GigaOM » Royal Dutch Shell Group

Oct. 14: What We’re Reading About Infrastructure

Derrick Harris — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:31:09 +0000

Aside from the big news we covered here this morning, today also brought some interesting nuggets about Verizon’s data center plans, Twitter’s new data format and yet another scale-out storage vendor — this time MaxiScale — getting acquired. Further, there’s a lot to be learned from Ars Technica’s analysis of Intel’s huge recession profits and Cloudscaling’s cloud-benchmarking proofpoints.

How Intel Clawed Huge Profits from the Global Downturn (From Ars Technica) It helps to be among the most important companies in a field that will never decrease in importance. Intel was poised to strike whichever iron was hot, even during the downturn.

Cloudharmony: KT’s Cloud Faster than Amazon, Rackspace (From the Cloudscaling blog) The point here isn’t to illustrate that internal clouds are faster than public clouds (they probably should be), but that you can achieve this performance using commodity gear and building for failure.

Twitter Solves its Data Formatting Challenge (From Computerworld) The decision to choose the Google-created protocol buffers was based on the 12TB of data Twitter stores each day. If you’re wondering why it relies so heavily on NoSQL and Hadoop, here’s a big reason.

Overland Storage Announces Acquisition of MaxiScale Inc. (From Marketwire) That didn’t take long. MaxiScale has been around for about a year (or thereabouts) and it’s already been bought. We shouldn’t be surprised. If you have good scale-out storage technology, you’re on somebody’s list.

Verizon Reveals Plans for Massive NY Data Center (From the Web Host Industry Review) Verizon has been building out its cloud footprint lately; is this new data center part of that strategy? Of course, it has another business that might need additional capacity …

For more cloud-related news analysis and research, visit GigaOM Pro.

Image courtesy of Intel.

Yes Virginia, there is a Firefox Mobile

James Kendrick — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:11:02 +0000

No question I loves me some Firefox in the morning and it seems like it’s been rumored for years that Mozilla has been secretly working on a mobile version of the browser. Firefox Mobile has long been reported to be the light version of the browser designed to take advantage of handheld devices that need special attention. According to the people behind FF Mobile it is designed around touch as the main source of interaction, although they are shunning multi-touch as not mainstream enough. There is video of the concept version that shows how FF Mobile might look when it’s released. Some day.

(Aza’s Thoughts via Gizmodo)

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

BP's Profits Lag Behind its Oil Peers

Stacey Higginbotham — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:00:02 +0000

Oil giant BP lagged behind its peers when it reported a drop in profits for the latest full-year period, to $20.85 billion from $22 billion in 2006. The drop was blamed on refining outages and rising costs. The oil company was not helped by losing its longtime CEO last year or a $373 million fine from the Department of Justice resulting from charges related to its oil refinery explosion in 2005 and a record of environmental damage and fraud.

And while BP has made suggestions that it’s been moving away from the company’s renewable energy division, weaker profits could mean an even paler shade of green for BP. Particularly when its oil company competitors are making money hand over fist compared with BP, and don’t seem too worried about their image on renewables.

Royal Dutch Shell last week reported a 23 percent rise in full-year earnings to a record $31.3 billion. Exxon Mobil posted the largest-ever annual profit by a U.S. company with earnings of $40.6 billion. For oil companies, being green may not pay — at least not in the short term.

BP did see its fourth-quarter profits rise, to $4.41 billion from $2.88 billion in the same period last year. But its net replacement cost profits dropped by 24 percent for the quarter, to $2.97 billion. The net replacement cost is a measure of how much it would cost an oil company to buy oil at today’s prices. It’s one way to take the rising (or falling) price of crude out of the equation to check an oil company’s underlying health. For BP, it’s not so good.

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

So You Wanna Work From Home? You Can Convince Your Boss

Dian Schaffhauser — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:00:54 +0000

Sure, this is a topic we’ve explored before from multiple dimensions (see “Yet Another Reason to Build a Case for Telecommuting” and “Challenging Telework Myths“). But here’s your chance to get advice for building a case for telecommuting directly from Chuck Wilsker, the president and CIO of The Telework Coalition, who has probably heard more excuses from managers and executives for not allowing workers to do their jobs from home than any other person alive. The Coalition’s mission is, “enabling and supporting virtual, mobile and distributed work through research education, technology and legislation.”

Lay out the reason you want to work from home. Wilsker suggests something along these lines: “I’ve been an employee for three years. I get top reviews. You tell me how important I am to the company. I need a little work-life balance. My kid plays soccer. Even if I leave the office at 4 o’ clock, I can’t guarantee I’ll be home for that game at 6. I’d really like to telecommute.”

Address the equipment issue. If your manager says, “We don’t have the equipment,” you respond: “You’ve given me a laptop already,” said Wilsker. “We have the technology in place. We have a lot of people who travel. Does it matter if the work is done from a hotel room or a home?”

Address your manager’s security concerns. “If you’re dealing with medical records or you have to comply with regulations, make sure you address that,” said Wilsker. That may mean learning how from others in the company who are already doing mobile work.

Consider the business continuity angle. “Ask your boss — especially if you live in the north where you have snow — ‘How many days have you had to close operations because of weather?’” said Wilsker. “‘How much did that cost the business?’”

If your manager hedges, make it easier to agree by reducing the commitment. “Say, ‘I’d like to try it for a 90-day trial. I’d like to do it one or two days a week. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll know then.’”

Put together an agreement. Include “what you’re going to do, when you’re going to be available, what hours you’ll be working, who’s responsible for what.” Assure your manager that your work computer will not become your home computer. Your kid won’t be running CDs from school on it.

Don’t use the “T” word. “Don’t talk about telework or telecommuting,” said Wilsker. He suggests using the terms “distributed worker” or “virtual worker.”

Point out that virtual work will cut down on presenteeism. “It’s like absenteeism — you feel like shit, but you still go into work,” explained Wilsker. “People are coughing and you have these people coming in sick, which can make other people sick.”

Supply statistics. “Show your boss how virtual work will help the bottom line, build morale, bolster recruiting and retention, provide life balance.” The numbers are out there for all of those things, said Wilsker. You’ll find plenty of additional artillery on the Telework Coalition web site.

What objections have you heard that aren’t already on the list?

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

EMI Finally Partners with YouTube

Liz Gannes — Thu, 31 May 2007 15:30:43 +0000

EMI today becomes the last major label to partner with YouTube to share audio and video recordings. Warner, Universal, and Sony BMG had taken equity stakes in YouTube last fall just prior to it being bought by Google, alongside similar partnerships with the video-sharing site.

The partnership signals YouTube is back on track with its pre-Google dealmaking, though a lot has changed since last fall.

Interestingly, an emailed release refers to YouTube’s “Claim Your Content” program as if it has already been instated:

EMI Music will use YouTube’s industry-leading content management tools which feature a content identification and reporting system that will help EMI track and monetize its content and compensate its artists. YouTube’s content management tools also give EMI Music the ability to request the removal of EMI’s copyrighted content from YouTube.

Yesterday, in a major benchmark for the music business, Apple iTunes started selling songs and music videos from EMI without digital rights management.

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

Macworld Live Coverage

Josh Pigford — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 17:57:42 +0000

As with all major live Apple events, The Apple Blog will be having (we hope) live coverage of Macworld.

The Steve Jobs Keynote will be on Tuesday, January 9 from 9:00AM to 11:00AM PST.

We’ve got some of “our people” that will be there and hopefully will be able to get us some live coverage.

We’ve got a live chat room setup for this event, located at the following URL:

https://theappleblog.campfirenow.com/c60e9

It’s being provided by Campfire.

Feel free in the meantime to go chat it up with other TAB readers and then on Tuesday morning we’ll start the live coverage.

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

MSU students go wireless

Om Malik — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 15:03:23 +0000

Mississippi State University students are getting really addicted to wireless Internet, according to this report from the campus paper. Thank god, WorldCon has nothing to do with it.

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