24 hours. Another team of employees designed and deployed a daycare for working mothers. Most of these projects were initiated and executed within one week by utilizing existing resources — thus requiring limited additional budget. During Ferose’s first twelve months as head of SAP Labs India, empowered employees successfully implemented a total of fifty-two new morale-boosting projects.

Ferose was also keen to infuse into his organization the mindset and principles of jugaad — a cost-effective and flexible approach to creating affordable solutions using limited resources. To that effect, he set up AppHaus — an open space within the SAP Labs India campus where designers, engineers, and marketers work collaboratively and intensively on new products — compressing the whole concept-to-market cycle to 90 days (versus the 2 years it would typically take SAP to develop a new product using the linear and structured software development processes). By leveraging rapid prototyping and continuous customer feedback, the cross-functional teams that operate in the AppHaus are able to innovate faster, better, and cheaper — managing each project as if they were running a startup. To date, the AppHaus has successfully designed — or redesigned — and launched several software products in global markets — including SAP Collections Insight, a software suite that enables frontline employees such as sales reps to make informed decisions rapidly. AppHaus truly embodies SAP’s frugal innovation philosophy.

In addition to serving the company’s commercial needs, SAP Labs India is using AppHaus to serve a larger purpose by creating socially relevant applications. For instance, a small 10-member team worked in the AppHaus using limited resources to quickly develop a social networking site called Charitra (short for Charity Transformation), a first-of-its-kind portal for driving positive social impact. The web site connects people with needs (NGOs or volunteers driving a social cause) to people who can give (volunteers who can donate their time, skill, or resources).

Ferose has helped SAP Labs India reap big rewards by encouraging frugal and flexible grassroots experimentation of novel ideas: within two years of taking over, attrition dropped from 19% in 2009 to 10% in 2011, to 7% in 2012. The India lab now ranks #1 in employee satisfaction within SAP’s global network of 15 R&D labs. In the annual ranking of best employers in India, SAP Labs India has risen to the #4 position in a very short time. SAP HQ has taken note, and is now shifting more strategic R&D projects and even global product ownership to SAP Labs India — an acknowledgment of the lab’s ability to innovate faster, better, and cost-effectively for local and global markets.

Ferose stands out among global corporate leaders: he didn’t graduate from a prestigious university nor does he have a MBA. However, empathy and a high emotional quotient (EQ) enabled him to provide the wise leadership that amplifies and leverages other people’s intelligence to drive innovation and revenue growth while also serving the greater good.

Ferose was recently promoted to become the head of SAP’s Globalization Services organization.

This post is adapted from the book Jugaad Innovation: A Frugal And Flexible Approach To Innovation For The 21st Century (Random House India, 2012).

American Realty Capital, an investment advisory firm, has added seven people to its team over the past month. They are: Doug Lyons, James Fisher, Joseph Taylor, Carol Loundon, Jonathan Stein, Marc Tolchin, and Daniel Schapiro.

PRESS RELEASE
Investment advisory firm American Realty Capital announced today that it has added seven key executives over the past month who will add to the firm’s core competencies and strengths. These additions are in line with the company’s overarching objectives and continuing commitment to deliver demonstrable results for the shareholders in its sponsored offerings. To this end, the company has assembled, and continues to attract and retain, dedicated management teams whose members bring deep and broad experience to the business areas in which American Realty Capital and its affiliates operate.

A primary driver of the firm’s ability to deliver results is the intellectual capital embedded in the multi-disciplinary teams running and supporting its business units. The company has attracted a skilled and seasoned group of professionals and support staff. Over the past month the following individuals have joined American Realty Capital’s business development company and commercial real estate debt teams:

Business Development Company Team
Name Title Previous Affiliations Experience
Doug Lyons Senior Vice President UBS Investment Bank; Mr. Lyons, a Certified Public Accountant, has over 20 years’ experience in investment banking and leveraged finance, most recently at UBS Investment Bank where, for over six years, he was a Managing Director responsible for managing the leverage finance practice in the Consumer, Retail, Gaming, Real Estate, Lodging and Leisure industries. In his role at UBS, Mr. Lyons was responsible for the origination, structuring, negotiation and execution of senior debt, unsecured debt, high yield and mezzanine financing transactions for key corporate and sponsor clients.
and Chief Credit CIBC World Markets; Deutsche Bank Securities; Duff & Phelps; Coopers & Lybrand
Officer, BDCA Adviser
James Fisher Senior Vice President and Managing Director, BDCA Adviser True Course Capital Advisors, LLC; Praesidian Capital Inc.; Allied Capital/AC Finance/Callidus Capital; JPMorgan/The Chase Manhattan Bank Mr. Fisher has over 30 of experience lending to and investing in middle market and small businesses. He spent 22 years at JPMorgan Chase, with his last position as the Senior Vice President and Division Executive running the Bank’s Middle Market Structured Finance business, including Sponsor Coverage, Asset Based Lending, Leasing, and Middle Market M&A. Most recently, Mr. Fisher was the Founding Partner of True Course Capital Advisors; a firm focused on advisory work related to middle market leveraged finance, as well as small business investments.
Joseph Taylor Senior Vice President and Managing Director, BDCA Adviser True Course Capital Advisors, LLC; Allied Capital; Callidus Capital Management; JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A.; First Union/First Fidelity Bank Mr. Taylor, a CFA charter holder, has over 20 years of experience investing in middle market companies and has been directly involved in originating, underwriting and syndicating over $8 billion of middle market senior, unitranche and mezzanine debt. Mr. Taylor spent 7 years at JPMorgan Chase and was the founding partner of the Middle Market leveraged loan structuring and syndication group. Most recently, Mr. Taylor was a Senior Advisor at True Course Capital Advisors; a firm focused on advisory work related to middle market leveraged finance and small business investments.
Carol Loundon Senior Analyst, BDCA Adviser Churchill Financial, LLC; CapitalSource Finance LLC; Bank of Ireland; Lehman Brothers Ms. Loundon brings 12 years of experience in underwriting as well as providing debt financing for private equity backed leveraged buyouts and recapitalizations in the middle market. In her previous roles, Ms. Loundon assisted in due diligence initiatives, syndications and portfolio monitoring.

Commercial Real Estate Debt Team
Name Title Previous Affiliations Experience
Jonathan Stein Vice President, ARC Brookfield Asset Management; Credit Mr. Stein has spent most of the last 10 years in the real estate finance, asset management, origination and securitization groups of prominent asset management firms. Over his career Mr. Stein has participated in the origination or underwriting of more than $15 billion of transactions. In his most recent role at Brookfield Strategic Real Estate Partners, he originated equity and debt investments for the North American sleeve of the fund through direct relationships with sponsors, lenders, special servicers and brokers.
Realty Finance Advisors Suisse
Marc Tolchin Assistant General Counsel, American Realty Capital Alston & Bird LLP; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP; Law Offices of Marc A. Tolchin; Town of Harrison, NY; Rattet, Hollander & Pasternak, LLP Mr. Tolchin brings 17 years of experience in real estate law, most recently at Alston & Bird LLP. In his role as Senior Real Estate Associate, Mr. Tolchin represented major portfolio and capital markets lenders in the origination of commercial real estate financings secured by hotel, office, retail, mixed-use and multifamily properties.
Daniel Schapiro Assistant Vice President, ARC Realty Finance Advisors Brookfield Asset Management; Perseus Realty Partners and Perseus Realty Capital; AFL-CIO Investment Trust Corporation Mr. Schapiro has 6 years of experience in real estate investment management, real estate private equity and investment banking. In his most recent role at Brookfield Asset Management, Mr. Schapiro provided investment analysis in hard assets and loan portfolios and assisted with acquisition and asset management functions.

American Realty Capital’s Chairman and CEO, Nicholas S. Schorsch noted, “The addition of well-experienced and highly skilled individuals to our dedicated business units serves to enhance the intellectual capital that has helped us successfully grow our business segments over the past five years. We are committed to constructing our business with a clear emphasis on best practices and an investor-first focus, making certain that management’s interests and capabilities are always squarely aligned with the needs of our programs’ shareholders.”

About American Realty Capital

American Realty Capital is a full-service real estate advisory firm founded in 2006 that sponsors real estate investment programs and provides advisory services to retail and institutional investors. American Realty Capital is an active sponsor and manager of public and private real estate investments, a business development company and other investment solutions. Collectively, American Realty Capital’s senior team of seasoned professionals has acquired and managed over $10.0 billion of real estate, as well as $5.0 billion of corporate sale-leasebacks as of 2012.

SOURCE American Realty Capital

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