HP’s Helion Goes Commercial

HP has announced general availability of its Helion OpenStack cloud platform and Helion Development Platform based on Cloud Foundry.

The Helion portfolio was announced by HP earlier this year, when the firm disclosed that it was backing the OpenStack project as the foundation piece for its cloud strategy.

At the time, HP issued the HP Helion OpenStack Community edition for pilot deployments, and promised a full commercial release to follow, along with a developer platform based on the Cloud Foundry code.

HP revealed today that the commercial release of HP Helion OpenStack is now available as a fully supported product for customers looking to build their own on-premise infrastructure-as-a-service cloud, along with the HP Helion Development platform-as-a-service designed to run on top of it.

“We’ve now gone GA [general availability] on our first full commercial OpenStack product and actually started shipping it a couple of weeks ago, so we’re now open for business and we already have a number of customers that are using it for proof of concept,” HP’s CloudSystem director for EMEA, Paul Morgan said.

Like other OpenStack vendors, HP is offering more than just the bare OpenStack code. Its distribution is underpinned by a hardened version of HP Linux, and is integrated with other HP infrastructure and management tools, Morgan said.

“We’ve put in a ton of HP value add, so there’s a common look and feel across the different management layers, and we are supporting other elements of our cloud infrastructure software today, things like HP OneView, things like our Cloud Service Automation in CloudSystem,” he added.

The commercial Helion build has also been updated to include Juno, the latest version of the OpenStack framework released last week.

Likewise, the HP Helion Development Platform takes the open source Cloud Foundry platform and integrates it with HP’s OpenStack release to provide an environment for developers to build and deploy cloud-based applications and services.

HP also announced an optimised reference model for building a scalable object storage platform based on its OpenStack release.

HP Helion Content Depot is essentially a blueprint to allow organisations or service providers to put together a highly available, secure storage solution using HP ProLiant servers and HP Networking hardware, with access to storage provided via the standard OpenStack Swift application programming interfaces.

Morgan said that the most interest in this solution is likely to come from service providers looking to offer a cloud-based storage service, although enterprise customers may also deploy it internally.

“It’s completely customisable, so you might start off with half a petabyte, with the need to scale to maybe 2PB per year, and it is a certified and fully tested solution that takes all of the guesswork out of setting up this type of service,” he said.

Content Depot joins the recently announced HP Helion Continuity Services as one of the growing number of solutions that the firm aims to offer around its Helion platform, he explained. These will include point solutions aimed at solving specific customer needs.

The firm also last month started up its HP Helion OpenStack Professional Services division to help customers with consulting and deployment services to implement an OpenStack-based private cloud.

Pricing for HP Helion OpenStack comes in at $1,200 per server with 9×5 support for one year. Pricing for 24×7 support will be $2,200 per server per year.

“We see that is very competitively priced compared with what else is already out there,” Morgan said.

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China Using Home Servers Admidst Cyber Concerns

A Chinese firm has developed the country’s first homegrown servers, built entirely out of domestic technologies including a processor from local chip maker Loongson Technology.

China’s Dawning Information Industry, also known as Sugon, has developed a series of four servers using the Loongson 3B processor, the country’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.

“Servers are crucial applications in a country’s politics, economy, and information security. We must fully master all these technologies,” Dawning’s vice president Sha Chaoqun was quoted as saying.

The servers, including their operating systems, have all been developed from Chinese technology. The Loongson 3B processor inside them has eight cores made with a total of 1.1 billion transistors built using a 28-nanometer production process.

The Xinhua report quoted Li Guojie, a top computing researcher in the country, as saying the new servers would ensure that the security around China’s military, financial and energy sectors would no longer be in foreign control.

Dawning was contacted on Friday, but an employee declined to offer more specifics about the servers. “We don’t want to promote this product in the U.S. media,” she said. “It involves propriety intellectual property rights, and Chinese government organizations.”

News of the servers has just been among the ongoing developments in China for the country to build up its own homegrown technology. Work is being done on local mobile operating systems, supercomputing, and in chip making, with much of it government-backed. Earlier this year, China outlined a plan to make the country into a major player in the semiconductor space.

But it also comes at a time when cybersecurity has become a major concern for the Chinese government, following revelations about the U.S. government’s own secret surveillance programs. “Without cybersecurity there is no national security,” declared China’s Xi Jinping in March, as he announced plans to turn the country into an “Internet power.”

Two months later, China threatened to block companiesfrom selling IT products to the country if they failed to pass a new vetting system meant to comb out secret spying programs.

Dawning, which was founded using local government-supported research, is perhaps best known for developing some of China’s supercomputers. But it also sells server products built with Intel chips. In this year’s first quarter, it had an 8.7 percent share of China’s server market, putting it in 7th place, according to research firm IDC.

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Mobile Carriers Dash To Enter FCC Auction

Three of the four largest U.S. mobile operators and satellite provider Dish Network Corp plan to bid in the Federal Communications Commission’s November auction of airwaves, according to initial applications released on Wednesday.

As expected, the largest U.S. wireless carrier Verizon Communications Inc, No. 2 AT&T Inc, No. 4 T-Mobile US Inc and Dish appeared to be the largest companies to indicate an interest in bidding in the upcoming auction of frequencies known as AWS-3.

Applications from Northstar Wireless LLC and SNR Wireless LicenseCo LLC reported they had entered bidding agreements with Dish, which had indirect ownership interest in both companies.

Northstar’s disclosures showed direct and indirect ownership interest by Alaska Native corporation Doyon Ltd and indirect ownership interest by financial firm Catalyst Investors. Asset manager BlackRock Inc had membership shares in SNR, according to the documents.

T-Mobile and AT&T did not appear to plan joint bids with other companies, and T-Mobile’s Kathleen Ham, vice president of federal regulatory affairs, said the carrier had no such agreements with any company.

A Verizon spokesman did not respond to inquiries about potential joint bidding and Dish representatives declined comment beyond confirming the submission of its application, citing FCC’s anti-collusion rules.

A total of 80 entities submitted initial applications. Interested parties, which may or may not actually bid for wireless licenses in the auction, included smaller U.S. companies such as Bluegrass Wireless LLC, Guam-based wireless company Docomo Pacific Inc and individual spectrum investors.

Scheduled to begin on Nov. 13, the auction is expected to raise at least $10 billion and will include airwaves previously occupied by multiple federal users, including the Department of Homeland Security.

Dish applied to bid in the auction as American AWS-3 Wireless I LLC and disclosed joint bidding arrangements with SNR and Northstar, which in turn had to disclose ownership and other information.

SNR listed former FCC Wireless Bureau Chief John Muleta, now CEO of consulting firm Atelum LLC, as a contact. Muleta, reached late on Wednesday, declined comment, citing FCC’s restrictions.

Northstar’s disclosures listed Allen Todd, assistant secretary at Doyon, a Fairbanks-based Alaska Native Regional Corporation with numerous affiliates in various fields including oil and gas land drilling. Todd could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

SNR’s and Northstar’s, as well as AT&T’s, initial application appeared to be incomplete, which can be caused by small bureaucratic omissions. Of the 80 applications, 47 were deemed incomplete and have to be properly finished by Oct. 15 to allow the companies to participate.

All initial applications have to put down an upfront payment by Oct. 15 to confirm participation.

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Judge Rejects Silicon Valley Settlement

A California judge has rejected the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over no-hire agreements used by top Silicon Valley tech firms, saying the amount being offered to compensate workers is too low.

The remaining defendants in the case — Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe Systems — had reached a deal with the worker’s lawyers to settle the case for US$324.5 million, but Judge Lucy Koh of the federal district court in San Jose, California, said that amount is too low.

After subtracting the fees for the workers’ lawyers — they’re allowed to keep up to a quarter of the award, or $81 million, as well as other money — each worker would be left with an average of only $3,750.

“The Court finds the total settlement amount falls below the range of reasonableness,” Koh wrote in her order, issued Friday.

She said she was troubled that the workers would get less money than under a previous settlement with companies that settled earlier in the case, even though the case has been progressing in the workers’ favor since then.

Last year, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar settled with the workers before the case came to trial.

All of the companies were accused of striking secret deals to not poach each others’ workers, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act that reduced the workers’ potential to earn higher wages.

An expert hired for the case has estimated that the workers’ should receive damages of $3 billion, for wages they could have earned if the no-hire agreements hadn’t been in place.

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Will Twitter Release Data?

U.S. civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson is urging Twitter to release its employee diversity information, which its Silicon Valley peers such as Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Facebook have already done.

The Rainbow Push Coalition, founded by Jackson, has also asked Twitter to signal its commitment to inclusion by hosting a public community forum to address the company’s plan to recruit and retain more African American talent.

The coalition and black empowerment group, ColorOfChange.org, plans to launch a Twitter-based campaign to challenge the company, the coalition said in a statement late last week.

On Friday at the Netroots Nation conference in Detroit, ColorofChange will lead a “Black Twitter” plenary session where activists will push out the petition campaign over Twitter and other social media.

Tech companies have been under pressure to release employee diversity data since Jackson took up the campaign to highlight the underrepresentation of African-Americans in Silicon Valley companies, starting with a delegation to Hewlett-Packard’s annual meeting of shareholders.

“….Twitter has remained silent, resisting and refusing to publicly disclose its EEO-1 workforce diversity/inclusion data,” according to the joint petition by the coalition and ColorOfChange.org.

The diversity reports are typically filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and companies are not required to make the information public.

Twitter has not commented on the matter.

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Google, Dropbox Team Up

Google, Dropbox and a few other high-tech firms have devised a new way to help protect themselves against patent trolls.

Patent trolls, or “non-practicing entities,” are companies that buy up old patents and try to monetize them by accusing others of infringement. They usually request a one-off licensing fee to end a lawsuit, something many companies reluctantly pay because it’s cheaper than defending the claim.

The practice has become a significant problem in the high-tech field, in part because of the complex nature of modern software and hardware.

In an attempt to stop it, six high-tech companies have banded together to launch the License on Transfer Network, or LOT Network.

Members of Lotnet retain full ownership and licensing rights of their patents, but they agree to provide each other with a royalty-free license should any of the patents ever be sold.

That means if Dropbox, for instance, sells a patent on data storage to a third party, Google and the other members will first receive a license to the technology. That should insulate them from any lawsuits brought by the patent’s new owner.

Besides Google and Dropbox, the launch members include SAP, Canon, Asana and Newegg. They hope the agreement will reduce the nuisance of patent trolling.

“The LOT Network is a sort of arms control for the patent world,” said Allen Lo, deputy general counsel for patents at Google, in a statement. “By working together, we can cut down on patent litigation, allowing us to focus instead on building great products.”

The group is offering membership to other technology companies.

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NSA Spies With Tracking Cookies

The browser cookies that online businesses use to track Internet customers for targeted advertising are also used by the National Security Agency to track surveillance targets and break into their systems.

The agency’s use of browser cookies is restricted to tracking specific suspects rather than sifting through vast amounts of user data, theWashington Post reported Tuesday, citing internal documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Google’s PREF (for preference) cookies, which the company uses to personalize webpages for Internet users based on their previous browsing habits and preferences, appears to be a particular favorite of the NSA, the Post noted.

PREF cookies don’t store any user identifying information such as user name or email address. But they contain information on a user’s general location, language preference, search engine settings, number of search results to display per page and other data that lets advertisers uniquely identify an individual’s browser.

The Google cookie, and those used by other online companies, can be used by the NSA to track a target user’s browsing habits and to enable remote exploitation of their computers, the Post said.

Documents made available by Snowden do not describe the specific exploits used by the NSA to break into a surveillance target’s computers. Neither do they say how the NSA gains access to the tracking cookies, the Post reported.

It is theorized that one way the NSA could get access to the tracking cookies is to simply ask the companies for them under the authority granted to the agency by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Separately, the documents leaked by Snowden show that the NSA is also tapping into cell-phone location data gathered and transmitted by makers of mobile applications and operating systems. Google and other Internet companies use the geo-location data transmitted by mobile apps and operating systems to deliver location-aware advertisements and services to mobile users.

However, the NSA is using the same data to track surveillance targets with more precision than was possible with data gathered directly from wireless carriers, the Post noted. The mobile app data, gathered by the NSA under a program codenamed “Happyfoot,” allows the agency to tie Internet addresses to physical locations more precisely than was possible with cell-phone location data.

An NSA division called Tailored Access Operations uses the data gathered from tracking cookies and mobile applications to launch offensive hacking operations against specific target computers, the Post said.

An NSA spokeswoman Wednesday did not comment on the specific details in the Post story but reiterated the agency’s commitment to fulfill its mission of protecting the country against those seeking to do it harm.

“As we’ve said before, NSA, within its lawful mission to collect foreign intelligence to protect the United States, uses intelligence tools to understand the intent of foreign adversaries and prevent them from bringing harm to innocent Americans and allies,” the spokeswoman said.

The Post’s latest revelations are likely to shine a much-needed spotlight on the extensive tracking and monitoring activities carried out by major Internet companies in order to deliver targeted advertisements to users.

Privacy rights groups have protested such tracking for several years and have sought legislation that would give users more visibility and control over the data that is collected on them by online companies.

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Twitter Tightens Security

Twitter Inc said it has put in place a security technology that makes it harder to spy on its users and called on other Internet firms to do the same, as Web providers look to thwart spying by government intelligence agencies.

The online messaging service, which began scrambling communications in 2011 using traditional HTTPS encryption, said on Friday it has added an advanced layer of protection for HTTPS known as “forward secrecy.”

“A year and a half ago, Twitter was first served completely over HTTPS,” the company said in a blog posting. “Since then, it has become clearer and clearer how important that step was to protecting our users’ privacy.”

Twitter’s move is the latest response from U.S. Internet firms following disclosures by former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden about widespread, classified U.S. government surveillance programs.

Facebook Inc, Google Inc, Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc have publicly complained that the government does not let them disclose data collection efforts. Some have adopted new privacy technologies to better secure user data.

Forward secrecy prevents attackers from exploiting one potential weakness in HTTPS, which is that large quantities of data can be unscrambled if spies are able to steal a single private “key” that is then used to encrypt all the data, said Dan Kaminsky, a well-known Internet security expert.

The more advanced technique repeatedly creates individual keys as new communications sessions are opened, making it impossible to use a master key to decrypt them, Kaminsky said.

“It is a good thing to do,” he said. “I’m glad this is the direction the industry is taking.”

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Is GM Reconsidering Facebook

General Motors Co and Facebook Inc are in talks about the return of the U.S. automaker as a paid advertiser almost two months after GM said it would stop running ads on the social networking website, sources close to the situation said on Tuesday.

Although the two companies remain far from reaching an agreement, Facebook executives have actively courted the world’s largest carmaker. One source said Facebook was not pushing for GM’s immediate return, but offered to provide data showing the effectiveness of the website’s paid ads.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg sent GM Chief Executive Dan Akerson an e-mail urging the company to reconsider its decision shortly after the third-largest U.S. advertiser pulled its ads in May, a move that undermined confidence in Facebook on the eve of its highly-anticipated initial public offering, according to sources who were not permitted to speak publicly because the talks are ongoing.

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Verizon Introduces HSN For Financial Firms

Verizon on Wednesday launched a new low-latency network for financial services firms that can complete a stock transaction between New York and Chicago in as little as 14.5 milliseconds.

The new Verizon Financial Network Premier Low-Latency Service shaves as much as 5 milliseconds off the company’s current offering, a change that can translate into millions of dollars for high-frequency traders.

The new service, which becomes part of the Verizon Financial Network, uses higher performance networking technology from Ciena and takes the shortest possible path between the two metropolitan areas, according to Verizon.

Verizon is targeting the service to global banks, hedge funds, pre- and post-trade service firms and money managers who use high-performance computing algorithms and networks for speedy transactions.

High-frequency trading firms require low-latency networks to execute arbitrage transactions and algorithmic trading with minimal delay. Fiber distance between trading locations introduces latency, as does the equipment used to light the fiber.

Verizon plans on expanding the new high-speed network to other U.S. markets later this year.

CME Group, a financial derivatives marketplace, plans to use the new Verizon service in its Aurora, Ill., data and colocation center to enable companies in Chicago and New York to trade on CME Group’s platforms and more quickly exchange market data.

“We’re creating a secure, reliable high-speed path along one of the busiest financial trading routes,” Chandan Sharma, managing director of Verizon’s financial vertical markets, said in a statement.

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