Saturday, August 23, 2008

Internap - Institutional ownership

from the Yahoo MB - Thanks to ridgeback51.

NET SHARE INCREASE = 33,517 (with 123 of 125 institutions reporting)
92 Institutions owning 28,455,297 shares
Basic Shares (49,208,000): 57.83%

15 New = 1,874,729
31 Sold Out = (2,936,118)
36 Increased = 2,684,926
20 Decreased = (1,590,052)
21 No Change

Historical Ownership Data (basic):
1st qtr 06 - 15.2%
2nd qtr 06 - 25.2%
3rd qtr 06 - 30.9%
4th qtr 06 - 60.3%
1st qtr 07 - 55.48% (105 owners) (VSTH acquisition)
2nd qtr 07 - 57.24% (112 owners)
3rd qtr 07 – 62.08% (114 owners)
4th qtr 07 – 67.42% (115 owners)
1st qtr 08 – 57.83% (113 owners)

CDN discussion on WebHostingTalk

CDN - any demand at all?

Guys,
I am wondering - how many of you guys are considering buying into a CDN service? Do you ever find yourself (or your clients) asking for it?

If so, in what specific situations would you need a CDN? Did you already buy the service - if so, what made you choose your provider, and if you did not buy the service yet, why not?


D

__________________
Ditlev Bredahl, CEO
www.UK2group.com

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Quote:
If so, in what specific situations would you need a CDN? Did you already buy the service - if so, what made you choose your provider, and if you did not buy the service yet, why not?
Great post eming!

My experience in selling CDN has been well varied across a number of situations. Considerations to include are number of files to be cached, average file size, and number of downloads per month. Anything delivered via HTTP or Streaming can utilize a CDN. Specific situations vary from full time whole site caching to one time events and everything in between.

As a general rule if you are pushing less than 1TB of traffic a month you do not need a CDN. However if you have events every few months that spike above this or you are planning on launching a new marketing program a CDN is a good thing to consider.

Youtube started with a few CDN's well before they took off, but it was their use of CDN that kept their Quality of Experience high enough to keep users coming back. You can have the coolest website in the world but if it starts lagging or crashing because of a sudden surge in use then everyone is gonna move onto the next website of the week.

Looking at your existing situation and then putting together a 3 month, 6 month, and 1 year growth plan is essential. If you can show a CDN that you are serious and have plans to grow you can negotiate more aggresive pricing.

Right now the industry is in a flux. If you read Akamai's earnings call they are blaming the slow in the US economy on a lag in their growth, however they are still showing 19% quarterly growth. Limelight is still burning cash too fast to make a profit but they are serving up the Olympics to the US and its pretty impressive stuff. Level 3 is still building their network out but have a strong advantage in that they own the network so they can get really aggressive on pricing.

__________________
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Random bits mixed with sand
desertstandard

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I actually work for the largest CDN (Akamai) and I can tell you that CDNs are a requirement for a lot of today's highly interactive web and business applications; I would go so far as to say the internet as we know it.

Streaming HD video to Australia or running your online business portal globally would be impossible without today's CDNs. There simply is not enough effective bandwidth on the internet. Serving content from inside the last mile on the ISP's local network this coupled with advanced mapping and routing algorithms is by far the fastest and most efficient way to deliver content.

Which is another thing that should be considered. All CDNs are not created equal. Limelight and all of the other budget CDNs do not have the reach like Akamai does. You also get what you pay for: some DCs / CDN providers claim 3, 4 or even five 9's of uptime. That is all for beginners; we measure uptime in 0's. (All 0's = 100.00% uptime.) Not to mention our ability to move large amounts of data seamlessly.

Limelight is streaming the Olympics to the US, however Akamai is streaming it to the rest of the world. Limelight does not have the reach to do that. If right now there were to be some other major media event on their network it would most likely crumble. To see a 300+ gb/sec spike in traffic on our network is not uncommon but it makes no difference to our daily operation. On to the next topic at hand...

Polling people here about their customers' use of CDNs is useless. You're not going to find the decision makers of Yahoo, Amazon, MySpace or Disney trawling the forums here looking for budget CDNs. They're going to be going right for the big dogs. And as far as things go here on this forum; we're all small players. No one here is doing 200+ million dollar deals with bandwidth usage statistics that DCs like Softlayer and FDC could only dream of hitting. (IE the previously aforementioned 300gbps spike on top of our normal daily traffic)

Just my perhaps bias and slightly cynical $0.02

__________________
Echoservers.com
Premium Dedicated, VPS and shared hosting.
Never Oversold.

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CDN is growing big time to say otherwise is to miss what is happening in the marketplace. Annual growth for the industry is around 30%.

Its not just the Yahoo's and MSN's that are using CDN.

I am not a regular user of this forum so I may be out of touch with who is reading these posts. Still it is a very good conversation to have as CDN is becoming more and more prevalent. If you are building a website/platform that you want to grow and make money with then CDN will enter the picture eventually.

That said if you are on a shared hosting account and are looking at CDN you have skipped a step, and that step is a dedicated server. I have many clients that came to me about CDN services while they were still on a shared server. The first step was to get them to one of my Partners and onto a Dedicated solution, then we rolled them into CDN.

__________________
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Random bits mixed with sand
desertstandard

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Softlayers CDN which is really just a resold service from InterNap is really good.

Saves me a lot of hassle

__________________
--
Damien Jorgensen
www.damienjorgensen.co.uk

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Quote:
Originally Posted by lockbull View Post
I guess I'm in the minority here, but I think the bloom is kind of off the CDN rose. Akamai and Limelight reported disappointing results, Internap is having major integration and revenue problems with it's CDN, and analysts are predicting there are way too many struggling venture backed CDNs compared to the anticipated market revenue. Plus there are still some unsettled intellectual property issues in this space. My guess is that if you wait around say 12-24 months you'll be able to pick the carcasses of several dead CDNs at an attractive price.
making a 20% growth quarter over quarter is anything but a failing business. missing the Street's expectations is nothing new. i agree that the CDN market is being flooded at the moment and that a shakeout is inevitable but this is how business works.

the fact remains that content growth is exploding online and without a caching service to help things along users will have to get used to slow/spotty/latency riddled delivery or providers will have to build out more and more servers to keep up with the demand. users will not accept this and unless you are a tech company who wants to build a network then the providers are not interested in building and maintaining such a network. it also doesnt make sense to build out something that can handle your maximum traffic but is underutilized the majority of the time. the flexibility of being able to handle a mention on Operah is not an everyday need, but when it happens you want to be able to handle it with no downtime. this is what a cdn gives you.

my provider has switched out of Internap

>So my provider has switched out of Internap to Gnax and frankly the performance has not been up to par since this change. With the applications being very ping sensitive I'm looking to find a provider who is still offering pure Internap. So does anyone have any suggestions? I'd be looking at about 2u's and 10mbit. I understand it's not going to be cheap and I'm fine with that. If necessary paying $100+mbit is fine.

I tried doing a search and found some of the recommended were no longer internap either.

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>>
All dedicated servers are currently hosted along side our servers in a tier IV datacenter located in Dallas Texas.

We utilise a Tier IV datacenter facility located inside the well known INFOMART telecom hotel near downtown Dallas.

>>Our Washington DC location is located just 7 miles from Dulles airport
in a facility certified to the highest standards in the industry. The DC area has one of the highest concentrations of fiber connectivity in the US and provides Hawk Host and its customers with multiple network options and world class performance.

----

Server Status

Live Support is Away

Welcome to our server status page which is a list of our servers, their specifications and what purpose they serve for us.


Name Location Purpose CPU RAM Hard Drives More Info
Mars Dallas, Texas Hosting Quad Core Xeon 3220 4GB 4x250GB SATA II RAID-10 More Info
Mercury Dallas, Texas Hosting Quad Core Xeon 3220 4GB 4x250GB SATA II RAID-10 More Info
Venus Dallas, Texas Hosting Quad Core Xeon 3220 4GB 4x250GB SATA II RAID-10 More Info
Skyline Dallas, Texas Hosting Quad Core Xeon E5430 4GB 4x250GB SATA II RAID-10 More Info
NS1 Atlanta, Georgia DNS Opteron 170 1GB 80GB SATA More Info
NS2 Chicago, Illinois DNS Opteron 170 1GB 80GB SATA More Info
Bosco Dallas, Texas Backups Dual Core Xeon 3060 1GB 4x1TB SATA II RAID-5 More Info
Neptune Washington, DC Hosting Quad Core Xeon E5430 4GB 4x250GB SATA II RAID-10 More Info
Gizmo Washington, DC VPS Dual Quad Core Xeon E5430 8GB 4x150GB 10,000RPM SATA II Raptor Raid-5 More Info

this post would probably need further digging, as there are a couple of things that are not very clear - I guess a few more posts in answer to it might explain the situation better... it looks like the problem might be just with the server hosted in Atlanta (as the other locations - Dallas and Washington DC metro seem under SoftLayer...)

Friday, August 22, 2008

BBC - AKAMAI and Level 3

Dan Rayburn corrects the first articles assuming Level 3 was REPLACING Akam forthe BBC business:

>>Yes, the BBC has signed up with Level 3 for a new trial using H.264. But as Anthony says on his blog, "we're going to create our content in both On2 VP6 and H.264 format". So this is new business that Level 3 is getting and not the business that Akamai still has with the BBC.

The da Vinci surgical system is a nice complement to the CyberKnife radiosurgery system

>>Hospital receives $2 millon, its biggest gift

The da Vinci surgical system is a nice complement to the CyberKnife radiosurgery system, which was purchased in June, said Hall.

"With the hospital's recent investments in both the CyberKnife radiosurgery system and now the da Vinci Surgical System, Stamford Hospital is now the most technologically advanced institution in the region for cancer therapy and minimally invasive surgery, regardless of the complexity," said Hall in a statement.

Spinal reirradiation using the Cyberknife-preliminary efficacy from a single institution

via yyy60 on the Yahho MB:

>>Spinal reirradiation using the Cyberknife-preliminary efficacy from a single institution

Background: Spinal cord tolerance to prior radiation is a major limiting factor in reirradiating patients with spine metastases that have relapsed or progressed in a prior treated field due to concerns about toxicity. The accepted total tolerance dose of the spinal cord is approximately 5,000 cGy in conventional fractionation (180 cGy/day). This dose is reported to cause a 5% risk of myelitis.

Methods:
13 consecutive patients who had received prior external beam radiation to the spine and who were subsequently retreated with Cyberknife radiosurgery in 2005–2006 were reviewed. The radiation dose to the spinal cord and cauda equina given during the external beam and Cyberknife treatments were measured. The doses were also converted into 180 cGy equivalent doses using alpha/beta corrections and were also measured. Local control as measured by pre and post treatment imaging is reported.

Results:
The median follow up was 9.1 months. The median external beam dose to the spinal cord was 3,811 cGy. The median fraction size was 238 cGy. The median prescribed dose using the Cyberknife for retreatment was 2,030 cGy. The median dose per fraction using the Cyberknife was 500 cGy. The median dose to 5% of the spinal cord (D05) from the Cyberknife was 1171 cGy. The median dose to the spinal cord converted to 180 cGy/day equivalent from the prior external radiation was 4,228 cGy. The median dose to the D05 of the spinal cord from the Cyberknife converted to 180 cGy/day equivalent was 1,641 cGy. The median total cumulative dose to the spinal cord from both external beam and Cyberknife was 5,171 cGy. The median total cumulative dose to the spinal cord from both external beam and Cyberknife converted to 180 cGy/day equivalent was 5,889 cGy. Local control was achieved in 13/13 patients (100%) No patients suffered from treatment related complications from the retreatment of the spinal cord.

Conclusions: Cancer patients with recurrent or progressive disease after prior external beam radiation can be safely retreated using the Cyberknife. Cyberknife radiosurgery provides local control and minimal risk of radiation induced myelopathy during the patient's lifetime. Cyberknife should be considered a safe treatment option for retreating patients who have relapsed or progressed in the treated spine after prior external beam radiation.

Managed hoster SingleHop jumps into CDN fray

another new player in the already very crowded CDN sector...

from Tier 1 Research:

>>Chicago-based SingleHop, a managed hosting provider, is gearing up to launch a new CDN service with an offer that's hard to pass up. The first 300 current customers that sign up in advance get free CDN service – 250 GB of data transferred per month – for three years.

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CDN Network Map

CDN Note Locations:

North America
Atlanta
Chicago
Dallas
Denver
Los Angeles
Miami
New York
San Francisco
San Jose
Seattle
Washington

Europe
Amsterdam
Frankfurt
London
Madrid
Milan
Paris
Stockholm

Asia/Pacific
Hong Kong
Seoul
Singapore
Sydney
Tokyo


IPCast CDN -- Pay-as-you-go Content Delivery Network

As part of our commitment to providing a solid feature-set to clients, we will soon be announcing the release of a powerful content delivery network (CDN). The SingleHop CDN is currently being tested with selected clients, and is being integrated in to LEAP. The content delivery network will feature over 20 locations throughout the world, allowing clients to minimize the distance visitors have to take to access files.

Service Explanation

Resulting benefits of this powerful content delivery network are as follows:

• Faster video/audio streaming

• Control & Accessibility through LEAP

• Decreased latency to files

• Extreme value (low prices, no commitments)

• Throttle your traffic to save on bandwidth costs

Service Explanation

The first 200 customers who purchases any dedicated server from SingleHop between 08/11 and 09/01 will receive a FREE IPCast CDN account with 250 GB monthly bandwidth for 3 full years! If you are not ready to purchase a server, please fill out our RSVP form. We will give an additional 100 accounts out on a first-come-first-serve basis to RSVP clients.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

New Cancer Center Under Construction

>>New Cancer Center Under Construction
Published: Thu, August 21, 2008 - 3:45 am
Last Updated: Thu, August 21, 2008 - 5:09 am

The 80-million dollar Mitchell cancer center institute is slated for a grand opening in November. High ceilings and large windows allow sunlight to flood its wide open hallways.

On the ground floor you'll find the latest in cancer treatment technology. A Cyber-Knife is still under construction. The computer controlled particle accelerator will allow doctors to zap tumors that may be near delicate, vital organs.

“Literally enables the physician to plan a treatment to shoot and destroy tumors in the lung that are moving with respiration or tumors of the pancreas,” says Boyd.

The center is slated for a grand opening on November 3rd.

Worldwide Video CDN Revenue $400 Million In 08

Dan Rayburn updates his blog after the Frost & Sullivan webinar about the video CDN market:

>>The preliminary data shows that the worldwide video CDN revenue will be a little more than $400 million in 2008, increasing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of more than 30%. As the slide below shows, we expect the worldwide video CDN revenue to grow to more than $1.4 billion by 2012.

Cdnmarket_7 These numbers are very specific to revenue obtained for video delivery services by CDNs and does not include revenue from P2P based networks or any type of content outside of video. While the report, when released, will also break out P2P based revenue and include additional types of content like gaming, these numbers are for video delivery only. To obtain these numbers, we spoke to every major CDN provider in North America, Europe and Asia and obtained revenue numbers or guidance, from nearly every one, on what percentage of their revenue came from just video and from what region.

Level 3 CDN wins...

Several news out of Level 3 and their CDN business, recently, both out of Europe and the USA...

>>In the last few months, there has been increased discussion about the costs of delivering content from the Internet to the end user, and in particular, applications like iPlayer which are quite bandwidth intensive.

In a blog post by Anthony Rose, head of BBC Digital Media Technology, it has emerged that the BBC is in the process of switching its iPlayer hosting from current content distribution network (CDN) Akamai to Level 3 Communications prompting concern from a number of service providers about the increased cost burden this is likely to place on them.

a comment on Telecom Rumblings:

>>Level 3 at the BBC

The entrance of Tier-1 carriers into the CDN space therefore has the potential to shift some costs around and there will be pain. For Level 3 and AT&T, selling CDN services actually adds health to the overall IP transit markets by pulling traffic back off of the Akamai bypass, but those ISPs who have benefited won’t be happy because as buyers they like the IP transit market the way it is.

Tier 1 Research is also covering the news today:

>>The BBC iPlayer saga continues: Akamai dropped for Level 3 - UK carriers not happy

One of the most successful ongoing content delivery efforts of our times has been the BBC iPlayer, where BBC license holders (i.e., people in the UK who pay a 'television tax') get to watch BBC content up to seven days after its original broadcast – a very nice video timeshifting .....

another nice win for Level 3 (from The Industry Standard, click here for the link to the article):

>> Content-delivery network (CDN) vendor Level 3 Communications, on the other hand, has been given the task of delivering the DNC to everyone who wants to watch the convention live over the Internet.

To provide live streaming video of the DNC over the Web sites of major television networks and the Democratic National Convention Committee, Level 3 is deploying its transport equipment to aggregate fiber and connect it to the company's POP in Denver, then distribute video over its CDN to streaming locations. Level 3 also will cache all content from the DNC and make it available on-demand for anyone who wants to watch events they may have missed.


uWink Q2/2008 Earnings: It’s a Good Thing uWink Isn’t a Restaurant Company

Chris Fernandez updates his view on uWink. A lot of interesting comments, including a realistic approach to the disappointing results of the 2Q 2008...

>>After taking a look at the latest quarterly results from uWink (NASDAQ: UWKI.OB), parsing the numbers, and talking to management, it struck me that it’s a good thing that uWink isn’t a restaurant company because it was not a pretty picture…and then I caught myself.

You see, right now, uWink is indeed a restaurant company until they start selling and licensing their proprietary gaming and point of sale (POS) software on a large scale, which is the whole basis of my original investing thesis for buying shares of uWink.

In the end, I don’t really care about the success of their restaurants, and neither should you, but rather the continued success of that software and licensing business.

But, and this is a big but, until that happens, uWink is on borrowed time, and is indeed solely a restaurant company, that HOPES to license its software to really increase revenue, and ultimately, stay in business.

Logitech Introduces First Force Feedback Wheel for Wii

somehow interesting... Logitech is an Immersion licencee, but Nintendo is not, and there has never been complete clarity on whether their "feed back" on Wii is infringing IMMR patents or not...

>>To give you a more realistic driving experience on your Wii, Logitech (SWX:LOGN - News) (NASDAQ:LOGI - News) today announced the Logitech® Speed Force Wireless racing wheel the first force feedback wheel for the popular gaming platform. Licensed by Nintendo, Logitechs newest force feedback wheel works with Electronic Arts Need for Speed Undercover and paves the way for more force feedback racing titles on the Wii console.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Accuray results

ARAY came out with its 4Q results last night.

According to this post on the Yahoo MB, this is the first follow up by the UBS analyst (Erik Schneider):

>>UBS maintained their sell rating and PT of $7.00 due to lack of confidence in 2009 earnings.

Non-contingent backlog shows initial sign of strength

Although one quarter does not make a trend, we note that this increase is positive since we view this section of backlog as a fairly reliable indicator of revenue to be recognized in the near-(Product only), medium- (Product and Service) and long-term (Service only).

The company received new orders for 28 systems and the non-contingent backlog increased by $75M to $460M. This is the largest increase in non-contingent backlog in at least two years. We view this as a positive initial indicator, but the drop-through to recognized revenue still appears to be lagging.

The contingent backlog represents orders with a higher probability of cancellation that we would think of as the end stage of the sales funnel. The company removed another $29M of orders from its contingent bucket due primarily to a decline in expected order realization for stand-alone centers that now comprise about half of the company’s remaining contingent order base.

Oscoda woman undergoes new CyberKnife treatment for tumor

another article involving a patient who had cyberknife recently:

>>She was the 29th patient to undergo the treatment at St. Mary’s. Only one other hospital in the state offers the technology. Located further south in Ann Arbor is St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, the first to offer the radiosurgery in Michigan.

“Both my husband and daughter view that the diagnosis came at a time when it was a blessing. Three years ago, when my symptoms were discovered, the CyberKnife had not yet been invented,” said Anderson.

Although benign, the tumor was wrapped around the carotid artery and four facial nerves, three that control eye movement. Gonzalez referred Anderson to neurosurgeon E. Malcolm Fields, M.D., at St. Mary’s Seton Cancer Institute.

Concerns about the location of the tumor surfaced. Although not life altering, according to physicians, the tumor was inoperable because it was located in the optic chasm.

Fields said that Anderson was a candidate for CyberKnife and that he would take her medical chart to the CyberKnife team for review the very next day. The team agreed to take on Anderson’s case. Interestingly, Anderson was told, when the physicians reviewed the older MRI completed in January 2005, the tumor was indeed present, but missed.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Data Center Knowledge - CDN Blogs list

Thanks for the mention!

Here is the link to the article.

The 2008 Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo Opens This Weekend

-- Keynote Speakers include Nolan Bushnell, founder and former CEO of Atari Corporation and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre and CEO of uWink, Mark Sanborn, best-selling author of The Fred Factor; and Ted Balestreri, owner of The Sardine Factory.

Be a PCI Compliant Online Merchant

a post on Navisite's blog:

>>Posted by Allen Allison

Although the PCI DSS has been published and enforced for several years, there are still several organizations scrambling to deliver online credit card purchases in a PCI compliant, or even certified, environment. Here are three important steps to becoming a PCI compliant online merchant:

1. Choose the right hosting provider; PCI Compliance is not a checkbox.

2. Application development is as important to a PCI certifiable environment as is the security infrastructure.

3. Develop the right strategy for handling cardholder data.

Level 3 CDN strategy

Dan Rayburn has a very interesting interview with Jim Crowe, CEO of Level 3, about their CDN business. Hard to summarize anything, I suggest you read both the interview, at this link, and the follow up at Telecom Rumbling.

The comments, from blog.streamingmedia.com, are somehow Internap related:

>> Nice job, Dan. Is there anyone out there likely to challenge
what seem to be the big three going into next year: Akamai, Limelight, and Level 3? Internap has been imploding of course, who else might step forward? Panther?

Thanks for the link Rob. To answer your question, Panther won't be a challenge to the big three. Panther can grow, but they are doing under $20 million this year in total revenue, don't support streaming, live broadcasting, Flash streaming or any pieces of the ecosystem. But they are not trying to be Limelight in size or product feature set so it's not a knock on their service. They are happy being smaller and staying that way.

I don't see anyone challenging the big three. CDNetworks is the only other CDN who is going more than $25 million a year, but as of now, more than 90% of that revenue comes from Asia, which is a lot smaller market for video CDN services than the U.S. is.

If you look at purely CDN revenue, no one is going to come anywhere close to Akamai, Limelight and Level 3 by the end of next year.

Vodafone-Arcor - Equinix Ashburn next?

Company Information
Company Name ARCOR AG & Co. KG
Also Known As Vodafone-Arcor
Company Website http://www.arcor.de
Primary ASN 3209
IRR Record AS-ARCORGLOBAL
Network Type Cable/DSL/ISP
Approx Prefixes 250
Traffic Levels 100-200 Gbps
Traffic Ratios Balanced
Geographic Scope Europe

Public Peering Exchange Points

Equinix Ashburn 3209 10000
Equinix Zurich 3209 194.42.48.70 2000

Kuwait - the ministry would purchase a medical instrument called "Cyber Knife"

>>Additionally, the MP said that he had information indicating that the ministry would purchase a medical instrument called "Cyber Knife" to treat patients ...

Monday, August 18, 2008

Akamai and Limelight love each other...

Akamai's response and Limelight's response to Akamai's response - it's all about a ZD Net article...

>>I read with interest your recent blog post
on ZDNet entitled “Limelight Networks: Why the Olympics didn’t ‘Melt’ the Internet.“ However, I feel compelled to correct a number of inaccuracies in your post.

Internet Traffic: Growing or Slowing?

Data Center Knowledge on Internet growth:

>>"In spite of the widespread claims of continuing and even accelerating growth rates, Internet traffic growth appears to be decelerating." That's the verdict from Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota, a specialist in Internet metrics who monitors more than 100 public sources of web traffic data for the university's MINTS project.

To be clear, total traffic isn't decreasing, as it continues to grow at a rate of about 50 percent per year. But that rate of growth is slower than it has been, meaning that Internet traffic growth is not accelerating, but moderating.

As we noted in June, Odlyzko has seen traffic growth slowing in mature markets like Japan and Hong Kong. Will the US follow this pattern? Stay tuned.

Telecom Earnings Roundup

This article, by Ike Elliott, is a kind of follow up to Rob Powell Telecom Rumblings' "Earnings Summary for Internet Infrastructure", quoted a few days ago.

Some highlights related to the stocks covered here:

>>
Rob Powell has an excellent summary of the winners and losers, here. He concludes that colocation is hot, owning your own fiber is good, the slow economy is not having broad effect in telecom, and that competition among CDNs is heating up.

Here are a few additional observations: Focus counts for a lot in telecom strategy. Internap lost focus with its Vitalstream CDN acquisition, and it is showing in the company's financial reports.

Winners:

  • Time Warner Telecom
  • Global Crossing
  • Equinix
  • Savvis
  • Switch and Data
  • Comcast

Losers:

  • Internap
  • Paetec
  • Akamai
  • Cogent
  • Vonage
  • Time Warner Inc.

Pandora can't make money, may pull the plug

from Ars Technica, thanks to carpmtv on th Yahoo MB for the heads up. This may effect both Internap and Equinix (S. Jose L. data center)

>>Buckling under the weight of the Internet radio royalty hike that SoundExchange pushed through last July, Pandora may pull its own plug soon. Despite being one of the most popular Internet radio services, the company still isn't making money, and its founder, Tim Westergren, says it can't last beyond its first payment of the higher royalties.

Report for AS40428

PANDORA-EQX-SJL - Pandora Media, Inc

Free Frost & Sullivan Webinar On The CDN Market

by Dan Rayburn:

>>On Wednesday August 20th,
I will be hosting my first Frost & Sullivan Analyst Briefing on the CDN market. Each month, Frost & Sullivan analysts provide free briefings on a variety of topics in the Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) industry and this month I will be covering the latest trends and data from the CDN market.

Data Center Demand Remains Healthy

A must read about the data center market, from Data Center Knowledge:

>>What's the current outlook for data center demand?

A review of second-quarter conference calls for the other publicly-held data center specialists finds demand for data center space remains healthy, and outpaces supply in the most active markets of Silicon Valley and New York/New Jersey.

Equinix to Provide Data Center and Connectivity Infrastructure for Social Network Application Leader Slide

Today's P/R from Equinix will not really come as a surprise to the readers of this blog:

Friday, August 8, 2008

Slide, Inc.

Public Peering Exchange Points
Exchange Point Name ASN IP Address Mbit/sec
Equinix Ashburn 13949 206.223.115.190 1000
Equinix Los Angeles 13949 206.223.123.38 1000

Private Peering Facilities
Facility Name ASN City Country SONET Ethr ATM
Equinix Ashburn 13949 Ashburn US

It is interesting that the Company mentioned DC5, the latest data center in Ashburn (Washington, DC metro area), as the additional location.

Here's the full P/R:

Monday August 18, 8:00 am ET

Equinix's Newest Center in the Washington, D.C. Area to Facilitate High-Performance Links between Slide and Its More Than 150 Million Users

FOSTER CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq:EQIX - News), the leading global provider of network-neutral data centers and Internet exchange services, today announced that Slide, the world's largest producer of applications for social networks, has deployed operations at Equinixs Washington, D.C.-5 Internet Business Exchange (IBX®) center in Ashburn, VA. The move will enable Slide to operate within a high performance data center environment that offers the most efficient connectivity infrastructure for linking to its social network partners and to its more than 150 million users around the world.

Slide offers people the ability to engage and have fun with one another using the relationships they've already developed on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. Slides applications rely upon fast and stable links to end-users and to the social networks where the applications are available.

Slide will use Equinixs network-rich data center environment to directly connect with an aggregation of strategic partners within the same physical location. By operating within this Internet ecosystem and by conveniently connecting to these partners through the Equinix Exchange central switching fabric, Slide will have the opportunity to directly link with these companies, rather than connecting to them in multiple, disparate locations and over long distances. This direct connectivity reduces bottlenecks in the path between content and end-users, providing improved performance levels and reductions in transit costs.

Equinixs DC5 center will also provide Slide with a secure and redundant physical infrastructure. Power operations at the center include a high-performance backup system that provides uninterrupted power even in the event of utility power disruption. Security features include interlocking "mantrap" doors, multiple layers of biometric hand-geometry scanners controlling access, as well as 24-hour security officers and hundreds of surveillance cameras.

Slide requires fast and reliable connectivity to our partner social networking sites to ensure the best possible user experience with our applications, said Ken Brownfield, Director of Operations at Slide. Equinix's Washington, D.C. area campus is one of the most well connected data centers on the East Coast and it made the top of our list when we evaluated options for our East Coast expansion.

With more than 150 million users around the world, Slide is an innovator in developing applications that leverage the growing popularity of social networking sites, said Margie Backaus, chief business officer of Equinix. At Equinix, Slide has access to a one-stop location to more efficiently reach their partners and users, while operating within premium data centers that provide high levels of performance and reliability.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Canaccord Adams 28th Annual Global Growth Conference - Internap

Internap had its presentation at the Canaccord Conference on August 14th.

Nothing new, really, just a few slides worth posting with a few comments.

This slide is interesting:

>IP Services and Data Center services markets represent North America only. CDN service provider market is global.

Not really an apple to apple comparation, but we know how difficult it is to estimate the market size of CDN right now. Let's take it for granted.

Going backwords (here the importance is given to the potential size of each business unit in 2010, while I would like to make an analysis on 2007 numbers...):

IP Services - 7.3 Billion market
Data Center - 3.2 Billion market
CDN - 1.2 Billion market

If we try to calculate how much Internap represented in each market, we should come up with these numbers, roughly:

IP Services - 1,7%
Data Center - 2,6%

CDN, as usual, is a more difficult business unity to work with. 2007 numbers wouldn't represent a 12 month period, so I guess applying twice as much this year's revenue should be fair to Internap.

CDN - 1,7%

Using this approach, Internap presence in the Colocation sector is, percentage wise, larger than in the other business units. Interesting...

Bundling is increasing, although colo represents certainly a great part of it (97% of customers take another service, mostly IP Services).

I found DeBlasio's example on colo and bundled offering a bit funny: he said that, for example, when a colo customer whose contract at say $ 20 sq.ft. comes for renewal (and the market rate is now around $ 60), Internap's opportunity of offering several services is interesting and comes handy for the negotiation - you may renew at $ 55 and introduce CDN as an additional service. Which sounds a bit like a free gift on Mc Donald's Kids' menu... :-)



Internap doesn't want me to sleep

a small blog post (may be related to the situation I noticed on Keynote and printed - attached at the end of this post, as usual click for a clearer picture).

Question: how does Internap SLA apply in such cases? (scheduled network outages...)

jeramey ([info]jeramey) ha scritto,
@ 2008-08-17 01:14:00
Post Precedente Aggiungi ai post da ricordare! Dillo a un Amico! Post Successivo

Internap doesn't want me to sleep.
Thanks for the scheduled and unscheduled network outages back-to-back, yo. That they're happening in the middle of the night is even better.

Who can sleep in this heat anyway?

----

Indian industry seeks cutting edge IT solutions from vendors

from India Times, a small Navisite mention:

>>"After a long period of under-investing in their information technology infrastructure
and keeping most things like security and costs in-house in a do-it-yourself culture, Indian companies have suddenly realised the need to leverage the Web as a channel to expand their businesses rapidly," said Sumeet Sabharwal, managing director of Navisite India, a global organization which provides IT hosting, outsourcing and professional services to medium to large organizations.

This has led to the evolution of new infrastructure management models that encompass a growing number of managed devices in complex environments spread across multiple locations. "As a result, the ability to remotely manage equipment is becoming a top priority," Sabharwal said. His company, which has 900 businesses on its clients' roster, is promoting two new cutting-edge IT solutions in the mid-level industrial segment - the Remote Infrastructure Management Services (RIMS), and the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.