Dell is a computer company desperately in search of a new market as the desktop and laptop PCs dwindles. But the Austin-based company is finding that that an elusive target.

Public Cloud? That's So 2011

Yesterday the company announced it was dropping Dell Cloud, its home-grown infrastructure-as-a-service public cloud service. It is also pulling the plug on its planned OpenStack-based public cloud service and online storage service before they even get off the ground.

Dell isn't out the cloud game altogether, mind you - it will be reselling public cloud services through its new Dell Cloud Partner Program. And it's still working on private cloud offerings.

Dell's decision to drop its program after only two years isn't terribly surprising - it was regarded as pricey compared to similar offerings from HP and IBM, and going head to head with similar services from Amazon Web Services and Google without good pricing and a very solid support system is tantamount to suicide these days.

Bring On The Dongles

But Dell is still on the hunt for new revenue. Reports out today indicate that the hardware maker will be releasing a new thumb-drive PC, codenamed Project Ophelia, this July for a reported $100.

PC World has revealed that the device will be based on Android and can be plugged into a TV or monitor via the HDMI port. File storage will be handled via Wyse's PocketCloud.

Dell wants to get this device in the hands of telecomm carriers, who could use Ophelia to deliver streaming TV to customers who don't currently have smart TVs or devices like Roku or Apple TV to pull in online content.

Developers will get their hands on the PC-on-a-stick first, in order to build Android apps and build up a collection of TV-friendly apps. Since there's a lot of Wyse thin-client tech packed into this thing, presumably there will be some capability to have portability between home and work.

This is an interesting concept, save for the fact that there are already similar and cheaper devices on the market now. The concept of a dongle PC is not new, and to date, they haven't really taken off.

The idea also ignores the very real trend away from vertical screen and keyboard/mouse devices to handheld tablets and smartphones. While Ophelia devices would give you portability, you still need a mouse, keyboard and screen to use these things… so the portability is constrained. And if I'm essentially recreating a PC-like portable work setup anyway, why not just use a laptop?

I suspect that's why Dell is emphasizing the telecom angle when it pitches these things. Carriers could offer Ophelia with video and data plans, maybe. But it's hard to imagine consumers buying these things off the shelf when there are other similarly priced set-top devices already on the market and proven to work.

Dell is clearly throwing a lot of things against the wall to see what sticks. Public cloud didn't work, and it's difficult to see Project Ophelia working out, either. Servers, however, aren't doing badly right now. Perhaps Dell should stick to what it knows best.

Getting called out by the Obama administration wasn't enough of a deterrent for Unit 61398, the cyberattack unit of the People's Liberation Army of China, because apparently they're at it again, working to pilfer information from private company and public government data stores.

The New York Times is reporting that Unit 61398 has resumed operations and is actively engaged in hacking into any U.S. systems that might hold information considered to be of use for the People's Republic of China.

Security firm Mandiant told the Times "that the Chinese hackers had stopped their attacks after they were exposed in February and removed their spying tools from the organizations they had infiltrated. But over the past two months, they have gradually begun attacking the same victims from new servers and have reinserted many of the tools that enable them to seek out data without detection.

"They are now operating at 60 percent to 70 percent of the level they were working at before, according to a study by Mandiant requested by The New York Times," the article reported.

If accurate, then it's clear that the U.S. is going to have to step up its game when it comes to cybersecurity, particularly organizations that have data related to trade secrets or, more disturbingly, infrastructure plans - both targets of Chinese hackers.

Even if this isn't the PLA, someone is hacking these systems, and it's time to stop treating cybersecurity like a game.

Disaster is a word with strong connotations, conjuring images of fire, flood, storms, earthquakes and... spilled cups of coffee.

That latter category might not strike you as the kind of disaster that will bring the 24-hour news vans to your door, but to a business that depends on the uptime of its systems, a jostled cup of joe or a faulty hard drive can be just as much of a disaster as the Biblical stuff.

According to a new survey of small to medium-sized businesses, it isn't flooding, tornadoes or hurricanes that are mostly responsible for IT downtime, but rather hardware failures - a full 55% of downtime incidents, in fact. IT recovery vendor Quorum tracked the trouble tickets of customers who used their service in the first quarter of 2013 to derive the data.

Disk failures were the number one hardware failure, says Quorum CEO Larry Lang. "More often than you think, it's a SAN failure," he adds, referring to "storage area networks" that are designed to keep data available even when a disk - or disks - crash.

Power supply problems are another big hardware issue. At times, they're complicated by cooling system malfunctions that in turn overheat power supplies and bring them down in a giant cascade of fail.

Or you can face something completely unexpected. A Quorum customer once had a problem when a neighbor's renovation work spewed gypsum dust onto server heat sinks, causing them to lose efficiency and overheat the system.

Delete All? OK...

Next on the list was human error, which made up 22% of incidents that caused downtime. But Lang suspects that this figure is actually on the low side. "Human nature being what it is, the actual human mistakes tend to be under-reported," he said. Accidental deletions, are common mistakes that don't get reported.

Software failures ranked next, coming in at 18% of downtime causes. These include updates that don't go well, many of which were probably untested before deployment. (That could also put these back in the human error column, too.)

The last category is the flashier stuff. But natural disasters only accounted for 5% of IT downtime incidents.

The Cost Of Goofs

Estimating the damage caused by IT downtime isn't always easy. Ball-parking the financial cost is straightforward - just take your company's annual revenue, divide that by number of business hours in a year (2080 in the U.S.), then multiply that number by the number of hours your systems are down.

But some times in the year are worse for downtime than others. If your accounting firm's servers go down in mid-June, it's likely not as stressful or painful to the bottom line as a similar failure the week before the April 15 tax deadline in the U.S.

Then there's the reputational effect. When an actual natural disaster strikes and you are offline, customers are more likely to cut you some slack until you get things up and running. But if they tune in on any given day and your computers are dark for what to them seems no apparent reason, they might be... unsatisfied. Some might take to Twitter, Yelp and other social outlets to broadcast their frustration, too.

Back Up And Prepare

IT managers need to prepare for the worst, but also must understand that the worst might not happen when Mother Nature drops by.

To be prepared for the disasters that occur in the chaos of our daily lives, Lang recommended that, at the very least, businesses need to back up as much as they can. It may take longer to restore than expected, but when the worst happens, your data will still be there and you can start the recovery process.

Lang also recommends testing and retesting backup and restore processes as often as possible. Software and hardware configurations can change often, so you need to make sure your recovery operations won't fail.

"In business, the longest distance in IT is the distance between ought to work and known to work," Lang said.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Low-level cyberscuffles between nations may be about to escalate into more serious conflicts. U.S. government officials are reporting a new wave of attacks aimed at sabotage within the U.S., apparently originating from somewhere in the Middle East.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that saboteurs are using probes to look for ways to seize control of processing plants of mostly U.S. "energy companies" — presumably oil and gas producers. Senior officials with the Obama administration said the attacks are aimed at the administrative systems of 10 major American energy companies, which the sources have refused to name.

Tension, Apprehension And Dissension

To be sure, so far no one seems to have independently corroborated these alleged attacks. As such, there's no good way to know whether they are as potentially serious as these unnamed government officials — and, of course, the NYT — would have us believe.

If the warnings are sound, though, cyberwar escalation still wouldn't be a huge surprise. Security experts and government officials have long predicted that hackers bent on wreaking havoc will will eventually become as commonplace as those looking to steal government and corporate secrets.

In February, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned that the technology used in cyberattacks is able to "cripple a country, to take down our power grid system, to take down our government systems, take down our financial systems, and literally paralyze the country. That is a reality."

The U.S. and Israel provided the motivation for their enemies to pick up the pace with their cyberattack on Iran's nuclear facilities several years ago. The two allies used the Stuxnet worm to damage centrifuges used in making high-grade uranium that could be used for nuclear weapons, according to the NYT. Experts believe Iran retaliated last year with the attack on Saudi Aramco, one of the world's largest oil producers.

A virus unleashed on Aramco administrative offices wiped out data on thousands of computers, replacing the deleted files with a burning American flag. The hackers targeted Aramco's production facilities, government officials said. The mission reportedly failed because Aramco's administrative offices were on a network separate from that used for industrial control systems. Using separate networks in this way is a best practice recommended by security experts.

The Aramco attack was soon followed by a similar one launched against Qatari energy company RasGas, which also claimed the attack was stymied because its compromised office network wasn't connected to production systems. Israeli officials said Iran's "cybercorps" was behind the assault. Iran organized the group after the Stuxnet attack.

Tit For Tat

These tit-for-tat attacks could be morphing into a new phase of cyberwar where the consequences are much greater than the damage caused by pilfering a company's trade secrets. Any attack that could destroy critical infrastructure — from oil production and the electric grid to manufacturing facilities and water treatment plants — has the potential to affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

Experts have warned for years that industrial control systems that run these facilities are filled with vulnerabilities that could be easily exploited. Fortunately, hackers haven't yet been able to infiltrate the networks these systems are on.

To shore up the nation's critical infrastructure, President Barack Obama issued this year an executive order requiring government agencies to share cyberattack information with private industry. Industry, however, is under no orders to share information with the government, and changing that will require action by Congress, which is struggling with the privacy implications of requiring companies to share data with government agencies.

Like numbers? Here's some for your morning coffee… 2,904. 10. 2.4 million.

Those numbers are integral to what federal prosecutors in Brooklyn allege occurred on February 19, when a team of eight men scattered throughout the Borough of Manhattan to make 2,904 ATM withdraws in the space of 10 hours, making off with about $2.4 million in New York alone.

The heist was part of a larger global plot implemented at the same time that raked in about $45 million, all told.

According to the indictment, the eight-person team in New York was the final stage in a process that first involved hackers gaining access to an Indian credit card processing vendor and then eliminating the limits on prepaid MasterCard accounts. Using the unlimited cards, teams around the world raided bank ATMs for cash before they financial institutions knew what hit them.

The New York Times has more details on the ATM spree, which may be a taste of what's to come as banks and credit card companies keep falling victim to criminal ingenuity.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Last weekend, the busiest spot at Fry's Electronics in Concord, Calif., was the notebook PC aisle, where eager salespeople buzzed about from customer to customer, eager to show off Windows 8. It appears that this new, kinder, gentler approach to selling Windows 8 is part of a larger Microsoft strategy that involves both altering the software itself and improving the retail experience. 

Changes Coming For Windows 8

In a Wall Street Journal blog post earlier this week, Windows marketing chief Tami Reller described how Microsoft is working to overcome the perception that Windows 8 is frustrating and difficult to use - and said the company is working to both make Windows 8 easier to use and to better explain to shoppers the new operating system's benefits and how to take advantage of them:

Without offering many details yet, Ms. Reller outlined how Microsoft is working on changing software features, helping people overcome obstacles to learning the revamped software, altering the shopping experience for consumers, getting more of people’s favorite apps available for Windows 8 and making sure a wider array of Windows 8 computing devices will be on sale.

The Journal also said Reller confirmed that Windows Blue is "both the codename for a coming update to Windows 8 – with additional features and improved services – as well as a name for a broader strategy shift to provide faster changes to its key software." Significantly, Reller also promised a Windows Blue update "before late June" that would address user complaints about Windows 8.

How Is Windows 8 Selling?

Reller's six-month update also revealed that Microsoft claims to have sold 100 million Windows 8 licenses, and that 250 million apps have been downloaded from the Windows Store in the same period, surpassing what Apple's iOS store accomplished during the same period. The number of apps within the Store has grown six times since launch, Reller said, and almost 90% of the company's app catalog has been downloaded each month.

Bob O'Donnell, an IDC analyst whose firm has blamed Microsoft for holding the PC industry back, told Bloomberg that he didn't understand where Microsoft was getting its numbers, given that his sources at the PC were telling a different, less optimistic, story. 

Changing Perceptions Of Windows 8?

Whatever the numbers, the first small signs of the push to change perceptions bout Windows 8 were visible at Fry's:

• Placards that refer to the "familiar" Windows 8 desktop experience
• Shifting the older, cheaper non-touch laptops away from the main floor
• The constant attention from sales staff.

That last bit is a big deal: Fry's is known for its sprawling stores and massive selection, but customer service and friend salespeople traditionally haven't been its strengths. 

My wife and I were doing a bit of showrooming to find a touch-based Windows 8 notebook for the house. Fry's Concord location boasted five or six aisles of notebooks. Each PC boasted two placards: one touting the benefits of a Fry's card or financing, and one that promoted an Office discount. Microsoft's card also highlighted ow to learn more about the PC, how to get to the "familiar" desktop, and how to "go back to Start." Clearly, Microsoft does recognize that using Windows 8 isn't as natural as it originally claimed, and is trying to help.

Several times during our visit my wife and I were approached by a salesperson offering to answer any questions - and one specifically offered more information about Windows 8. When we wandered back into the rear aisles with the older, cheaper, non-touch Windows notebooks, however, no one followed. Unfortunately, there were about four or five rows of these older PCs versus just two specifically dedicated to Windows 8.

(For comparison, at Best Buy a week earlier, I found an aisle of rather lonely Windows 8 machines sitting by themselves, with Microsoft promotional materials but little sales support.) 

Is This A Mea Culpa From Microsoft?

What matters here is that Microsoft finally seems willing to listen to its customers, to work with them to craft an experience that's both productive and entertaining. And yes, when the occasion calls for it, help them over the purchasing hump. 

To be honest, though, after looking at them, my wife didn't really want a Windows 8 machine. She seemed to like the Start screen, and swiping back and forth, but she didn't really grasp how to launch a program within the Start screen by typing its name, nor how to how to enable the Charms by swiping in - or even what they were used for. 

Microsoft and the PC industry now seem to feel that the solution to the Windows 8 problem is a little hand-holding, and making sure everyone feels comfortable. That's the right approach, let's hope the coming changes to Windows and renewed emphasis on helping customers upgrade hasn't arrived too late.

Hewlett-Packard has said that a partnership between itself and gesture-technology provider Leap Motion is an opportunity for "incredible user experiences." But isn't this really just HP casting about for something, anything, to set it apart from it competitors?

(See also Leap Motion-HP Deal: Gesture Control Goes Mainstream.)

Leap executives said Tuesday that they see HP's clout justifying sales to other PC makers, as well as non-PC markets  like surgery and automation. But how does HP benefit from all this? A bit of sizzle from one of today's most hotly promoted technology firms, that's how. (Asus announced its own partnership with Leap earlier this year.)

And boy, does HP need some sizzle right now.

(See also This Tiny Gizmo Could Be A Very Big Deal In 2013 - And Beyond.)

PC Market In Free Fall

Just last week, IDC and Gartner chronicled a free-falling PC market, dubbing Microsoft's Windows 8 an anchor, when it was supposed to be a life preserver. Consumers are increasingly turning to tablets and phones as their "personal computing" devices. And without a viable tablet or phone offering (the Windows 8-based ElitePad excluded) HP must ride the barrel over the falls for at least the next two quarters. PC owners simply aren't replacing their PCs as quickly as they once might, which makes Hewlett-Packard, the leader in the PC market, look especially vulnerable. HP's PC shipments dropped by nearly 25% last quarter.

That's not to say that the Leap Motion partnership is nothing but a smokescreen. HP representatives said that there are viable technical reasons for the deal.

"Our customers are looking for new ways to interact with, and create content," an HP spokeswoman said in an email. "Leap Motion combined with HP technology and developer apps will offer incredible user experiences.

"Leap Motion's not intended to fully replace existing input mechanisms like the mouse or keyboard, but rather to augment them and provide new and/or improved functionality," she added. "Many creation and exploration tasks - like molding virtual clay or moving through maps - are intuitive in the real world but highly technical tasks when handled with computers. Leap Motion can help overcome the input barrier to give people a new interaction experience."

What Leap Motion Really Means To HP

Reading between the lines, two things jump out:

1. Expect HP to either commission or partner with a developer to ensure that the Leap Motion gestures are well represented with at least one showcase app, like Windows 8's Fresh Paint app
2. HP carefully avoided the use of the word "touch"

Navigating through a map doesn't seem that difficult (pinch to zoom? Scrolling mice?) but sculpting a piece of virtual clay might be a fun experience using Leap Motion's technology. Navigating in virtual space (as we did with the Leonard3Do at the Consumer Electronics Show this January) provides a new, fresh way of interacting with a computer. And that's exactly what new technologies like Windows 8 hoped to offer.

HP declined to comment when asked if Leap's technology was designed to replace touch, and another representative hasn't yet responded to my question of whether the Leap peripherals would be bundled with HP's (non-touch) desktop monitors. The latter capability would be quite useful, I think. 

A Leap Ahead Of Touch?

In a way, I was really hoping that HP would position the Leap technology as a way to enable touch-like interactivity, but without gunking up the screen. It may seem a bit fussy, but who really wants to have to scrub off a fine glaze of Cheetos after lunch?

Bob O'Donnell, a PC analyst with IDC, said he sees the Leap Motion partnership providing another way of interacting with the PC, augmenting the mouse and keyboard. But he said it's also pretty impressive.

And Leap Motion could also save HP - and consumers - some money: A 13-inch touchscreen costs a PC maker $65 or $70 more than a similar non-touch screen; Leap's technology will probably be about $45, O'Donnell predicted. That's a big difference, especially with touchscreen competition making them hard to come by these days. "Remember, these guys argue over nickels and dimes," O'Donnell concluded.

At this point, the PC industry seems inclined to clutch frantically at whatever splinters it can to keep itself from drowning in sea of red ink. Will the partnership between Leap Motion and Hewlett-Packard be enough to save HP? Probably not, but it sure can't hurt to try.

But here's another thought: wouldn't building a competitive tablet be a better idea for HP?

Today the race is on to virtualize all aspects of the data center. Dubbed the software-defined data center (SDDC) or sometimes software defined networking (SDN), SDDC is a market IDC projects will top $3.7 billion by 2016.

It's a hot market, too: just this week, Cisco, IBM, VMware, Red Hat and others have banded together under a Linux Foundation-hosted consortium called OpenDaylight. But while this is a significant step toward virtualizing the networking layer of the data center, it may simply be a prelude to the next phase of virtualization: storage.

VMware led the way in virtualizing servers in the data center, creating enormous value for its shareholders over the last decade. Originally acquired by EMC for $635 million in 2003, VMware is now a standalone company with a market capitalization of more than $30 billion. Last year it acquired a leading SDN startup, Nicira, for nearly $1.3 billion. That move scared a lot of data center vendors – primarily Cisco – who don’t want to see VMware dominate networking virtualization as completely as it came to own server virtualization.

Too often overlooked in all the billions of dollars sloshing around servers and networking competition in SDDC is the laggard, storage. Traditional storage is a $10 billion annual business, but until recently it hasn’t made much headway into virtualization.

That may be about to change. 

To better understand the trends shaping the rise of the software-defined storage play, I sat down recently with Dr. Kieran Harty, CEO of Tintri, makers of storage systems for software defined data centers, and one of a core virtualization pioneer. Harty ran engineering at VMware from 1999 to 2006 and his teams created the software products that virtualized the server side of the SDDC equation.

ReadWrite: Remind us again what VMware was trying to do a dozen years ago when your teams were focused on bringing virtualization to servers.

Harty: The basic problems virtualization solved back then we called server consolidation and over-provisioning. Business wanted to move compute workloads from large, costly, proprietary, single servers (usually Sun servers) running one application, oftentimes at only 10% of capacity, to clusters of cheap, commodity, Linux servers. VMware pioneered a technology called the hypervisor that allowed virtualization to make this possible – on the server.

ReadWrite: Today VMware enjoys roughly 90% market share in server virtualization. The spectacular success of server virtualization begs the big question of what comes next. Can the same benefits of virtualization on servers be applied to the rest of the data center?

Harty: This is what gives rise to the concept of the software-defined data center (SDDC) – a data center with infrastructure that is fundamentally more flexible, automated and cost-effective; infrastructures that understand application workloads and can automatically and efficiently allocate pooled resources to match the application demands. Rather than construct data centers full of over-provisioned and siloed resources, a SDDC would more efficiently utilize and share all aspects of the infrastructure: servers, networking and storage.

While servers, and to a lesser extent networks, have embraced SDDC, storage lags significantly behind and continues to cause a great deal of pain in the data center today. Fortunately, some of the key technologies that brought the sweeping changes to servers and networks are taking shape for storage.

ReadWrite: What kind of changes?

Harty: A quick look at some of the most successful disruptive technologies reveals that many of them “crossed the chasm” with the help of a few common key ingredients: standardization, hardware innovation and abstraction. In the case of server virtualization, the standardization of Intel’s x86 platform and the proliferation of the open source Linux operating system massively disrupted the server market. Armed with a new generation of multi-core processors and VMware’s hypervisor technology, server virtualization conquered the data center.  

Networks followed a similar path starting with TCP/IP standardizing the network protocol. Gigabit Ethernet increased transmission speed by an order of magnitude. OpenFlow, which set the foundation of an open and standards-based software-defined networking, paved the way for the most significant changes in networks in several decades. 

ReadWrite: What kinds of changes in standards, hardware innovation and abstraction are leading to disruption in the storage market?

Harty: For 20 years, little has changed in the world of legacy storage designed for physical environments. As data centers become more virtualized, there is a growing gap due to the complete mismatch between how storage systems were designed and the demands of virtual environments. It’s a bit like people who don’t speak the same languages and have a hard time understanding each other - storage speaks LUNs and volumes; servers speak VMs. 

As a result, they don’t understand each other very well. Storage allocation, management and performance troubleshooting for the virtualized infrastructure are difficult, if not impossible with legacy storage. Companies have tried to work around this obstacle by over-provisioning storage which is very expensive and increases complexity.

ReadWrite: Is there where flash technology enters and disrupts storage? Can we power through these legacy storage challenges with performance improvements that are an order of magnitude over those of traditional spinning disk?

Harty: Storage has always been about performance and data management. Flash removes the performance challenges and levels the competitive playing field for storage vendors. Flash enables very dense storage systems that can host thousands of VMs in just a few rack units of space. But flash by itself – without the intelligence – only gets us so far. 

And while some industry players are attempting to make virtualization products adapt to legacy storage through APIs, or retrofit legacy storage to become virtualization aware, neither goes far enough to bridge the yawning gap between these two mismatched technologies – you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. What is needed to solve this problem is storage that has been completely redefined to operate in the virtual environment and uses the constructs of virtualization. In short, VM-aware storage.

ReadWrite: What do you mean, VM-aware?

Harty: Virtualized environments require storage designed for virtualization. Enterprises expecting to get the full benefit out of the software-defined data center need storage that’s simple and agile to manage, while delivering the performance required by modern applications. They will need storage that understands the IO patterns of virtual environments and that automatically manages quality of service (QoS) for each VM. 

We eliminate an entire layer of unnecessary complexity if we stop talking about LUNs or volumes. 

The broad adoption of virtual machines as the data center lingua franca gives us de facto standardization for software-defined storage. The rapid growth and declining cost of flash technology provides the hardware innovation. 

This leaves us with the one last essential missing piece – the abstraction between storage and VMs, an abstraction that understands VMs while being able to abstract and pool the underlying storage resources and deliver the benefits of simple, high performing and cost effective storage. We call that VM-aware storage.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

In an effort to compete with Amazon, Walmart is reportedly considering crowdsourcing its online package delivery. While that might save the retail giant the cost of gas and maintenance for its own delivery fleet, it could also open up the mega-retailer to potential lawsuits and a ton of puzzling questions.

Reuters reports that the plan is still at “an early planning stage” as there are “numerous legal, regulatory and privacy obstacles.” So don't expect to see anything for at least another year or two.

What we know about the plan so far, though, is this. Walmart customers could disclose their home addresses and then, while at a Walmart store, sign up to deliver packages to folks who live along their route home. The delivery recipients would be Walmart's online customers; the retailer is making a big push to deliver goods ordered online directly from its stores, hoping to do so more cheaply than Amazon.

These volunteer deliverypeople would get a discount on their Walmart purchases — enough, supposedly, to at least cover their gas costs.

So let's give Walmart some points for creativity, as this certainly isn't the sort of idea you'd normally expect to bubble up out of Bentonville. Still, the nightmare scenarios are easy to imagine. Let us enumerate a few:

1. What happens if the person delivering the package takes a shine to whoever the package was delivered to? Perhaps a future couple will meet this way, but so could a stalker and his or her unknowing stalkee.

2. Will there be a way to do background checks on who will be delivering your package to you? Would people be disqualified from delivering packages if they had a criminal record?

3. What prevents the designated delivery person from "losing" (i.e., keeping) a package instead of delivering it? Would Walmart have to track this thief down?

4. Would crowd-sourced delivery folks ask for tips? Will tipping the Walmart customer become as commonplace as tipping the pizza delivery boy?

Walmart hadn't responded to a request for comment by the time we published. We'll update if and when it does.

Update: 

The conventional wisdom holds that your organization will be secure if you focus on shutting down zero-day exploits and keep out the rest of the exploits by applying multi-layer defenses from multiple vendors. That complacency is about to take a serious beating from new research coming out of NSS Labs this week.

The news really could not have come at a worse time. Last week's revelations that China may be participating in state-sponsored cyberattacks against Western nations, coupled with Anonymous' full-on declaration of war against various corporate and government agencies following the death of Aaron Swartz, mean that security is very much on the minds of IT leaders these days. Finding out your bulletproof vest is made out of cardboard instead of Kevlar just as the firefight is heating up does not make for happy security executives. 

Bypassing The Kill Chain

Good news or not, Frank Artes, Research Director at NSS Labs, are spreading the word about the research he and colleague Stefan Frei have done.

After analyzing the massive amount of data NSS Labs collects as it analyzes security products up and down an organization's security stack (known as the kill chain), the team discovered that the usual practice of using heterogeneous, layered tools to filter out exploits is not as effective as one would think.

The idea of this layered approach, Artes explained, is based on the premise that even if an exploit can get through one vendor's defenses, another vendor's tool can catch that exploit and kill it. Hence, "kill chain."

But in reality, "huge numbers of exploits are getting through," Artes said. The NSS Labs researchers mapped those exploits and identified them based on criticality and availability (is the exploit hard to get or part of a crimeware package that a script kiddie can buy with a credit card?). Using a visual model, the team was able to create graphic results that demonstrate just how many serious exploits can get through.

Exploits Don't Have Expiration Dates

NSS Labs, which acts as a Consumer Reports-like organization in the security sector, is not singling out any one vendor as a problem. Instead, Artes emphasized, all vendors' products, be they browsers, Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) or firewalls, have exploits that can let malware through, and a surprisingly high number of these holes are shared among various products.

Part of the problem is that many vendors are so focused on security in the present, such as protecting customers from zero-day exploits and advanced persistent threats (APTs), such as state-sponsored attacks.

"We're always looking forward, watching out for the next Duqu or ILoveYou for 2013," Artes said. What should also be done is keep an eye on what's happened in the past, because it can come back to haunt you.

Exploits don't have expiration dates and there are a lot of older methods and tools that can bust through security because the security software may never have been properly patched or (in some cases) the exploit may have been deprecated from the security tool's database to make room for newer exploits. Databases for security software can't afford to get too big, Artes explained, or their tool's performance would be hindered.

End users patch-management policies can also affect how many exploits get through. Because many applications can touch parts of a security stack, you can't just automatically update every single piece of security software to the latest and greatest - without extensive testing, business applications could break and die when confronted with freshly patched security code.

Revisiting your company's patch-management procedures is a good way to help ensure systems are locked down as much as possible. Devoting more resources to these procedures is your best bet, Artes explained, but many companies don't have the time or the money to beef up patch management.

Instead, they may have to work smarter, not harder. Tools like the visual analysis Artes and Frei's team have developed should help  focus efforts, even on a fixed budget.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

If you ever thought that something will last forever, get ready for a smack on the head.

The latest evidence of this grand falsehood is today's announcement from the United States Postal Service of a new plan to halt mail delivery on Saturdays, with the exception of package delivery.

The move, which is scheduled to begin this August, would save the post office $2 billion annually. Under the proposed plan, mail would still be delivered to post office boxes on Saturdays, and post offices currently open on Saturdays would remain so.

This is all just in the planning stages, since Congressional approval is needed to make such a drastic change. But the USPS is expected to cite figures demonstrating the American public would be behind such a move when it makes its formal announcement later today.

Shifting Technology, Always

Technology has a way of disrupting the hell out of the things and processes we have come to accept as "always there" in our lives. If you went back 15 years, it would hard to imagine five-day mail delivery, yet here we are, with an proposal that makes sense. Personal mail delivery has fallen drastically since the advent of e-mail and social media networks.

Five years ago, I might have objected to such a plan. Saturdays were a big day for checks from publishers. Now that all my funds are direct deposited, I no longer care.

It's not just the mail, of course. A decade ago, it would have been hard to conceive homes not having landlines for phones, and yet these days it's commonplace, thanks to ubiquitous cell phones and e911 services that geolocate phones. (If I didn't live in a plaster-walled Faraday cage, I would ditch the landline in a minute.)

Five years ago, it would be really hard to imagine a world without a desktop Windows monopoly, but then Apple and Google took the computing world sideways into the land of smartphones and tablets and now things have gotten so bad for Microsoft, they've had to put financial stakes into companies (i.e., Nokia and now Dell) just to ensure Microsoft has a vendor that will actually sell Windows on said smartphones and traditional PCs.

For those of you who find that line of reasoning hard to accept, it may be time to let go of the staid notions you might have about technology. Nothing in this business lasts forever and something will always try to replace the technology you are using.

It's All Been Done

Many of us of a certain age have watched some new technologies rise to prominence, only to nearly completely fade away. Fax machines had a particularly short tech cycle, and VCRs shorter than that. Landline telephones had a good long run, as did personal desktop computers. But now, it seems, their time is waning.

This is not a proclamation that "the desktop is dead." But personal computing is changing, and drastically. We have inklings of what this might look like, but like any change, it's going to have its share of bumps and scrapes along the way.

Today's announcement from the USPS reflects the fundamental change in the ways we communicate. There will be other world-shaking announcements in the months and years to come, and we need to be ready.

Five-day mail delivery?

No idea is unthinkable any more.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

President Obama's technical team wants to open source the technology that is credited with helping him win the 2012 election. The Democratic Party, however, has other plans, apparently intending to keep Project Narwhal and the rest of the software secret so as to give it an advantage over cash-rich but tech-poor Republicans. In so doing, the Democratic Party demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of open source and, indeed, how organizations benefit from technology.

Open sourcing Obama's campaign systems is actually in the Democratic Party's self-interest.

Open Is Good For Everybody

Some Democratic politicians like to think technology won them the election. Unfortunately, it's not true. Obama won because he ran a better campaign against a Republican candidate who looked OK on paper but was somewhat wooden in person.

Yes, part of Obama's "better campaign" was a crack team of data scientists who built what appears to be excellent system - dubbed "Narwhal" - "that acted as an interface to a single shared data store for all of the campaign's applications, making it possible to quickly develop new applications and to integrate existing ones into the campaign's system." This enabled the Obama team to divine and respond to voter preferences, among other things.

According to two of the Democratic National Committee's technical team, who want to see the software open sourced, the current plan is to "mothball" the software to conserve resources and protect the Democrats Big Data advantage. This, they argue, would be a mistake:

Right now, only presidential campaigns have the resources to build systems of this sophistication. The data and technology infrastructure from the Obama campaign cost millions of dollars to build, and even the most well-funded senate campaigns couldn't afford anything close to that.

But with some additional work, the data and tech infrastructure from the Obama campaign could be adapted to offer the same functionality to other progressive candidates and groups, giving them the opportunity to use these systems with their own supporters and volunteers. For smaller campaigns that would have no chance of creating these systems on their own, this could be a game-changing step forward.

The problem for the Democratic Party, however, is that even (gasp!) non-progressives could benefit from the technology if it were open sourced, which could lead to (double gasp!) Republicans winning. As The Verge reports, the Democratic Party has blocked efforts to open source the code, believing the software gives it and its candidates an advantage, and the Obama campaign is therefore keeping tight control of all campaign assets, including the software.

History Repeats Itself

For those of you who were around to witness Microsoft and other technology incumbents respond to open source's rise, this will all seem very familiar.

Like these Democratic politicians and bureaucrats, the tech giants resisted open source, arguing that proprietary software was the only way to innovate, and gave them an advantage against competitors. They, too, thought that software was more valuable as individuallyowned property, rather than as a collective effort that brought multiple values and talents to its development. 

They, too, completely missed the genesis of the very Big Data movement, firmly grounded in open-source technology that was developed through the collective efforts of Yahoo!, Google, Facebook and other new-school tech giants. Such companies understand that real competitive advantage derives from savvy business execution on services built from open-source software.

It's not a matter of hoarding ones and zeroes.

If the Democratic Party holds Narwhal and its other software in cold storage, as TechDirt's Mike Masnick argues, it's effectively rendering it useless, as the software will no longer be state of the art when the next election rolls around in four years time. In addition, it's foolish to think that the Obama campaign, however smart, employed the only intelligent engineers on the planet, and is the sole repository of wisdom about how to make the code better. It could benefit from collective efforts to improve it which, in turn, also help it recruit the best and brightest. The best developers want to work with open-source code, in an open source manner.

The days of winning by blocking access to one's software are over. This is true in technology, and it's true in political campaigns. For their own good the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee should open source Narwhal and other related technology. They truly have nothing to lose.

spirit of america / Shutterstock.com

Ray Kurzweil, one of the most wide-eyed futurists around, is going to work at Google.

Kurzweil is one of the foremost authors responsible for the popularity of the notion of technological singularity, the idea that artificial intelligence will someday (soon) reach a crescendo of self-improvement, kicking off an endlessly growing planetary intelligence and allowing us to transcend our limited humanity.

He's written multiple books about artificial intelligence, the singularity and transhumanism. He's also intensely interested in human life extension and has written extensively about health and biology. On top of all that, he's an inventor of musical instruments, and he's worked on optical character recognition, text-to-speech and speech recognition technology.

It's in those last few areas that Kurzweil will be of most immediate use to Google. The KurzweilAI press release says he's joining Google to "work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing."

Google has plenty of Kurzweilian technology in play already, with voice and text search that understands natural language and optical character and image recognition that allows search of text, images, and even video. Imagine how cool Google search will be when Project Glass glasses are a live, real-world search interface.

But the next step of all those technologies is best described as artificial intelligence, the real Holy Grail for Kurzweil. If any company is going to bring about a singularity by computing endlessly on all the world's information, it's going to be Google.

What an amazing, slightly terrifying combination.

"I’m thrilled to be teaming up with Google to work on some of the hardest problems in computer science so we can turn the next decade’s 'unrealistic' visions into reality," Kurzweil says.

Kurzweil's title will be Director of Engineering. He starts on Monday, December 17.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock

Google has acquired Canadian parcel delivery start-up BufferBox Friday for an undisclosed sum. BufferBox is like a PIN-protected P.O. box for packages that solves the problem of missed deliveries. It's a service that mirrors the Locker service Amazon began offering earlier this month. Google's acquisition of BufferBox signals that it's serious about going head to head with Amazon on retail.

"We’re not going to go into great detail about our future plans," Google Waterloo engineering director Steve Woods told Financial Post, "but we think there’s a real exciting space beyond this amazing start with boxes, and the idea of touching consumers as part of their end-to-end experience is something we’re going to explore together."

The Google PR statement on the deal reads: "We want to remove as much friction as possible from the shopping experience, while helping consumers save time and money, and we think the BufferBox team has a lot of great ideas around how to do that."

Google's new ad-driven shopping search results, which went into full effect this week, show how Google will go about building its commerce services to compete with Amazon. While it doesn't sell the products directly, it makes a compelling case to merchants that they should bid to list their products on Google Shopping, which is just a name for what happens to a regular Google search when you search for a product.

After all, a Web search is a clear demonstration of intent. When someone Googles a product, it's very likely that they're interested in buying it. Amazon takes its cut as the actual storefront selling its goods, whereas Google is just selling ads, though they're compelling and interactive ones.

Now, by adding conveniences like BufferBox pickup, as well as existing payment services like Google Wallet, Google can make its search results the most ubiquitous and convenient way to buy something, and it can take its cut from providing the conveniences.

"We are happy to share that it will be business as usual for our users and we are looking forward to continuing to build out the service," the BufferBox founders say on their blog.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Cisco is not afraid to spend big to show investors that it will not be left behind as software takes on a greater role in networking. The world's largest maker of networking gear agreed this week to spend $1.2 billion for Meraki, a San Francisco startup that builds software-centric wireless networks for mid-size organizations. The deal dwarfs the $125 million Cisco spent last week for Cloupia, a maker of software that manages data-center resources.

Cisco's Struggles

Cisco has fought to convince investors that it isn’t an anachronism. At roughly $18 a share, Cisco's stock price has barely budged since the beginning of the year. But companies of its size with billions in the bank do not go down without a fight.

If the Meraki deal closes as expected in the second quarter of next year, Cisco will expand its footprint in the midmarket. Specifically, the startup has targeted organizations with lean IT departments that support Wi-Fi networks in multiple locations, such as branch offices, hotels, restaurants, retail stores and schools.

"Cisco's offerings were only partially covering that and not really hitting the sweet spot," Rohit Mehra, analyst for IDC, said.

Meraki's software enables an administrator to log into a Web app running in a browser to get a centralized view of a wireless network. Through the app, IT managers can allow the type of devices based on hardware as well as operating-system version. More important, they can dictate which apps on devices can access the network, and prioritize the apps, so the most important ones get in first.

Meraki is expected to become a valuable extension to Cisco's current portfolio, Mehra says. "Over time, I think this could be a nice incremental addition."

Meraki's Success

Started in 2006 by three doctoral candidates from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Meraki expects $100 million in bookings this year and is cash-flow positive, Sanjit Biswas, chief executive of the company, wrote in a letter announcing the deal. The company has 330 employees, nearly three times more then at the beginning of the year.

Its growth is driven by increasing demand for wireless networks to support smartphones, tablets and laptops. Wireless devices are expected to top 1.1 billion units worldwide this year, rising to 1.84 billion units by 2016, more than twice the number last year.according to IDC. That works out to a five-year compound annual growth rate of more than 15%.

Meraki investors will likely make a bundle on the deal. They include Google, Felicis Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Google has also bought 1,000 routers from Meraki, Douglas Leone, a Sequoia partner, said.

Growth By Acquisition

Cisco has been cutting costs, shuttering poorly performing divisions and trimming prices to keep rivals Hewlett-Packard and Juniper Networks from grabbing customers. While cost cutting certainly improves earnings in the short term, a company still needs to grow sales. Cisco is doing that through acquisitions like Meraki and Cloupia.

Meraki gets the benefit of Cisco’s worldwide sales team, propelling the company into regions that it would have taken years to penetrate on its own.

About 80 percent of Cisco's revenue growth comes from new business, which brings volatility to quarterly results, particularly in a rocky economy. Meraki adds more-stable recurring revenue through software licensing.

Meraki will become Cisco's new Cloud Networking Group. But with Cisco’s cash reserve of more than $40 billion, the parent company is unlikely to let Meraki stay there alone for very long.

Don’t think that you’ll be able to escape Windows 8 by going to the mall - or just about anywhere else. On Tuesday night, Microsoft invited the Windows 8 environment into the embedded world of cars, kiosks, handheld devices and just about everywhere else.

Beginning in early 2013, Microsoft will make five versions of Windows Embedded 8 available to developers: Windows 8 Embedded Standard, plus “Pro,” “Industry,” “Handheld” and “Automotive” versions. Microsoft will also release Windows Embedded Compact 2013, designed for small-footprint devices that require flexible hardware, the use of touch- and gesture-based inputs and real-time support. Microsoft also made a preview release of Windows Embedded Standard available on its website, available today for developers. 

Windows Has A Long Embedded History

Embedding versions of Windows in consumer products like a mall kiosk or a grocery store checkout isn’t new. What products use Windows? Somewhat embarassingly for Microsoft, a great way to find out is to do an image search for something like “blue screen kiosk,” which will pull up pictures of all sorts of products that have used Windows - and crashed.

But Windows Embedded general manager Barb Edson also said that Windows powers Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Sea, the largest cruise ship in the world, where the systems help employees manage and prevent food spoilage. And a bit closer to home, the Cincinnati Reds use Windows Embedded to manage the team's ticket sales. In all, IDC estimates the market for these “intelligent systems” will be $1.4 trillion by 2016.

Part of the value of Windows Embedded 8, Edson explained, was selling an end-to-end solution; in other words, Microsoft’s enterprise sales teams go to customers and not only try to sell them the Windows Embedded 8 OS, but also a suite of services that extends into the enterprise: from front-end hardware to back-end analytical tools that can crunch the big data needed to power in-store retail kiosks. Microsoft already has a version of Windows Server and SQL Server optimized for these embedded devices.

Buy Cat Litter Using Windows 8?

For a consumer, however, the message is simple: If a retailer wishes it, you could be seeing the Live Tile-based Windows 8 “Metro” interface at stores and airports. “There’s an opportunity for the industry to attach devices to the entire infrastructure,” Edson said. “That means there’s a broad opportunity for PCs, phones, tablets and embedded devices combined.” 

Does that mean that you could be seeing Live Tiles while checking in at the airport? Yes, although you might not recognize them. Although the underlying software infrastructure of a kiosk may be powered by Windows 8 Embedded, a Target store might show you only four live tiles at a time, Edson said: possibly something like “bridal registry,” “today’s discounts” and others. And the retailer has no requirement or incentive to make those kiosks look like a PC.

“An OEM [device manufacturer] can build the device they want,” Edson said. “They can use features as they want, with a full experience like a keyboard,” or choose to eliminate some of those additional features.  

Certain Windows Embedded 8 versions, such as the Standard version, can “lock down” certain features. The idea is to prevent users from turning the kiosk into a PC that they can play with and possibly hack into. Windows 8 Embedded Standard can turn off certain gestures, for example, prevent the software keyboard from being enabled, or block the Windows 8 “charms” from being shown. On the other hand, using Windows 8 as a foundation should mean that familiar touchscreen gestures should also work on kiosks, making them more accessible to a generation who has grown up on iPads (and Surface tablets, Microsoft hopes).

The Windows Embedded 8 operating systems support only the x86 chip architecture made by Intel and AMD. Windows 8 Compact supports the ARM processor architecture, making it a sort of Windows RT for the embedded space. That means that customers will have to develop their own apps, but that’s far less of a problem when they're trying to present a particular experience - a dedicated mall kiosk is often designed to run a single application, not play Angry Birds.

Handheld Devices - Not Smartphones

Don’t expect Windows Embedded 8 Handheld to compete with Windows Phone. The list of handheld devices running Windows Phone Embedded Handheld includes handheld scanners used to track packages for shipment and manage inventory.

One intriguing question mark will be Windows Embedded 8 for Automotive, which the company hopes will power the next generation of cars. Microsoft isn’t saying which car makers are along for the ride, just that it’s working with a “group of preselected partners” to develop the technology.

Windows Embedded has long been one of the geekier versions of Windows, hidden away behind counters and in back rooms to link business storefronts to industry management software and other back-room applications. But with Windows 8 designed to be a more cutting-edge, consumer-friendly operating system you might see it sneak into your local mall. Or your next car's dashboard.

Photo illustration of Ford Sync and Windows 8 by Fredric Paul.

In the presidential debates both candidates focused much of their energy on job creation and the future of America. They missed the third part of that equation, namely, the role immigrant entrepreneurs play in economic growth—and why the exodus of these highly-educated workers is a cause for alarm. (I covered this topic in my book The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent.) But even beyond the obvious, Obama and Romney are missing a number of larger trends that need to be understood in order to plan effective policies. 

China Is Not The Real Issue

First, they both have seemed to be focused on nailing China up as a currency manipulator. This may have been an issue in the past, but is going to become decreasingly important. That’s because China is well down the path to Japanification. The central government has bet the farm on last-generation technologies in solar, transportation, and batteries.

Beijing has flooded the economy with infrastructure projects and financing for construction. Now this is coming home to roost with rampant inflation and soaring wages. Already factory jobs are leaving China for cheaper locales like Vietnam and Bangladesh. So Mitt and Barack, please forget about China. That’s the wrong target.

Instead, focus on our education system. The U.S. education system is actually quite underrated. The university system remains, despite all the cutbacks, the envy of the world. And our public education system, for all its faults, continues to turn out high quality graduates.

But we are in the midst of a revolution in education. Technology has eliminated the need for students to sit and listen to teachers deliver subject matter. Lectures and exercises can be pursued at home, on tablets or PCs, at a student’s own pace. Instead, class time will be used for Socratic study, with teachers answering questions and serving as guides and consultants. 

Rebooting Education

This is a far more efficient way to learn, and numerous startups are jumping on this bandwagon. The question is, how long will it take the U.S. government to get a clue and push down reforms around these new self-paced, Socractic learning methods—replacing the now archaic and largely failed “No Child Left Behind” policies which have shackled schools to arbitrary testing regimes that largely measure rote memorization.

Simultaneously, the rise of the “DIY” and Maker generation will allow students to delve deeper and deeper into functional problem solving as part of education. Yes, chemistry kits have always been available as have model rockets. But today an ambitious high schooler can download Arduino, code up some novel software, and have a unique UAV, or a remote controlled robotic vacuum cleaner. Supporting and encouraging functional, creative learning will help secure our national future.

A New Kind Of Manufacturing

This also ties into another trend that the candidates have missed -- micro and regional manufacturing. Rapid improvements in 3D printing are shrinking the factory to the size of a desktop, blowing up the old advantages of economies of scale. By removing labor from the equation and enabling assembly of small complex objects from CAD files, 3D printing will enable an explosion of boutique manufacturing and unprecedented creativity. What’s more, 3D printing will actually fuel the ongoing revival of big-ticket manufacturing in America.

One of the reasons that Apple builds in China is because all the key fabrication shops and parts suppliers are now over there after the U.S. manufacturing sector hollowed out in Silicon Valley and other technology centers. But when Johnny Ive wants a new enclosure mockup and he can get it from his own desktop or from a high-end 3D printer at a custom fabrication facility, then all of a sudden the benefits of having the people who makes screws and touch screens in the same city goes away because those items can quickly and easily be fabbed anywhere.

Beyond old-line products, these printers will be used for genetic material manufacturing and personalized medicine, medical device manufacturing, micro-solar arrays, and even home building, to name a few. 

What does this have to do with Romney and Obama? 

3D Printers, 2D Regulations

This new style of manufacturing will demand a new, lightweight set of regulations. Just as small farmers have struggled to meet food safety guidelines that larger foodcos can easily digest, small manufacturers using super-clean 3D printing technology could struggle with regulatory burdens born by large factories.

Neither Romney nor Obama seems to have given much thought to the future of manufacturing and that’s not a good thing because the U.S. Federal Government should start crafting economic policies (not subsidies but regulatory changes) designed to suit next generation pint-sized, high-powered factories. 

Granted, our two candidates have a lot to talk about in other areas. But the truth is, nothing else matters if the U.S. economy continues to sputter and growth remains stunted. In that same vein, nothing else matters if our education system fails to produce world-beating graduates (and attract the world-beating immigrant scholars) that have made America the reigning global hegemon.

Focusing scarce energy and political capital on the ghost of China past does not serve our future nor does it provide a viable economic solution to our current woes. America has always won by focusing on the future and clearly seeing where the ball is bouncing, not where it was on the last play. Let’s hope our candidates can refocus forward in time to make the shifts required to keep growing our economy and pay for our profligate past while securing the future for our children and their children. 

Vivek Wadhwa is a Fellow at Stanford Law School and VP of Innovation and Research at Singularity University. Follow him on Twitter: @wadhwa.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Burberry's London flagship store recently underwent a renovation that turned the 192-year old building into a digitally integrated showroom for the luxury fashion brand.

Last weekend, American Public Media's radio show, Marketplace Money, aired a feature about how some luxury brands are starting to hurt in the long-suffering economy even as inexpensive brands are thriving. One of the companies that saw a slide in earnings was Burberry.

Perhaps coincidentally, the company best known for its plaids and classic trenches wants to boost its status through digital interactivity. This week, after two years of renovation, the brand open the doors of its digitally integrated store, Burberry Regent Street, in London.

Burberry executives say they're "blurring" the line between the physical and digital, mimicking the online shopping experience in Burberry Regent Street. Many features on the site have a physical counterpart, from the live customer-service chats to interactive outfit suggestions.

Interactive signage greets shoppers as they walk in and displays key points in the building. Associates carry iPads with customer information, including past purchases and preferences. On the floor, certain articles of clothing and accessories carry RFID chips. These chips interact with store mirrors to show videos on craftsmanship or examples of what the items can be paired with. 

At the end of the shopping trip, customers can check out through a mobile system a la an Apple Store, or go to a regular cashier. 

Occasionally taking center stage in the store, quite literally, are "disruptive digital takeovers." At set times, thunder claps from all 500 store speakers, and on all 100 mirrors/screens, including those in fitting rooms, appears an iconic London downpour. (If you're a skittish shopper, may we suggest calling ahead to make sure you avoid these displays?) The rest of the time, models are shown walking from screen to screen, promoting the company's most recent line.

And, just in case you were wondering, the store does have WiFi.

Iceland's nascent data center industry, powered by cheap, renewable energy, could be a growth driver in that nation's economic recovery and the cloud computing revolution. It could also save your company money.

If you're looking to host data between Europe and the U.S., it's worth taking a look at your options in Iceland.

Because of Iceland's unique climate, cooling costs are drastically lower than they are in places like New York and London. And the low cost of electricity helps push pricing down further.

Don't miss: Iceland's Cheap, Green Cloud: How a Tiny Island Could Drive Big Changes

Data Centers

The two big data centers right now are Verne Global and Thor. Both offer a range of services, including co-location. Verne is closer to the main Keflavik airport, while Thor is closer to the capital city of Reykjavik. (They're all pretty close to each other, though.)

Hosting, Cloud & IT Service Providers

Datapipe, Colt, and Opin Kerfi have announced a presence at Verne's facility. GreenQloud, a Reykjavik-based startup, is offering an suite of cloud services similar to Amazon Web Services, hosted in both Verne and Thor's facilities. Others may follow.

What kinds of services are a good bet for hosting in Iceland? The bandwidth situation is much-improved over a few years ago, but if latency is your top concern, Iceland may not be your best option. But Verne Global CTO Tate Cantrell - biased, of course! - estimates that companies could host 75% or more of their services in a facility like his, ranging from ERP and data analytics to backups.

What about taxes? Once upon a time, Iceland's nasty 25% value-added tax on servers was a big roadblock, but it's gone now.

If You Visit, Don't Miss...

One of the fringe benefits of hosting in Iceland is that you get to go there to check out your data center. Reykjavik is a neat place to visit for a couple of days, and Iceland's countryside is beautiful. (Also, everyone speaks near-perfect English.)

I recommend the Icelandair Marina hotel right next to the waterfront in downtown Reykjavik. It's brand-new and super cool. For dinner, check out Grillmarkadurinn or Tapashusid; for breakfast or lunch, Aldin; and for coffee, Kaffismidja Islands.

If you're traveling with an unlocked phone, you can get a prepaid, data-only Vodafone SIM card with 5GB of data for about $15. (Check out the mobile phone shops at the main shopping mall in Reykjavik.) If you want to rent a mi-fi device with service in Iceland, check out Tep Wireless.

And be prepared for sunlight all night long in summer and darkness almost all day in winter!

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.