What's (technically) in your tweets?

Twitter Platform/API technical lead Raffi Krikorian posted an interesting map of what's going on behind your Twitter stream. As it turns out, there is quite a bit of data associated with not just you as a user, but also with every tweet that you post to the service.

Twitter status objects are continuing to expand (despite the 140 character limitation) as new functions such as geo-location and annotations make their way into the service.

One notable aspect is Twitter's focus on users' profile data including the number of status updates and where they sent the update from. … Read more

Virtual goods expected to hit 20 percent of game revenue

A new study by virtual goods provider Viximo suggests that by 2011, sales of virtual goods will amount to 20 percent of U.S. game software revenues.

According to the report (registration required), this forecast is predicated on the expectation that virtual goods will grow faster than the overall gaming software industry. In 2009, U.S. retail sales of console, portable, and PC game software generated revenues of $10.5 billion, an 11 percent decline over the $11.7 billion generated in 2008. In the meantime, virtual goods revenues are expected to hit roughly $1.6 billion in 2010 and … Read more

Analyzing public-cloud logs and transactions

Gartner has predicted that IT will spend more money on private cloud computing than the public cloud through 2012. And while I personally am a big supporter of private cloud, I've still been trying to figure what are the real issues that would make users avoid public cloud services, and what aspects of public clouds could be changed to make them more appealing to enterprise users.

It's no secret that security is a major concern, but companies' reluctance to adopt the public cloud seems to go beyond security. At its heart, it appears to be a matter of … Read more

Linux: Strong and getting stronger

At the Linux Foundation's annual collaboration summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, Executive Director Jim Zemlin kicked off the event with some interesting perspectives on the state of the Linux marketplace today.

The short version: Linux is going strong and getting stronger.

According to Zemlin, the macro-economic trends have played to the strengths of Linux and open source. Few can dispute that Linux is cheaper to procure and run in comparison to proprietary platforms. This applies not only to end users but also to device manufacturers and development shops building platforms.

Would Google be the company it is today … Read more

Venture investment rises in first quarter of 2010

Private company research firm CB Insights (formerly known as Chubby Brain) on Tuesday released new venture investment data for the first quarter of 2010. Overall, the news is very positive with strong growth in the number of deals from 687 in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 731 in the first quarter of 2010.

The first quarter of 2010 saw $5.9 billion invested across 731 deals, a marked increase over the year-ago quarter when $3.9 billion was invested across 483 deals. "The psychology and sentiment of entrepreneurs and venture capital investors continues to improve, albeit cautiously," the report concluded.

And while CB Insights notes that $5.9 billion remains far below quarterly levels seen before the '08-'09 recession, there is some belief (that I share) that "the VC asset class has perhaps reset at a lower but ultimately more sustainable and healthier level."

The fact that VCs are opening their collective wallets, even for smaller deals, is good news for both entrepreneurs and the economy as a whole. That said, there is still probably too much money still sitting on the sidelines.

What's interesting to note is the vast disparity in the number of deals by sector, where health care and Internet outpace all other categories by at least 3 to 1 in number of deals.

… Read more

IBM proclaims middleware dominance

IBM released new analyst data on Monday that shows Big Blue is the market share leader for service-oriented architecture (SOA) software, capturing nearly 75 percent of the market. This follows news last week detailing IBM's 31 percent overall middleware market share.

And while it's not surprising that IBM has a large share of the middleware market, what's notable is that much of the company's recent success has come with an added bonus--taking away Oracle customers.

Oracle introduced its Fusion Middleware product roadmap in 2008, which included the amalgamation of several acquisitions, including BEA and Plumtree. However, … Read more

The changing face of private cloud

The debate over private clouds will likely continue in the foreseeable future as public-cloud usage becomes more acceptable in the enterprise, and private-cloud vendors offer more solutions-oriented approaches to create cloud-like infrastructure.

And it's only getting more confusing as the cloud term has effectively lost any specific meaning and is thrown around in relation to everything from Internet-based storage to grid computing.

To the extent that cloud offerings can be categorized for ease of discussion, I like RedMonk analyst Michael Cote's explanation. (He also uses a burger metaphor in describing these layers.)

IaaS = servers, storage PaaS = middleware SaaS = applications

Most vendors focused on private clouds are targeting the IaaS layer, which for ease of discussion is similar to Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2. And while EC2 sets the tone for how most people think about clouds, it lacks (and maybe doesn't require?) the same kind of tooling enterprises need to manage their complete infrastructure.

Tooling and management is arguably the most important aspect for enterprise private clouds to be successful but may also be the most difficult to get right.

But tools may also be where the money is. And considering the cloud has yet to rain down the cash we all hope for, it seems like it's time to reset thinking a bit and focus more on enabling applications and infrastructure to make it appear more cloud-like rather than focusing on specifically making clouds. (Note: see my blog colleague James Urquhart's excellent series on DevOps to learn more about what happens after you have a cloud deployment.)

In terms of private-cloud software, its becoming less clear that enterprises want to run their own version of EC2, but perhaps that they want to make their existing infrastructure behave the same way--that is, allow for APIs and such to turn up VMs with a variety of images that are relevant to their organization.

And, perhaps more interestingly, I've recently heard from several enterprises that they are interested in programming-language and/or application-specific private clouds for Java application or other infrastructure like internal content management tools that require variability in their scaling. … Read more

Security driven by compliance, rather than protection

A new report by Forrester Research, commissioned by Microsoft and RSA, the security division of EMC, found that even though corporate intellectual property comprises 62 percent of a given company's data assets, security programs are focused on compliance rather than data protection.

The report highlights a number of key findings, that provide a number of things to think about if you are remotely involved in the security of corporate data:

Secrets comprise two-thirds of the value of firms' information portfolios Compliance, not security, drives security budgets Firms focus on preventing accidents, but theft is where the money is The more valuable a firm's information, the more incidents it will have CISOs do not know how effective their security controls actually are

According to Forrester, corporate security programs are typically divided into two main categories of data types to protect: secrets and custodial data.

Secrets--that can confer long-term competitive advantage such as product plans, earnings forecasts, and trade secrets.

Secrets refer to information that the enterprise creates and wishes to keep under wraps. Secrets tend to be messily and abstractly described in Word documents, embedded in presentations, and enshrined in application-specific formats like CAD.

Custodial data--which includes customer, medical, and payment card information that becomes "toxic" when spilled or stolen.

Custodial data has little intrinsic value in and of itself. But when it is obtained by an unauthorized party, misused, lost, or stolen, it changes state. Data that is ordinarily benign transforms into something harmful. When custodial data is spilled, it becomes "toxic" and poisons the enterprise's air in terms of press headlines, fines, and customer complaints. Outsiders, such as organized criminals, value custodial data because they can make money with it. Custodial data also accrues indirect value to the enterprise based on the costs of fines, lawsuits, and adverse publicity.

Forrester notes that while toxic data spills are both dramatic and expensive, secrets are actually much more valuable and are an "underappreciated and underprotected information asset." … Read more

Outlook good for venture-backed exits and IPOs

New data released from the National Venture Capital Association shows evidence of a rebounding acquisitions and IPO market for venture-backed companies in the first quarter of 2010.

According to the Exit Poll report (PDF) by Thomson Reuters and the NVCA, Q1 2010 ended with nine venture-backed initial public offerings (IPOs) and 111 merger and acquisition transactions.

Additionally, there were 31 disclosed venture-backed M&A exits averaging $180.2 million, 21 percent higher than the total average disclosed transaction value for all of 2009. As the chart below shows, the funding-to-exit ratio for software and Internet start-ups was roughly 4 … Read more