In April a report indicated that Cinven had put HEG up for sale with a €1.7 billion ($1.9 billion) sticker price, and also mentioned Hellman & Friedman among firms that might be interested. That price puts HEG’s multiple to earnings of €140 million at just over 12 times, which is comparable to GoDaddy’s multiple, and significantly higher than competitors Rackspace and Endurance International Group.

Strato was acquired by Deutsche Telekom in 2009 for €275 million ($310 million). One of Reuters’ sources said it has core earnings of around €30 million and its enterprise worth is about a quarter as much as HEG.

Potential bidders for HEG would have to consider the value of both its mass market and managed hosting businesses, according to the report.

Deutsche Telekom announced intentions to double its business cloud revenue by 2018 and become the leading cloud platform provider for businesses in Europe when extending a partnership with Huawei to include public cloud a year ago. Adding HEG’s customers, products and team would be a significant move towards that goal.

Source: TheWHIR

Gelsinger also said in an interview with The WHIR that the current mobile-cloud era is the most transformative period in his career for IT.

The companies said that with VMware Horizon Air’s scalability and flexible monthly subscription pricing it will prove less costly and complex for enterprises than legacy on-premise virtual desktop infrastructure. IDC has predicted the global DaaS market will grow from $376 million in 2014 to over $1.4 billion in 2019, according to a VMware blog post.

Horizon Air is based on Desktone, which VMware acquired in 2013 to serve the demand for mobile enterprise hybrid computing.

“Hybrid is the new reality for migration to cloud. It’s the fastest-growing segment in the enterprise cloud space. Clients want control and flexibility in making decisions about taking their existing IT infrastructure into the cloud,” said IBM Cloud CTO Jim Comfort in a blog post.

The launch extends a strategic partnership IBM and VMware announced in February at IBM Interconnect to encourage enterprises to move workloads from on-premise software-defined data centers to the cloud. The companies’ general partnership spans 14 years, and includes IBM’s support for VMware NSX, which launched in November to encourage enterprises to transition to hybrid environments including Softlayer.

VMware Horizon Air on IBM Cloud will be available to all customers of both companies globally, after an initial launch slated for Q3 2016.

Source: TheWHIR

Some elements of the US Telecom challenge seemed unlikely to succeed, including its key claim that the precedent set in the “Brand X” case is does not apply, and therefore that the definition of “telecommunications” is not ambiguous. Politico reports that the appeals court judges had seemed skeptical of the applicability of the FCC’s new net neutrality rules specifically to mobile broadband and internet exchange traffic, but Tuesday’s ruling represents an unqualified victory for the FCC. Net neutrality advocates are hardly enthusiastic about the FCC’s regulations.

Republican lawmakers have opposed the regulations and introduced the Internet Freedom Act into Congress last year, which was immediately sent to the Subcommittee on Communication and Technology.

Verizon successfully blocked FCC net neutrality regulation in appeals court in 2014.

Source: TheWHIR

“With spend on cloud services growing by over 50 percent per year and spend on SaaS growing by over 30 percent, there is little surprise that cloud operator capex continues to drive strong growth in public cloud infrastructure,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst. “But on the enterprise data center side too we continue to see a big swing towards spend on private cloud infrastructure as companies seek to benefit from more flexible and agile IT technology. The transition to cloud still has a long way to go.”

In a soft quarter typical for the beginning of the year, infrastructure sales grew by 13 percent annualized in Q1, and 20 percent over the past year.

Synergy calculated total public cloud revenues at $20 billion per quarter as of September.

READ MORE: HPE Bets on Core Data Center Hardware Sales to Drive Profits

Source: TheWHIR

The criteria set out by the NTIA for the IANA transition were to support and enhance the multistakeholder model, maintain the security and stability of the DNS, meet the needs of IANA service partners and customers, and maintain the openness of the internet, without recourse to a government-led organization. ICANN set out the proposal in March, which includes measures for “the community” to potentially block ICANN budgets, bylaw changes, and even board members, as a safeguard against takeover.

Oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) will be transitioned from the NTIA to “direct customer stewardship via contracts, service-level expectations, community-led reviews, and increased transparency.”

The proposal was weighed against recommendation from the Government Accountability Office and reviewed by a panel of corporate governance experts, NTIA said.

“The internet’s multistakeholder community has risen to the challenge we gave them to develop a transition proposal that would ensure the internet’s domain name system will continue to operate as seamlessly as it currently does,” said Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling. “The plan developed by the community will strengthen the multistakeholder approach that has helped the Internet to grow and thrive, while maintaining the stability, security, and openness that users across the globe depend on today.”

The Internet Association, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), and the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) issued a statement in support of the proposals.

“The internet economy applauds NTIA for its deliberative and thorough work reviewing the ICANN transition proposals to ensure its principles for a successful transition are met. Our organizations agree that the proposals to transition ICANN from U.S. government stewardship to a bottom-up, multistakeholder model satisfy NTIA principles and provide the internet with the best path forward for self governance. It is important that Congress not artificially slow down the transition beyond theSeptember 30 expiration of the current IANA contract. We will remain engaged and vigilant as the transition proceeds to ensure the continued success of the multistakeholder model.”

Ecommerce lobby group NetChoice also expressed support for the decision.

US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) introduced legislation on Wednesday, the Washington Post reports, to require the Commerce Department to keep ICANN under the NTIA unless even more legislation is passed, ordering it to carry on.

Recently departed ICANN head Fadi Chehadé said a year ago that the government would approve a transfer plan before the fall Presidential election, despite the renewal of the existing contract just last August.

Source: TheWHIR

• Migration Delivery Partners: 2nd Watch, Accenture, ClassMethod, ClearScale, Cloud Technology Partners, cloudpack, Cloudreach, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Corpinfo, CSC, FPT Software, Infosys, Logicworks, REAN Cloud, Serverworks, Slalom Consulting, Smartronix
• Migration Consulting Partners: Apps Associates, Aquilent, Datapipe, Flux7, Pythian, TriNimbus
• Migration Technology for Discovery & Planning: Atadata, Cloudamize, RISC Networks
• Migration Technology for Workload Mobility: Racemi, CloudEndure, Atadata
• Migration Technology for Application Profiling: New Relic, AppDynamics, Dynatrace Ruxit

AWS already offers a Professional Services Cloud Adoption Framework, and launched its Database Migration Service in October to move enterprise databases to AWS Aurora, but as Bill Kleyman pointed out in January, working with heterogeneous storage ecosystems requires expertise.

“More and more, I hear from customers who want to migrate large-scale workloads to AWS, and seek advice regarding their cloud migration strategy,” said AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr in a blog post.

With over 30 percent of the cloud infrastructure market already, and a lead among public cloud providers for enterprises, AWS room to grow its revenue from enterprises is increasingly among cloud adoption laggards and business that might require a little more help and reassurance then the pioneers of public cloud use.

AWS announced a partnership with Ericsson in February to encourage telecom cloud migration by building cloud innovation centers.

Original article appeared here: AWS Migration Competency Launches with Dozens of Partners

Source: TheWHIR

READ MORE: Rackspace CEO: Q1 2016 Growth Driven by Managed Cloud Services Demand

The expanded Managed Application Services options provide support options for business-critical applications: Magento; SAP Hybris; Sitecore Experience Platform; Oracle Commerce; Adobe Experience Manager; and custom Java and .net applications. Application support can be purchased based on “Tools and Expertise” for self-monitoring, “Alerts and Response” for proactive Rackspace management, and “Critical Application Services” for expert consultation on application environment design and performance.

“All of these additions to the Rackspace Digital portfolio offer our customers new ways of removing the burden of architecting and managing optimized digital environments, allowing them to focus on delivering differentiated customer experiences,” said Rackspace Director of Product for the Digital Practice Brant Jones in a blog post.

SEE ALSO: Rackspace Launches One-Stop Digital Services Practice

Managed services were the top growth segment for Rackspace in the last quarter.

Magento is the leading platform for ecommerce with a 29 percent market share, aheadWorks reported in March. Managed Magento, therefore, is a big potential market for Rackspace, and PayPal and Ipsos predicted in November that the global ecommerce market will surpass $661 billion in 2017. The addition of managed Magento on AWS follows on Rackspace’s launch of support for AWS in October.

Source: TheWHIR

Saunders was ultimately charged with one count of Intentional Damage to a Protected Computer; four counts of Obtaining Information from a Protected Computer without Authorization; and two counts of Possession of a Firearm in Interstate Commerce while Unlawfully using a Controlled Substance. He pleaded guilty to the intentional damage charge under the conditions of a plea agreement.

SEE ALSO: Hacker Lifts Millions of User Credentials from Webmail Providers: Report

The wording of the Justice Department release headline “restitution for costs incurred” indicates the inclusion of mitigation and related costs in the $189,000 damages.

Saunders will also serve three years of probation, and forfeits the property seized in the investigation. His prison sentence is shorter than those received by the four members of cyber-vandal group Lulzsec in a UK court in 2013.

Source: TheWHIR

That’s why one of the sessions in the Marketing Track of HostingCon Global is “How Service Providers Can Take Advantage of the Booming E-Commerce Market.” Wilfried Beeck, CEO of ePages, will lead an exploration of the role of web hosts, ISPs, and service providers in ecommerce, particularly for SMBs. Competition among ecommerce companies grows constantly, but few of them deal directly, let alone effectively with SMBs.

Beeck founded ePages in 1983, after studying Mathematics and Computer Sciences. He also co-founded Intershop Communications GmbH, and managed its IPO in 1998. He is currently involved with a number of other high-tech companies as an investor and board member.

His expertise will be highly valuable to many hosts, and just may be the start of a big break for your web hosting company at HostingCon Global 2016. Register by June 10 to save $100 with the Early Bird rate.

Source: TheWHIR

It is little surprise that internet advertising is growing, or that mobile advertising growth outpaces desktop, but the extent of these trends is striking. There was a 20 percent increase in overall spending to $60 billion in the US in 2015, and mobile ad spend roughly doubled in that time. Still, the report shows that based on time spent, mobile still represents a major opportunity for advertisers, with 25 percent of time but only 12 percent of advertising spent on mobile. Non-mobile internet use takes 22 percent of consumer’s time, and 23 percent of advertising spending.

Ad blockers and muted videos represent major growing barriers to the effectiveness of that advertising, however, with 93 percent of internet users considering using ad blocking software, and 81 percent muting video ads. Privacy is also a looming issue, with 50 percent saying they are very concerned about data privacy and how companies use customer data.

READ MORE: China Said to Push for More State Control Over Video Websites

US data privacy regulation policy is in currently in development by the FCC, with advertisers expressing fear earlier this week that their effectiveness could be curtailed by proposed rules.

The report also highlights the declining use of text as a form of internet communication, suggesting it is being replaced in many areas by voice and image. The number of Baidu queries by speech, for instance, had reached one in ten in September 2014, when the company’s chief scientist Andrew Ng predicted that half of all searches will be done by voice or image in 2020.

As big data is adopted by businesses, opportunities for business apps will continue to emerge, according to the report, which is potentially a boon for both web hosts and cloud service providers.

A general point made throughout the report is that the pace of market transformation related to the internet is out of proportion with historical changes in media or technology. The rapid pace has made many internet companies highly profitable very quickly, but it puts pressure on companies to be nimble and forward-thinking.

Source: TheWHIR