Our friends over at Telehouse often host conferences, and we attended one this morning. The end-goal of the conference is to learn how media is changing, and how this is going to affect us in the technology sector, and ultimately all of us.

The first speaker was Co-founder of Limelight Networks, Michael Gordon. With all due respect to all our partners in the technology sector, it is not often we find some as well-spoken and capable of holding a crowd’s interest as Michael Gordon.

Michael begins with a simple question: Did Google pay too much for Youtube? I was one of the few who actually said they did, but that’s because have more than a few friends who practice Intellectual Property law. Let’s just say they’re extremely successful because of the kind of suits that await Google & Youtube.

At Limelight, they don’t think so. In fact, Michael believes they under-paid. Why? Ultimately, he thinks it’s a fundamental change in the way media is delivered. I couldn’t agree more on this point. He gives two specific reasons: massive amounts of content online, and users accessing this content from here. His first example is from the legacy of music hitting the internet; in 2003, 1% of music sales were done online. In 2006, it was 10%. With the astounding success of Apple, iTunes, and the iPod, it’s hard to see this will do anything but grow.

Next, consider this: 10% of original xboxes attached Internet. Now with the Xbox360, 60% percent attached to internet. In May of 2006 NBC test launched online streaming video of one of their TV shows: 11 million streamed online. A couple of months later, ABC did the same, with 20 million delivered online in first two weeks. What’s also interesting is that broadcast viewership goes up (not down) when content is delivered online.

Technorati Tags: telehouse, limelight, youtube, media, online data backup

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Happy December! Besides the beginning of the mad rush for Holiday shopping, the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center, and attending multiple holiday parties, this month is special for yet another reason: the new changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

We first blogged about this development a number of months back, especially in this post. It’s something we’re keeping our clients abreast of. It’s a big change, and although today is the first effective date, we’ll certainly feel the ramifications for a long time to come.

A good friend of ours over at Telehouse International sent us a link to a great article this morning on Foxnews.com. The article, “New Rules Make Firms Track E-mails, Instant Messages for Federal Trials,” gives a good, quick overview of why these changes are so important for every business.

Under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing the equivalent of “virtual shredding,” said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation.

Destroying evidence is pretty serious, and is certainly something I would never want to be accused of. We always practice what we preach: we use our own online backup solution of every computer, laptop, and server we use for our business. This way we always know we’d be prepared for any kind of electronic discovery.

These changes are going to be a burden for a number of companies, especially as their applicable scope is virtually unlimited. With under-staffed or overworked IT Departments, backup policies are often the first items to suffer from neglect. Regardless, we see these changes as a potentially positive development. No business should risk everything they have with easily corruptible and often incomplete backup policies. It’s our same mantra: make it automatic, and make it disk-to-disk.

We’ll keep our eyes and ears to the ground over the next couple of weeks to keep you all informed of any new developments. In the meantime, go backup your files!

Technorati Tags: federal rules civil procedure, online data backup, email, document retention, e-discovery

We’ve constantly got our ears on the ground to see what’s going on in the world of data backup and disaster recovery. The other day we noticed that Google Alerts had begun to list blog searches in their emails. How did we notice? Our very own post was circulated back to us!

According to a recent post over at Techcrunch, Google is thinking about adding a blog search to it’s actual search results. This is a very, very interesting development, and shows how much blogs have changed the way information is transmitted in our society. Five years ago nobody cared about them; now, every CEO and his sister is rushing to launch their very own blog.
Even a single blog listing on the bottom of the front page of Google would have enormous ramifications for the entire industry. Given the impressive amount of money currently spent on search engine optimization, this would redefine the game for everyone involved. With the blurring line between blogs, web 2.0 pages, and good-old fashioned web pages, we’d be interested to see how Google narrowly defines a blog. For every rule we formulate to explain these things, a hundred exceptions pop up.

And, of course, when Google changes anything, those trying to game the system will spring into action. The internet is beginning to be filled with spam-blogs whose sole purpose is to drive traffic to less-than-reputable sites. It’s a serious problem for anyone trying to index blogs (just look at Technorati). Something tells me, though, that Google can handle this one. They’ve got some money to spare on the development end.

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, and we look forward to writing again next week. Until then, give us a shout if you’ve got any questions!

Technorati Tags: Google, Techcrunch, Blog, Technorati, SEO, Thanksgiving, Data Backup