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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Google Defends New Privacy Policy

In a letter sent to eight members of Congress, Google yesterday defended its decision to consolidate its privacy policies and users’ personal information.

The 13-page letter explains Google’s decision to change its privacy policies and answers specific questions from the legislators. In sum, Google contended that its approach to privacy remains the same, that users still have control over how they use the company’s various online services, and that private information stays private.

“Some have expressed concern about whether consumer can opt out of ourupdated privacy policy,” wrote Pablo Chavez, Google’s director of public policy, in the letter.

“We understand the question at the heart of this concern. We believe the relevant issue is whether users have choices about how their data is collected and used. Google’s privacy policy – like that of other companies – is a document that applies to all consumers using our products and services. However, we have built meaningful privacy controls into our products, and we are committed to continue offering those choices in the future,” he added.

Google stirred up something of a privacy firestorm last week when company executives disclosed plans to rewrite privacy policies and to meld user information across its various products and services.

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Google Buys Clever Sense

Google has purchased Clever Sense, the developer of Alfred, a personalized restaurant and bars recommendations app, for an undisclosed amount, both companies stated.

The Internet giant has been strengthening its local offerings. It acquired in September for example a restaurant ratings publisher Zagat to boost its online maps and local business listings with trustworthy reviews and recommendations.

Alfred, which currently provides recommendations on restaurants, bars, and night life in the locality where the person is, could however down the line broaden its scope, potentially making it the Android alternative to the Siri personal assistant on Apple’s iPhone 4S.

Clever Sense’s co-founder and CEO Babak Pahlavan suggested in a notice on the company’s website that Alfred may include other information sources and services.

Discovering local information is extremely important to both users and businesses, and the acquisition of Clever Sense will benefit both, Pahlavan said. “With Google and Clever Sense working together, our entire team looks forward to building more intelligent, serendipitous and magical services!”, he added.

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White House Threatens Net Veto

The executive office of U.S. President Barack Obama stated Tuesday that the White House strongly opposes passage in the Senate of a resolution that could impact the equal availability of the Internet to all classes of users.

The resolution introduced in the Senate disapproves a rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission in December on the net neutrality issue, and states that it should have “no force or effect”.

If the President is presented with the resolution, S.J. Res. 6, which would not safeguard the free and open Internet, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto it, the administration said.

The FCC Report and Order adopted the rule that fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic”. A “no blocking” rule states that fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices. Mobile broadband providers are also prohibited from blocking lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services.

The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed in April a Republican-backed resolution disapproving the FCC rules, and asking for their roll back.

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Google Search To Add Default Encryption

Google is implementing over the next few weeks default encryption using SSL on searches for users signing in with their accounts, the company said Tuesday.

The move comes over a year after Google made SSL the default setting for Gmail, and also unveiled an encrypted search service.

“As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver,” Google’s product manager, Evelyn Kao said in a blog post on Tuesday.

The encryption is expected to be particularly useful for people using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a Wi-Fi hotspot in an Internet cafe, Kao added.

With Google search over SSL, users get an end-to-end encrypted search channel between their computer and Google. The secured channel helps protect search terms and search results pages from being intercepted by a third party, Google said in a description of SSL search.

Over the next few weeks, users will be redirected to a secure search site when they are signed in with their Google Account. The change encrypts search queries and Google’s
results page.

Users can also navigate directly to the secure search site if they are signed out or don’t have a Google Account.

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Sprint To Debut Cloud Services

Sprint will introduce cloud services to all sizes of businesses in the fourth quarter, a Sprint executive said on Wednesday.

A Sprint spokeswoman said more details would be announced at a later date, but confirmed the executive’s comments in an interview published Wednesday.

Paget Alves, head of Sprint business markets, said in the interview that Sprint’s offerings to businesses will include selling its network infrastructure as a service available on-demand.

Sprint will also offer software, security apps and Internet hosting.

Verizon and AT&T offer similar services, and Alves was said that the carriers are “in a unique position because our business is centered around the cloud.”

Sprint plans to offer services that rely on the company’s own data center, unlike Verizon, which is using capacity from Terremark, which Verizon purchased for $1.4 billion in January.

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Lightning Took Down Amazon, Microsoft Clouds

A lightning strike in Dublin on Sunday caused a power outage in data centers belonging to Amazon and Microsoft, causing the companies’ cloud services to go offline.

Lightning hit a transformer, sparking an explosion and fire which caused the power outage at 10:41 AM PDT, according to preliminary information, Amazon wrote on its Service Health Dashboard. Under normal circumstances, backup generators would seamlessly kick in, but the explosion also managed to disable some of those generators.

By 1:56 PM PDT, power to the majority of network devices had been restored, allowing Amazon to focus on bringing EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances and EBS (Elastic Block Storage) volumes back online. But progress was slower than expected, Amazon said a couple of hours later.

“We know many of you are anxiously waiting for your instances and volumes to become available, and we want to give you more detail on why the recovery of the remaining instances and volumes is taking so long,” the company wrote at 11:04 PM PDT. “Due to the scale of the power disruption, a large number of EBS servers lost power and require manual operations before volumes can be restored … While many volumes will be restored over the next several hours, we anticipate that it will take 24-48 hours until the process is completed.”

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ISPs Close Internet Gap

Broadband speeds on average are within 80 percent of what major Internet service providers advertise, an appreciable increase from two years ago, according to a government study.

The Federal Communications Commission studied cable, DSL and fiber-to-the-home services at 13 top U.S. broadband providers.

The FCC found Verizon Communications Inc’s fiber network was best at meeting or exceeding advertised maximum download speeds, while Cablevision Systems Corp came in last place.

Overall, the numbers were a big boost from 2009, when data indicated download speeds were often about half of Internet service providers’ (ISP) maximum advertised speeds.

“Most major ISPs are providing service close to what they’re advertising. This represents a significant improvement over the findings from two years ago when we first shined a light on this issue,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said, unveiling the study’s findings at a Best Buy Co store in the District of Columbia.

During peak consumer usage hours when networks are busiest, actual download speeds varied from 114 percent to 54 percent of advertised speed among the different ISPs, the FCC said.

The complete findings of the report, its raw data and an FCC-prepared guide for consumers will be made available online. The FCC says the data will help consumers decide which Internet speed, service and provider best meet their needs.

“This report pretty well dispels the myth … that there’s a huge gap between advertised and actual speeds, and in fact we do pretty well here in the United States,” said Richard Bennett, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Not everyone was impressed with the study’s findings.

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EMC’s Data Breach Cost $66 Million

Between April and June 2011, EMC spent $66 million handling the fallout from a March cyber attack against its systems, which resulted in the compromise of information relating to the SecurID two-factor authentication sold by EMC’s security division, RSA.

That clean-up figure was disclosed last week during an EMC earnings call, by David Goulden, the company’s chief financial officer. It doesn’t include post-breach expenses from the first quarter, when EMC began investigating the attack, hardening its systems, and working with customers to prevent their being exploited as a result of the attacks.

In spite of the breach, EMC reported strong second-quarter financial results, earning consolidated revenue of $4.85 billion, which is an increase of 20% compared with the same period one year ago. Meanwhile, second-quarter GAAP net income increased by 28% from the same period last year, to reach $546 million. The company saw large growth in its information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure products and services, including quarterly revenue increases of 19% for its information storage group.

Those results led executives to increase their financial outlook for 2011 and predict consolidated revenue in excess of $19.8 billion, which would be a 16% increase from EMC’s 2010 revenues of $17 billion.

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Skype Gives Asterisk The Boot

The Internet is buzzing with news that Skype is in the process of giving Asterisk the boot by no longer offering Skype for Asterisk starting in July.  Skype for Asterisk is proprietary software that was developed by Digium with Skype’s approval. The software was unique in that it allowed Asterisk based systems to join Skype’s VoIP Network. We assume this will not negatively impact current users for the next couple of years.

We wonder if Microsoft had a hand in killing this deal with Asterisk since they have a competing product.  One could also assume that Skype wanted to develop a native application and not use Asterisk for SIP implementations. I guess we will need the executives at Skype to fill us in on the details one day.

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