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Splunk is getting a sales nudge from the channel as the big data analytics software provider looks to boost its revenue past the $1 billion mark.
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Splunk partner bookings increased a bit over 60% for the company's 2017 fiscal year ended Jan. 31 compared with fiscal year 2016, according to the company, which describes its focus as operational intelligence. The increase in bookings was still higher among Splunk's top 25 global partners, which saw bookings nearly double during that period. Channel partner sales contributed to Splunk's fiscal year 2017 results, which saw revenue grow 42% year over year to $950 million. The company projects$1.185 billion revenue for fiscal year 2018.
Brooke Cunningham, area vice president of global partner programs and operations at Splunk, said the company views the channel as a key component as it sets its sights on eclipsing the $1 billion mark.
"We see our partners as a way we can go and, together, capture great market opportunities," she said, adding the company has 749 active partners.
In a December 2016 filling with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Splunk identified the expansion of its channel relationships and partner ecosystem as key elements of its growth strategy. In the filing, Splunk cited the ability to form "additional OEM and strategic relationships to enable new sales channels for our software" as an influential factor in achieving the company's goals. The company also listed the ability to help software developers use its platform through software development kits and APIs as an important factor.
To solidify its channel outreach, the company on March 1 unveiled an updated Splunk partner program, which includes expanded channel initiatives, new partner categories and a reworked deal registration process.
The Technology Alliance Partner program, for example, was launched in September 2016 to target ISVs. Cunningham said the updated program makes it easier for ISVs to engage with Splunk, noting the program now provides a quicker partner review and onboarding process. ISV partners create Splunk add-ons, connectors and applications built upon the software. Partner benefits include not-for-resale software and software development kits. Cunningham said more than 400 ISVs have participated in the program since its launch, noting that 74% of those companies are net-new partners that hadn't previously worked with Splunk.
The company, meanwhile, has formalized the services component of the Splunk partner program. This part of the program targets channel partners that seek to deliver professional services around the Splunk platform. Splunk in recent months has partnered with professional services firms such as Accenture, which formed an alliance with Splunk in April 2016.
Similarly, Splunk has formalized its outreach to managed service providers (MSPs). Cunningham said Splunk will work through its distributors to recruit and manage MSPs. Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions is one of Splunk's distributors.
And Splunk has updated its reseller initiative, which has been in place since 2015. New features include revised rules of engagement, a simplified discount model and a centralized process for handling deal registration. The adjustments are based on feedback received from partners, Cunningham said.
Jeff Swann, director, solutions architecture at OnX Enterprise Solutions, an IT solutions provider, said OnX has participated in the Splunk partner program for a few years as a reseller. But he said he's interested in the MSP part of the program, since OnX runs a managed services business. He said the Technology Alliance Partner program may also be an option down the road.
Swann said OnX typically deploys Splunk in operational intelligence and IT security scenarios. Operational intelligence involves analyzing machine-generated data to provide insight into IT systems.
"We have a large installed base of enterprise data center customers, so certainly operational analytics is a sweet spot," he said.
On the security side, OnX has built an appliance based on Cisco UCS servers and the Splunk Enterprise Security application, a security information and event management offering.
Resellers such as OnX now have a revised and shortened rules of engagement document to govern their relationship with Splunk.
Cunningham said it became clear based on partner feedback that Splunk's previous effort "was unnecessarily long and not as clear as it needed to be."
The new version has been whittled down to a page and half. The document, she said, provides greater clarity with regard to how partners and Splunk will work together and establish bilateral accountability. The rules of engagement cover deal registration, customer quotes, support, maintenance and renewal. The rules also describe a path for escalating and resolving partner-vendor issues.
As for deal registration, the Splunk partner program now provides a centralized function responsible for reviewing and approving opportunities, a process that includes quality checks for rooting out duplication. The revised deal registration process also comes with a faster turnaround time: 48 hours for Splunk partner deal registration acceptance versus the earlier service-level agreement of 72 hours.
Read about Splunk's take on emerging tech engineering roles
Learn about SIEM analysis interfaces
Listen to a podcast on big data analytics
Excerpt from:
Splunk partner ecosystem boosts data analytics vendor's sales - TechTarget
The United Arab Emirates education network, Ankabut, has linked up multiple education systems in the UAE and abroad through a learning management system (LMS) to enable students to stay connected to resources wherever they are.
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With the adoption of Brightspaces cloud-based LMS, academic institutions joined up by Ankabut have not just been connected to global online learning resources, but have also seen improved student performance, reduced carbon footprint and parents more involved in their childrens education.
Ankabut is the UAEs Advanced National Research and Education Network (NREN) that offers academic institutions in the Gulf state connectivity to other education networks around the globe. As well as connecting universities and institutions of higher learning, Ankabut also links up schools and public institutions across the UAE.
Launched in 2006, Ankabut has the primary objective of opening up information exchange highways between academic institutions in the UAE and the rest of the world.
Today, it provides connectivity to 33 academic institutions within the UAE, spanning K-20 (primary and secondary), higher education, vocational training centres and research institutes.
Within the UAE, Ankabut provides high-capacity, high-speed broadband connectivity between educational, research and eligible non-profit organisations. Internationally, it liaises with government-approved parties in neighbouring countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to determine collaboration on services.
Ankabut was looking to implement a single, uniform learning management system across its member institutions, which would not only benefit faculty members and 100,000 students, but also make it easier to build bridges between the institutions and learning resources around the world.
As a result, it embarked on a project to unify disparate legacy learning systems across the UAE. This reduced the costs of ownership of systems and infrastructure, while allowing students to remain connected.
Ankabut also wanted to reduce the carbon footprint of the countrys education sector and improve parental involvement in the education of their children through monitoring tools.
It wanted a single-point, cloud-hosted platform that would provide a device-neutral communications platform and easy-to-use dashboard for parents to monitor their childrens school performance.
Fahem Al Nuaimi, CEO at Ankabut, said the organisation had realised that having multiple and often disparate learning tools across the UAEs campuses was hindering connectivity to global resources.
Ankabut decided to clear this hurdle by implementing D2Ls Brightspace Learning Management System (LMS), said Al Nuaimi.
A uniform LMS across different learning centres wouldnt just allow educators to better deliver learning through cross-faculty collaboration, two-way feedback channels and comprehensive performance analytics, but would also open the door to a more connected learning experience for students, he said.
Al Nuaimi said that in todays digitally enhanced online environment, access to lectures and other learning materials should not be limited to the classroom.
Obsolete learning systems also sidelined parents, he said. Before the Brightspace LMS implementation, there were some systems that allowed parents to monitor the academic progress of their children, but these were not user-friendly. They did not allow parents to easily log in and see, at a glance, what was going on in their child's day-to-day academic life.
According to Al Nuaimi, the Brightspace platform provides an easily accessible, dashboard-style interface to monitor, at a glance, how a student is performing.
This system has completely changed interactions between parents and their children on the academic front, he said. A simple dashboard shows parents all the information they need to get a real understanding of how their child is doing, thereby allowing them to offer targeted help.
Another problem, saidAl Nuaimi, was that each institution had its own network and servers, which increased the carbon footprint of the UAEs education sector. Along with the increased impact on the environment, such systems were also burdening the institutions with unnecessary capex [capital expenditure] and opex [operational expenditure], he said. You would see everything from open source systems that have limited capacity, capability and availability, to very expensive, out-of-date systems.
The wide mix of tools that were being used by students and faculty members at different learning centres was proving a serious barrier to connecting them to each others resources, said Al Nuaimi.
The Brightspace implementation is a first for this region, where learning centres within the UAE can now connect to online learning resources no matter their location, and they can do so with minimal disruption, he said.
The cloud-based architecture of the new LMS, which Ankabut is providing on a free trial basis to learning centres across the board, has encouraged high adoption rates among UAE institutions, with 78 campuses and 100,000 students now connected to online learning resources from around the world using the Brightspace LMS.
Al Nuaimi said the use of online learning materials and feedback tools had drastically reduced the amount of paper used, and the centralised cloud architecture had reduced the consumption of electricity by learning centres for on-site servers and other IT infrastructure.
Cloud computing had also reduced the cost of ownership, he said. With no need for certain equipment, and its administration and maintenance, organisations were seeing a reduction in costs.
For academic institutions, this translates into bigger budgets for other, often underfunded departments. With the implementation of an online LMS, which is hosted in the cloud, learning institutions have seen a dramatic reduction in their costs, said Al Nuaimi. Our total cost of operations has gone down by 60%.
Once rolled out, the Brightspace LMS provided the standardisation required to enable a hyper-connected ecosystem of institutions, educators, students and parents.
Students no longer have to be on university premises to communicate or to have access to learning resources, said Al Nuaimi. Essentially, they can now carry their classrooms in their pockets. This also fits perfectly with the increased proliferation of the bring-your-own-device [BYOD] trend in the UAEs learning centres as students can now use their mobile devices to access online learning resources.
Member institutions have praisedAnkabut for the leap forward facilitated by the unified system. We have had an excellent response from member institutions, said Al Nuaimi. Faculty members have also noted that student performance has improved considerably.
See more here:
Ankabut creates hyper-connected ecosystem for UEA education - ComputerWeekly.com
If data is the lifeblood of business today, then bandwidth is the beating heart. As more data flows across company networks, new technologies must emergeto lower costs and improve speed. One of these is 5G, a new networking standard that is poised to open up the flow of data across the world.
If you think about what happened from 3G to 4G, youve seen how the usage has changed, said Lynn A. Comp, senior director of industry and sales enabling, Network Platforms Group, at Intel.
Comp spoke over the phone to John Furrier(@furrier), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLEs mobile live-streaming studio, from the Mobile World Congress 2017 event in Barcelona.(*Disclosure below.)
With consideration ofhow evolvingnetwork standards have enabled new applications and technologies, Comp shared her observations on developer innovation with IT networks. She specifically mentioned 5G opening up the networks bandwidth,allowing developers to more easily create and share data-heavy applications in need of low-latency network solutions, such as those for video and virtual reality environments.
Intel is trying to unleash that same spirit of creativity with the help of companies like Honeywell and GE, two partners collaborating on Internet of Things solutions for retailers and improvements throughout theindustrial IoT. With 5G, similarly progressiveuse cases shape a very unique ecosystem, one thats attracting early adopters looking for the first moveradvantage.
To aid in this 5G push, Intel showed off FlexRAN, a Radio Area Network that brings the concept of virtualization to the network. It runs on a standard server and uses network slicing to allocate bandwidth for specific scenarios.
Intel has also brought together a number of hardware and software vendors under the Intel Network Builders program. This initiative, which includes almost all of the top-10 operators, focuses on a building-block approach supported by open-source resources.
That translates into the kind of innovation and applications consumers love, Comp said. Its such an opportunity-rich environment. Were in the pre-standard world right now for 5G, and there are a lot of pre-trials happening.
One method of safeguarding early innovation with 5G technology is the use ofNetwork Function Virtualization. According to Comp, interest in NFV took hold when network operators realized they could run a network on a general processor. Doing soallows a company to separate the hardware from the software.
It gives the operators the ability to use general purpose processors for more than one thing, and future-proof workloads so they dont have to issue new hardware, just spin up a new virtual machine, Comp said. Were just starting to scratch the surface of the opportunities there.
Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBEs coverage of the Mobile World Congress 2017 Barcelona. (*Disclosure: Intel was the sponsor of this segment. Intel has no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)
Read this article:
Future-proofing Intel's 5G ecosystem for developers - SiliconANGLE (blog)
TQ Co-Director Dr. Thomas Funke Photo Credit: TQ
More than just banks and corporates, something is brewing in this German city that could make it the next center for global fintech
Berlin has fast become known as the hub for much of Europes culture and tech scene, offering a hip vibe that has drawn significant talent to the city over the past decade.
But moving past the spotlight on Berlin is the quiet giant of Frankfurt. With its burgeoning cadre of mostly early-stage companies that are emerging from the mass of corporates long associated with the city, it offers an alternative look at how startups are developing in Germany that may be surprising.
Helping to lead the charge is the new team at Tech Quartier, Frankfurts first hubspot aimed at nurturing the young community and supporting entrepreneurship. Backed by Goethe University, the Technical University of Darmstadt, and Wirtschafts und Infrastrukturbank Hessen among others, TQ is led by Managing Director Dr. Sebastian Schaefer and Co-Director Dr. Thomas Funke.
Tech Quartiers Managing Director Dr. Sebastian Schaefer and Co-Director Dr. Thomas Funke Photo Credit: TQ
As entrepreneurial evangelists and educators, Schaefer and Funke see Frankfurts role in the financial center of Europe as an advantage for the citys startup sector to build from. Quite naturally, they have decided to focus on fintech. It does not hurt that the Federal government has named Frankfurt Germanys fintech ecosystem in the Digital Hub program.
Looking to fintech would seem like the logical first step for the community, seeing as finance and banking have traditionally played such a key part of the city. Funke tells Geektime that somewhere between 20-25% of the local startups are in the fintech game, with e-commerce coming in with a strong showing as well. Leaning more on the side of B2B, there has been a growth in B2C, as seen in the case of investing technologies. However Funke says that many of these companies are not able to attract the necessary talent to grow to their potential, apparently stemming from both the supply and demand sides of the equation.
Goethe University, Frankfurt Photo Credit: Gabriel Avner / Geektime
With major banks like Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, ING DiBA and others calling Frankfurt home, these global financial institutions offer startups an incredible yet relatively untapped customer base. As only Munich has a stronger corporate density, TQ and others see ample room for various kinds of partnerships, ranging from strategic investments to more basic customer client relationships.
Despite the opportunities, startup growth has remained slow for several key reasons. These include basics like an insufficient number of the right kind of talent, difficulty in raising funds, slow adoption process from corporates, and a general low energy around the idea of startups outside of a core group. For a country with so much economic potential and a reputation for smart planning, the number of inefficiencies in how corporates offer products and how the consumers treat their money is rather astounding.
According to Prof. Andreas Hackethal of Goethe University, German private households bank deposits increased from 37% in 1999 to 39% in 2015. At the same time, securities went down from 29% to only 23%. Comparatively, this is a very significant amount of money that is not being used to grow the economy. With an aging population that will need to augment its income beyond what the state pension can provide, the public will need to be smarter with their money. This need creates room for products like Robo Advisors that will offer cost-effective measures of engaging the public and bringing them into the market.
Prof. Andreas Hackethal of Goethe University Photo Credit: TQ
Like many places that speak of the need for innovation, at this stage, the corporate engagement has been mostly lip service with a couple of caveats. Germany is not unique in this regard, but perhaps because of the sheer size of the potential industry, it is that much more apparent. To their credit, the local banks are prepared to put down money on supporting great organizations like TQ, and have made noises about opening up their own internal innovation departments. Deutsche Bank has already opened a Digital Lab, that employs over 400 people, to help them develop new technological solutions for their customers, but the feeling is that they are not bringing enough to the table. Perhaps recognizing this, all the major banks, and a number of top consulting firms, are backing TQ as their point of contact with the startup community, a touch point that has been seriously lacking up until now.
Break down sessions at TQs fintech event Photo Credit: TQ
Funke is encouraged in the changes he is seeing. He tells Geektime that the corporates are taking a much more hands-on approach, saying that they feel the need to stay on top of what is happening in the startup innovation sector. Ive never seen movement this fast from the corporate side. Different players like the university and others said that they needed a hub.
When it came to getting backing from the financial community, Funke says that the Economics Ministry of the Hessen state Tarek Al-Wazir wrote a letter to the banks about the plan. He asked if they wanted to sponsor the initiative for a hub and the corporates quickly responded. Whether from peer pressure or their significant interest, they appear to be on board.
The real proof of their commitment will come when they start becoming the startups paying customers. Sounding perhaps like a stereotype (yet true), the German corporates work on a much slower decision-making time frame than one might find in places like the US or Israel. Add to this the necessary considerations for the banking sector, and you hit even more bumps in the road. That can be untenable for a startup.
Hoping to explore what can be done to remedy the situation, TQ hosted an event this past December at their new offices in the heart of the city. In attendance were industry leaders in the startup and corporate sectors, including Prof. Hackethal, Startup Genome CEO JF Gauthier, Tomas Peeters of ING Diba, and Sven Korschinowski from KPMG.
Breaking into smaller groups, the attendees discussed the myriad challenges facing the nascent ecosystem with hopes of developing ideas that could be incorporated into a white paper for guiding their growth. Beyond the normal issues that any scene faces lack of sufficient talent, funding problems, etc. that will be highlighted in a series of follow-up articles they hit upon a couple of interesting points.
The discussion board from the meetup at TQ Photo Credit: Gabriel Avner / Geektime
First is the need to establish more connections where the community can meet and cross-pollinate on ideas and collaboration. There are events like the meetups between startups and investors, like the Pitch Club, that have helped tens of companies raise over 10 million in much-needed seed funding. If Tel Aviv has Startup Alley around Rothschild Blvd., where will Frankfurts startup leaders run into each other while going out to pick up coffee?
TQ will help to play a role here, becoming the new home to the Frankfurt Accelerator that is already setting up for its second round of companies. Founded by partners Ram Shoham and Maria Pennanen, they are leveraging Israeli companies looking for new markets in Germany. They are working to bring new energy to the scene, while bringing a classic and experienced accelerator that has been lacking in the city. As the first real accelerator in town, they have done a lot of the hard work of showing that startups have a place at the table, helping to break ground for those that will follow.
It is important to look at some of the success stories that have already happened on the scene and understand how they give entrepreneurs hope that they too can really build something at home in Germany. Probably the most well-known example is that of 360T, which was bought by Deutsche Brse in 2015 for 725 million. While not quite a unicorn, it marked an important moment for the German fintech startup ecosystem. Speaking with Schaefer, he tells Geektime that his team sees their role at TQ as developing and applying a systematic approach to help develop companies to the point that stories like 360T will become not only replicable but far more common.
Frankfurt Accelerator offices Photo Credit: Frankfurt Accelerator
Next month, TQ will be launching its own accelerator program called the Hessian Israel Partnership Accelerator (HIPA). It will bring young startups from the Frankfurt area together on projects with new teammates from Israel, helping to promote connections between the two ecosystems. They are also opening a new initiative with BCG Europe called TopStars, that they hope will kick off this summer.
Having visited plenty of up and coming startup ecosystems around the world, I always encounter the same set of questions about how to a nascent scene can grow to something resembling what we have in Tel Aviv.
From my short visit in Frankfurt, I witnessed a core group of passionate people who are determined to succeed not only with their own ventures, but to bring the ecosystem up with them. These are people like Funke and Schaefer who understand both the potential that is laying here beneath the surface, and that they will need to stir people from their positions of comfort if they want something to really happen.
Germany and Frankfurt will need to shift into high gear and become more aggressive if they want to reach the next stage. They have a talented and reasonably experienced crew of entrepreneurs and a customer base that others would kill for. Educating the market that, if they want to succeed in the years to come, they will have to learn to adapt and embrace the startup community. Not just coopt them for immediate access to technology, but be supportive partners for the long run.
See more here:
Uncovering Frankfurt's up-and-coming startup ecosystem - Geektime
The non-profit organization ALUS Canada is supporting farmers and ranchers in developing projects that contribute to healthy ecosystems through clean air, clean water, and increased biodiversity. Recognizing farmers as key players in maintaining healthy ecosystems well into the future, ALUS Canada funds their partner communities who work directly with farmers in implementing projects on their land.
As CEO of ALUS Canada and a rancher himself, Bryan Gilvesy came to focus on ecosystem services through his own personal experience. It dawned upon me one day that a farm is capable of producing much more than traditional food and fiber. And the fact that we choose to farm also identifies something within us that is useful to ecosystem services. That is, we care about the natural environment, were connected to it deeply.
ALUS Canada works with 20 communities in six provinces across Canada. Within these communities, 722 farmers and ranchers are participating in the more than 15,500 ecosystem projects currently in place on the ground.
The community-based approach of ALUS is unique, and we also think its the sort of foundational piece, its almost a magical piece of what makes this program work, says Gilvesy. We engage individuals by engaging a whole community. What the community-based approach allows us to do is harness our collective energy, of people that see more value in farms, and farming, and rural communities, and are learning how to apply that knowledge.
By working with communities rather than a single national model, the organization is able to develop alternative land-uses that work with the needs of each farmer or rancher. Some of their key projects include planting native pollinator habitat, reforestation, and wetland restoration. In total, the land involved in these projects covers more than 18,000 acres.
With their newest initiative, the New Acre Project, ALUS Canada hopes to take their impact even further. Branching out from institutional donations, New Acre will allow individuals and organizations to contribute directly to the development of further projects. Through this new initiative, ALUS Canada hopes to engage an even wider community in the production of ecosystem services. Individuals and organizations now have the opportunity to contribute directly to the society-wide services from which they benefit.
Between 2011 and 2015, ALUS Canada transferred nearly CAD$2.8 million (approximately $2.2 million in 2015 USD) to its ALUS communities. In the coming years, they hope to expand that impact by touching more farmers and ranchers, forming new community partnerships, and engaging the wider public in the importance of farming to our healthy ecosystems. As Gilvesy sees it, ALUS Canada is a wide and supportive community. We have a big doorway, and many people from different farming backgrounds, and different styles of farming, in different parts of the country, in different regions of Canada, can walk through the same portal.
Follow this link:
Farming Communities Produce More Than Food Through ALUS Canada - Food Tank (blog)
TrustX GM and President David Kohl was sitting in the front row with a big smile on his face when P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard laid into the digital supply chain at the IABs Annual Leadership Meeting last month.
For the past year, Kohl has been working on a project housed within Digital Context Next to bring premium publishers together into a programmatic cooperative.
Think of it as the love child between a joint business venture and a private marketplace.
So far, 31 publishers, including The Washington Post, CBS Interactive, Hearst, Purch, NBCUniversal and Vox, have signed on to make their inventory available with a human-viewable guarantee. The underlying tech was built by Iponweb, and Moat is providing the measurement and verification.
TrustX is in its alpha phase with a limited number of publishers testing the pipes against unpaid demand to make sure the plumbing works with desktop and mobile display. Beta will kick off by the end of the quarter, likely March, with somewhere between 100 million to 200 million impressions a month and with plans to ramp that up to about 1 billion impression.
The beta is slated to run until the end of July or early August, at which time it will probably also open to video and in-app inventory.
When it comes to transparency, RTB isnt the problem. Rather, the problem is the sprawling complexity of the digital advertising ecosystem.
For most problems, the answer in the ad tech ecosystem has typically been to throw a new piece of technology at the problem, layering technology on top of technology rather than trying to create a well-lit environment, said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next.
Fraud and bad actors aside, inefficiency creeps in when everyone just wants to take their nickel or their dime, said Jed Hartman, CRO of The Washington Post, which plans to take part in the TrustX beta rolling out in March.
If the ecosystem had been purpose-built rather than jury-rigged, Kohl said, the digital supply chain would be less porous than it is today.
Digital advertising, particularly in programmatic, has been cobbled together over the last decade or so without any master plan, and thats enabled a tremendous economy to develop around media budget, Kohl said. But the fact is that less and less of each dollar is actually making it to working media.
According to the World Federation of Advertisers, agencies and tech providers siphon off about 60 cents of every buck spent on media.
Brand safety can also be an issue in programmatic, as starkly evidenced in early February when ads for a number of high-profile brands, including Honda, Mercedes-Benz and Sandals Resorts,appeared on jihadist and extremist websites. Unfortunate contextual placements aside, the brands were put in the highly awkward position of essentially monetizing terrorism.
But retreating into the relative safety of direct sold isnt an option for a publisher like The Washington Post, which generates more than 1 billion page views per month. That requires WaPo to run what Hartman called a sizable programmatic business, which includes selling on the open exchange.
Its not realistic to think that wed be able to sell all of that from a direct perspective, Hartman said. But were an experimental culture and we always lean toward trying new sell-side platforms.
And if the yields there, so will be WaPo. Its the same at CBS Interactive, another TrustX beta launch partner.
I think theyre doing great work, but if we can find a better CPM, thats always where were going were ruthless in how we handle yield management, said Dave Morris, EVP and chief revenue officer at CBS Interactive, who noted that CBSi is still deciding how much inventory to make available through TrustX.
But volume isnt necessarily the point right now, Morris said. TrustX is a collective PMP of highly desirable publishers, and the CPMs will be priced accordingly. Each publisher will set its own pricing strategy, Kohl said. Although its too early to say what the CPM range will be on TrustX, according to Index Exchange the average PMP clearing price was three times the open market average in Q2 2016.
Exchanges dont sell out by their nature because they have millions of opportunities, but this is not an exchange, its invite-only, and not every advertiser can afford to be in there or wants to be in there, he said. If youre a major direct-response advertiser looking for $1 or $2 CPMs, you wont run on TrustX.
Were just trying to get to sufficient scale so we can figure out a better way to trade programmatically, Kohl said. Let us be the industrys master experiment.
But for the experiment to work, TrustX needs demand. Kohl and TrustX CRO John Vilade, a former sales VP at Hulu, are pounding the pavement to drum up interest from marketers, DSPs and trading desks at the holding-company level, although Kohl declined to share names just yet. Publishers or marketers looking for a seat on the exchange can reach out to Kohl directly.
One thing TrustX doesnt have to worry about, though, is making money, at least not for itself. The exchange will operate as a nonprofit subsidiary of Digital Content Next, which eliminates the profit motivation of a regular technology company, Kint noted.
While TrustX is never going to be a publishers main buying platform, the point here is to make a point, Kohl said.
Were building a purpose-driven platform to try and figure out what the next generation of ad tech looks like, he said. The publishers and agencies were talking to arent thinking about this as just another demand source. Its a transactional platform, yes real money will change hands but its more about trying to think about programmatic differently and building something new.
And the moment is right for a nudge or a shove toward greater transparency, said the Posts Hartman.
It feels like marketers are ready to really embrace something like this, Hartman said. And from our perspective, its 100% trusted brands in an exchange-type environment, so we looked at it and said, Why not?
See the article here:
The Digital Ad Ecosystem Is Messy And TrustX Is Grabbing A Broom - AdExchanger
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Young and aspiring entrepreneurs have always felt the need for veteran entrepreneurs and business owners to take the prestigious investor hotseat rather than bankers and accountants donning that role. Veteran entrepreneurs, who have walked the chaotic entrepreneurial path, generally tend to better empathize with younger entrepreneurs who are now at the nascent stages of their journey.
After creating a multi-billion dollar company, Vishwas Mudagal and Co-Founder and MD Sonia Sharma of GoodWorkLabs have now turned angel investors in 2017. The duo started an outsourced product design firm in 2013.
An opportunity with a purpose
Speaking to Entrepreneur, the duo spoke about how their personal hurdles and the market potential motivated them to turn investors for the ecosystem.
When we floated this co-working space, we wanted to give it back to the ecosystem by mentoring and funding these startups. Vishwas and I would mentor these startups as we rightly know how to solve real world problems as founders and likewise we want to solve companies that aspire to solve real world problems, Sonia said.
As we continue to grow as a company, we wanted to do a little more than what we were doing at the moment. We also thought that investing in different startups will help us engage with different genres and explore exciting sectors, Vishwas added.
The sectors Vishwas and Sonia are looking to explore include IoT, healthcare, fintech and are also keen on looking at startups outside India. They surprisingly, are also very keen on investing in organic farming as well.
We are driven a lot with our heart as much as our brain, Vishwas added
The advantage entrepreneurs have over regular VCs
Both young and old ecosystem players like Girish Mathrubootham, Bansals, Nandan Nilekani, Ratan Tata and others have plunged into the business of angel funding over the recent years. However, industry experts believe that there should be more veteran entrepreneurs taking up important roles at VC firms. A recent example of this is Kunal Shah joining Sequoia Capital at an advisor.
Talking about the advantage they have as investors over traditional VCs, Vishwas accepted that entrepreneurs are a lot more comfortable with them, as both he and Sonia have walked similar paths. We have more empathy towards them, he adds.
The duo believes that the co-working space would also help them explore the ecosystem and look at opportunities. Vishwas said that its easier for him from the wealth management perspective to invest in a plush property, but here they are looking a profitable exit from an angel investor perspective.
Today Vishwas and Sonia plan to invest in three startups anywhere within the bandwidth of $50,000 and $200,000 and also launched GoodWorks Co-works- and in-house co-working incubation studio.
I write on India's well- established entrepreneurs, VCs, business houses, covering a whole range of sectors, for the company's website and monthly magazine. I am an engineer turned journalist. Prior to this, I was working with Reute...
Read the rest here:
Giving it Back to the Startup Ecosystem: When Entrepreneurs Turn Investors - Entrepreneur
Forbes | The Driving Force Behind Australia's Growing Startup Ecosystem Forbes There's this thing called inspiration. Common symptoms include unfamiliar zeal, unquenchable passion, and unprecedented ambition. You've either experienced it first hand or heard about it from someone who has. By definition, inspiration motivates ... |
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The Driving Force Behind Australia's Growing Startup Ecosystem - Forbes
Cradle's new investment product DEQ800 timely for a maturing ecosystem Digital News Asia Both the startup ecosystem and Cradle has evolved significantly since the latter was formed 13 years ago. Back then, it filled a funding gap in the area of developing ideas into prototypes, moving on to funding for prototype-to-market in the form of ... |
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Cradle's new investment product DEQ800 timely for a maturing ecosystem - Digital News Asia
Samsung just recently announced a 2-in-1 device yes, and were mildly surprised that theyre into those as well and its not just an ASUS or Lenovo thing called the Samsung Galaxy Book. Its a Windows-powered tablet that is targeted for productivity-leaning users, and those who work on the go. But this device also slots in seamlessly with your Samsung Galaxy smartphone through the Samsung Flow ecosystem.
We wrote about Samsung Flow before, and it was an app that basically made things easier for people who owned a Samsung tablet and a Samsung Galaxy smartphone. It was initially available only for the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S, but now Samsung is incorporating some Windows 10 devices, starting with the Galaxy Book.
The premise is really simple pair your Galaxy devices (tablet and smartphone, in this case) and experience convenient authentication and unlocking via both devices. You can unlock your tablet using the fingerprint sensor on your Galaxy smartphone and never have to authenticate twice again. You can also seamlessly beam content from one device to the other, and also reply to notifications on your smartphone from the tablet, if youre working on something and cant be bothered to pick up your phone.
Its something youd recognize if youre using a Mac and an iOS device, and how we wish there would be something universal like this on Android. But this is a good start, although it only works for Samsung-branded devices. There are a lot of third party app solutions out there for Android devices as well, but none as streamlined as this.
SOURCE: Samsung
Excerpt from:
Samsung new Galaxy Book will slot in seamlessly to Samsung Flow ecosystem - Android Community
NEW DELHI: Apple has told the government that it plans to make most of its products in India and that it will establish an ecosystem of partners, which may include contract manufacturers and suppliers.
The company is said to be planning a start with local production of its iPhone SE.
"Apple plans to move up the value chain in their next phase, in terms of producing the entire suite of products, definitely all iPhone models, for which their entire ecosystem of partners needs to move in," IT secretary Aruna Sundararajan told ET.
The company's main contract manufacturers Foxconn, Wistron, Pegatron and Inventec are closely watching its plans for that reason.
"They (Apple) have two primary asksone that they should be able to import the components that they need, and second that it should be cheaper for them to manufacture here than to import," she said.
"The second question is where government has not yet taken a view, because this is to be decided only after the GST (goods and services tax) is finalised."
Foxconn, which is Apple's largest contract maker, is said to be in active talks with the Maharashtra government, with which it already has a $5-billion investment pact, said a senior manufacturing executive. "It may well be a three-four way game between Foxconn, Wistron, Pegatron and Inventectwo of them are already in India," the person said. Foxconn, Inventec and Pegatron didn't respond to ET's emails.
A query to Wistron, which makes the iPhone 5S and the SE, on whether it will set up a separate, larger plant for Apple went unanswered. Wistron will make the iPhone SE at its Bengaluru facility, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
An Apple spokesperson said, "We've been working hard to develop our operations in India and are proud to deliver the best products and services in the world to our customers here. We appreciate the constructive and open dialogue we've had with government about further expanding our local operations."
Sundararajan said her department has met several contract manufacturing firms from Southeast Asia looking to set up shop in India. "It's a question of when, not whether," she said.
Companies Await Rollout of GST Regime However, companies are waiting for the GST rollout, expected sometime this year, before finalising plans.
This also applies to Indian and foreign companies that made investments based on the 11.5 per cent duty differential between locally made pro ducts and imports.
"They have asked for long-term stability of policy, but the main issue is whether if they manufacture in India, they would not be at a cost disadvantage compared to earlier," Sundararajan said.
"The GST Council is still evolving, so we can't categorically say what kind of view they will take."
The council, a representative body of the Centre and the states, will decide the GST rates.
The key issue will be coping with the transition as GST takes effect, Sundararajan said. Mindful of the situation, the department has set up an Invest India arm to handhold companies, Sundararajan said.
"We have very categorically told them that India is open for investments and that we're there to support them," she said.
More here:
Will establish an ecosystem of partners in India: Apple to government - Economic Times
Many of our efforts at optimizing how we run our T&D systems depend upon the value of the underlying electric energy and capacity our generating facilities provide. And when it comes to coal in this regard, earlier this month, some highly placed conservatives proposed A Conservative Case for Climate Action as highlighted in this Feb. 8, 2017 New York Times piece editorial. The editorial references the Carbon Dividends Plan put forth by James A. Baker, George P. Schultz, and others.
It is undeniable that we owe coal the fact that it brought us the industrial revolution. But the forward progression has been driven primarily by efforts by businesses and regulators to make wise economic choices. Loyalties to specific fuels played second fiddle to an informed debate about the best available options at the time.
There is a narrative that was debunked many times but which still emerges at times like this in our industry. It is a narrative about how free market forces alone can lead us to the right energy choices (per this USA Today piece). It states that whale oil was replaced by better forms of light solely due to technological and economic forces. In reality, per this PBS Newshour piece, legislation was also involved.
In any case, youll probably agree with the idea that lighting a home via electricity from coal may have been better environmentally than lighting it with lamps burning whale oil, camphor, turpentine, or kerosene. And whichever side of the spectrum you are on, youll also likely agree it helps us to make better decisions if we start with the reality that our dependency on coal is still very strong.
Our current coal ecosystem
Between the 1990s and the midpoint of our current decade, U.S. electric generation from coal went from 54% down to a bit below the 40% mark. If electricity generation from coal went to zero, the carbon footprint of the electric utility industry would certainly decrease significantly from its current 2 billion metric ton annual CO2 emissions level. But the carbon footprint of some common everyday products could increase, depending on how we address alternatives (and depending on how we account for those changes).
If the last statement makes you cast a quizzical glance in one or another direction, whether you happen to be indoors or outdoors, consider why it is likely you looked at a surface or structure made with some coal by-products in it:
When estimates are discussed regarding additional coal related R&D and associated economic benefits, it is important to look at the propositions with an ecosystem point of view economically.
A coal ecosystem case studyRare Earth Elements
Research highlighted in a January 24, 2017 DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory piece shows the benefits from extraction of vital Rare Earth Elements (REEs) from coal ash. Titled Coal Ash Recovery Could Pump the Domestic Rare Earth Metals Supply, it involves a University of Kentucky project will pilot processing facility for recovering rare earth metals, to be built in September 2017 for testing in 2018.
One evaluation approach is to claim that coal ash would have to be disposed of anyway, so as long as we are utilizing coal, there may be incremental benefits to getting more economic value from the ash and reducing its environmental disposal costs.
But couldnt this approach be splitting hairs? Consider, size-wise in rough numbers, how small the annual U.S. spend currently is in rare earth elements, versus the current utility industry coal spend. The U.S. annual rare earth element spend is about $170 milliona tiny fraction of the tens of billions U.S. electric utilities spend annually on coal supplies. And it is a smaller fraction still of the hundreds of billions in capital investment represented by our existing coal-fired power plants. (Even just one carbon capture plant costs many times more than the $170 million annual U.S. rare earth spend. (See A January 25, 2017 Energy Times piece, Largest Carbon Capture Complex Complete--NRG Partners with JX Nippon on $1 billion Deal ).
So it is only when we take a big picture view that we can put these various elements into the right context for decision-making. And, hopefully, for good regulation-making.
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The Coal 'Ecosystem' and Good Regulations - TDWorld - Transmission and Distribution World
CSO | Feb 21, 2017 1:29 PM PT
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Peer to peer leadership mentoring and executive knowledge sharing is a critically important component to building, strengthening and sustaining our national cybersecurity ecosystem.
There are many excellent cybersecurity venues among the priority list of forum offerings. Of the large, annual multi-day offerings Black Hat and RSA, which of course just wrapped last Friday, are top of the pack. SINET, founded and led by legendary cyber warrior Robert Rodriquez and his wife Heather, is another premier knowledge transfer platform. Billington CyberSecurity too is a lead honorable mention.
But for pure play CISO-to-CISO leadership information sharing, HMG Strategy stands out. Simply, there is no better venue (that Im aware of) for CISOs, their infosec deputies and other corporate staff peripherally touching the CISOs office, to come together in a one-day close knit setting to share, explore and learn about the salient issues and their corresponding solutions confronting corporate information security officers today and contemplating the as-yet-unknowns looming on tomorrows horizon.
When it comes to gauging the quality, or what I call the content return quotient, of a professional gathering forum, I do what Im sure many other potential participants do and turn to the published speakers list. The extent of depth and range of pre-eminent thought leaders serving as panelist and/or keynotes usually (not always) correlates to the quality of the knowledge output of the respective summit.
With HMG, the product speaks for itself. Have a quick look at the advisory board, agenda and accompanying speakers list for HMGs upcoming 2017 New York CIO Summit of America, taking place March 9 in Midtown: HMG CIO Summit of America. Note the range of participating CIO luminaries.
And now Hunter Muller and his HMG Strategy team are leveraging the essential playbook they developed over 10 years in building what is widely consideredtheleading peer to peer CIO forum in the market. Im proud to have been invited by HMG to come aboard as a founding advisory board member, to contemplate, formulate, build and collaboratively execute the platform as envisioned by the Hunter and his team.
For the past two years, Ive been serving as a go-to cyber chair on the standing CIO headhunter panel scripted in every HMG CIO Summit agenda. Talent management is now a prevailing issue on the CIO priority list; as is of course cybersecurity.
Ive not been alone; Aileen Alexander and Jamie Cummings, who co-lead Korn Ferrys cybersecurity practice, are also regularly called as participating executive search consultants. Given where cybersecurity now predominates the national discussion across our national security, corporate and Wall Street spheres, its only natural that HMG Strategy would roll out a parallel standalone CISO executive leadership forum, to better serve constituent CISOs (and by association CIOs) and their respective organizations.
In the end, a knowledge-content-leadership summit is only as good and constructively useful as the collaborative range and dynamic exchange of ideas among participating speakers and audience guests. The HMG CISO Advisory Board has formulated a dynamic forward-looking agenda; and in tandem has assembled a fantastic team of keynotes and panelists, ranging from legendary cyber thought leaders such as Ed Amoroso, Mark Egan and Israel Martinez, to veteran CISOs Colin Anderson, Todd Barnum and Shamla Naidoo, and rising infosec leaders Kirsten Davies, Kevin Powers and Tom Sammel, to name just a few. Pretty exciting stuff . . .
On behalf of Hunter Muller and his team at HMG Strategy, I look forward to seeing many of you at the inaugural HMG Strategy CISO Executive Leadership Summit, March 17 in San FranciscoHMG Strategy CISO San Franciscoand/or latterly in New York, April 28HMG Strategy CISO New York. Additional confirmed CISO summits to follow in other US cities throughout the calendar year HMG CISO Summit 2017 Calendar.
See you out there . . .
This article is published as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join?
Stephen Spagnuolo leads the CyberSecurity Leadership Recruitment & Advisory Practice ZRG Partners, a global executive search firm that embraces data and analytics to underscore the hiring process. He brings over fifteen years of experience recruiting senior and next-generation corporate leaders on behalf of a wide-ranging client base, from leading global investment banks to pre-funded emerging growth companies to a cadre of consultancies of all sizes. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he formerly deployed to multiple overseas contingencies as a Marine Corps infantry officer.
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There is growing evidence that tomorrows urban cars will be safe, green and connected, Mary Gustanski, Delphis vice president of engineering, recently told Car Talk. Were going to see more electrification, and the electric car will merge with automated driving and the connected car.
Electric vehicles (EVs) now hold just a 1% share of the global fleet on the road, but it could comprise 15% to 35% of total global new vehicle sales by 2040, according to IHS Markit. Worldwide sales are up more than 1,000% since 2010. In Europe and China, where regulation encourages plug-ins, EVs could be more than half of new passenger vehicle sales by 2040 the same time fully autonomous cars are expected to rule the roads.
Cars That Drive Themselves
The auto industry is moving toward the self-driving car; and semi-autonomous cars able to operate hands-off, but with a driver behind the wheel are already on sale. According to Deloitte, the shift to take our hands off the wheel could occur more quickly and at greater scale than many are prepared for, especially in densely populated areas. Cities will probably be the first laboratories for autonomous technology.
Will these vehicles simply replace our current private cars? Maybe not. With cities in the vanguard, we seem to be evolving toward a growing reliance on shared fleet cars. We will primarily see autonomous cars in on-demand mobility fleets, said Sam Abuelsamid, a senior research analyst at Navigant Research. Theres a distinct possibility that consumers will never actually be able to buy them.
As Abuelsamid pointed out, there are good reasons for fleet ownership of self-driving cars, including the fact that maintenance will be critical. Once a car is sold to a consumer, the manufacturer no longer has control over which parts are put on that vehicle, and when were talking about the sensors that control the car, its critical that they not be replaced with cheap, off-brand parts, he said. But poor-quality parts could also be outlawed by regulation.
We will primarily see autonomous cars in on-demand mobility fleets. Sam Abuelsamid, Navigant Research
Robin Chase, co-founder of Zipcar, argued that serving our transportation needs with fleets of autonomous electric cars is an ideal scenario for these reasons. Simply eliminating the drivers from cars, and keeping everything else the same, will be a disaster, she said. If we share rides in shared cars, we will only need 10% of the cars we have today. We have the ability to eliminate congestion, transform the livability of cities, make it possible to travel quickly and safely from A to B for the price of a bus ticket, improve the quality of our air, and make a significant dent in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, she said.
The footprint of the [U.S. car rental] industry stretches from coast to coast, and includes both airport and what we call the home-city market, said Chris Brown, executive editor of Auto Rental News. The fact is, the autonomous vehicle model most likely will be well suited for a pay-as-you-go system, especially on the local level. And this plays into car rentals strengths of customer interface and management for the long term.
Jack Nerad, an executive market analyst at Kelley Blue Book, agreed that fleets will be in the autonomous and electric vanguard. In fleets, it works, he said. Cities are a challenge, because space is at a premium, and theres no place for apartment dwellers to charge. But fleets can be charged en masse at centralized locations.
Gary Survis, a venture partner at Insight Venture Partners and a senior fellow at Whartons Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL), said he believes that at least the early generation of autonomous cars will let their owners take the wheel when they want to, because the love of driving is still strong in todays motorists. A lot of research shows that, even with autonomous cars, people are still going to want to drive, he said. I dont think that goes away.
The Future of Transportation
When it comes to urban transportation, there is a huge amount of disruption to what we consider the norms, said Survis. The whole question of auto ownership is being challenged by sharing services and the autonomous car.
Survis said that accommodating self-driving cars will require cities to adjust their infrastructure for instance, by adding special dedicated lanes, or geo-fenced areas. The infrastructure for modern transportation in the urban environment demands major thinking and federal funding, Survis said. As the population continues to rise in our bigger cities, this should become a major priority.
For Asias growing megacities (with populations above 10 million), new transportation models may not involve four wheels at all. A startup called Gogoro has sold 15,000 of its electric scooters in Taipei, Taiwan, and keeps them on the road with hundreds of battery swap stations. Founder Horace Luke said he plans to expand to other Asian megacities. The company also has a separate scooter-sharing operation in Berlin, Germany with Bosch as a partner.
Automakers will remain a big part of future mobility, but they see their roles changing.
In the U.S., Americans are responding to the renaissance in urban public transit investment. According to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Fact Book for 2015, Since the early 1970s, public transportation has shown a long-term growth in ridership [60% since 1973]. Bus ridership has grown 15% over that time period while heavy rail and light rail ridership have each more than doubled. Public transportation ridership has increased by over a billion trips each of the past two decades. But more needs to be done, since the U.S. transit system is aging, and the population is expected to increase by 100 million by 2050.
The good news is that despite infrastructure challenges, cities are committing to adding transit options, especially light rail. According to New Geography in 2014, it is legacy cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C. with well-established subways and rail that account for 77% of transit commuting nationally. But thats changing, as newcomers like Phoenix (which opened a 20-mile rail system), Dallas (93 miles in four lines), Salt Lake City (four new lines in one year), Denver (which realigned its downtown around the rail hub) and others become far more transit-friendly.
That said, automakers will remain a big part of future mobility, but they see their roles changing. Volkswagen, for instance, launched a new brand called MOIA, which is providing a ride-hailing commuter shuttle in Germany using electric vans. According to a 2016 article in the Financial Times, [Automakers] are partly being pushed into it by Uber, which has made ride-hailing in cities so convenient and comparatively cheap that it may start to take the place of car ownership. Road transport becomes a utility, something that can be bought by volume, like gas, electricity and water.
John Paul MacDuffie, a professor of management at Wharton, believes that in the near future, urban dwellers will start each day figuring out where they need to go, and will put some options together that might be unique to that day, possibly combining public transit, car rentals, ride-hailing, car sharing and city bikes.
MacDuffie also said that there is likely a market for mobility services providers that can make it all work for you. Ideally, that would mean the traveler would tell the provider where they wanted to go, and they would get a detailed itinerary with all the intermodal links worked out.
Excerpt from:
Tomorrow's Transportation Ecosystem: From Autonomous Vehicles ... - Knowledge@Wharton
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Letters 11:41 a.m. PT Feb. 24, 2017
I read Stephen Moores February 18 column with dismay. ("The carbon-tax scam")
Then I read the introduction in his book about the subject online. He is afraid. Hes afraid that by relying on sources of power such as wind and solar we will go back to a time before electricity. He is afraid that our economy will suffer, and people will lose jobs. Maybe he should study some of the latest technological advances making clean, renewable energy more affordable and reliable. He should also study economic models such as the one done by the Regional Economic Models, Inc., which show the positive economic effects of a carbon fee and dividend.
Even if I did not believe that global warming is the biggest threat our planet has ever faced, even Mr. Moore would have to admit that fossil fuels have some negatives. Just look at the forests destroyed by the tar sands (an area the size of Britain). Mountaintops have been blown off to get at coal and the waste can now be freely dumped in streams. The obvious cost to our ecosystem is evident. Fracking is no better. The waste water pumped into wells creates earthquakes. Look at the pictures.
The plan put forward by the Climate Leadership Council of knowledgeable Republican statesmen and economists should be adopted, along with Governor Inslees budget as a way to transition to a cleaner world with a more stable climate.
Marty Bishop, Port Orchard
Read or Share this story: http://www.kitsapsun.com/story/opinion/readers/2017/02/24/fragile-ecosystem-fear-not-new-tax/98361126/
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To the editor:
A local gun store recently held a coyote hunting tournament in which 37 coyotes were killed over three counties. Organizers claimed that the contest was held due to hunters complaining about the declining deer population, but what these hunters do not know is that coyotes do not impact deer populations.
In an article posted to the pro-hunting website Bowsite.com, whitetail biologist C.J. Winand writes, Do coyotes negatively effect (sic) our deer herds? The answer is generally NO! In fact, in the big woods with an average deer herd and normal precipitation, I doubt whether its even measurable.
Before claiming that Mr. Winand is an anti or anything of the sort, understand that he is a staff writer for Bowhunter as well as Deer and Deer Hunting magazines.
Since its clear that killing coyotes will not protect the deer population, what do such killing contests actually accomplish? The truth is they do a lot of harm, and not only to the coyotes who are killed but also to the local coyote population and local farmers.
Hunting contests interfere with the natural predator/prey relationship that is vital to a well-functioning ecosystem. Killing coyotes initially creates unnaturally large populations of mice and rabbits, which then become a problem for agriculture interests.
Coyote hunting then increases the population of coyotes, because when hunting drops their numbers unnaturally low, they begin to breed faster than they can be killed. And by targeting the largest and strongest coyotes, hunting contests leave the smallest, weakest and sickest animals to breed. This grows the population, weakens the species and encourages the spread of sickness and disease. Killing contests are not based upon any degree of science they are nothing more than an exercise in bloodlust.
When one considers the effect hunting has on wildlife and habitat, it is clear that the sport is nothing less than an absolute disaster and one that has no place in an ethical society.
To learn what you can do to eliminate the problem of sport hunting forever, visit AbolishSportHunting.com.
Joe Miele
The Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting
New Paltz, New York
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Letter: Hunting contests damage ecosystem - Daily Reporter - Greenfield Daily Reporter
It is not surprising to learn the number of financial phishing and malware attacks has gone up throughout 2016. Last year was a top year for cyber criminals and it is believed 2017 will see more of the same. According to Kaspersky Labs, mainly Android users were targeted during the 2016 malware and phishing attacks, which is rather surprising.
It is true a lot of consumers rely on mobile devices to check up on finances or complete payments. This also creates new opportunities for cybercriminals looking to take advantage of this situation. Particularly the Android ecosystem is of great interest to hackers, as it is the most popular mobile operating system in the world today. Unfortunately, it is not all that secure either in some cases.
Throughout 2016, cybercrime gangs have been targeting Android users with both banking malware and phishing campaigns. It is the first time such a high amount of financial phishing has been recorded by security researchers. Kaspersky Labs also mentioned how phishers are becoming more professional, which increases their chances of tricking victims into giving up sensitive financial information.
Additionally, the number of Android users attacked by banking malware surpassed the 1 million mark. Considering how this trend had grown less popular throughout 2014 and 2015, security researchers were hopeful this attack vector would not increase in popularity again. That is anything but the case, by the look of things, as a 30.6% increase in recorded attacks does not bode all that well. Interestingly enough, less than one in five banking malware attacks were directed at corporate users.
It is evident cyber criminals are targeting the average consumer, rather than going after high-value targets. Whether this is due to corporate clients having better computer security, remains anybodys guess. The evidence indicates average consumers are more prone to get infected with the banking malware once distributed. A lot of smaller targets will eventually result in larger financial gains for the criminals, which remains their ultimate objective. Most victims were located in Russia, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, and the United States.
In terms of which banking malware is distributed exactly, it would appear Zbot remains the most popular tool among crime gangs. Nearly half of all attacked users received a Zbot banking malware strain, making it the clear fan favorite for the time being. The second most common banking malware strain is the Gozi family, which represents over 17% of all attacks recorded in 2016.
Kaspersky Lab researchers also discovered a worrisome trend Android users need to take note of. The number of banking malware attacks increased exponentially during the second half of 2016. It is unclear if this trend has continued throughout the first month and a half of 2017, albeit it seems likely to assume that is the case. Primarily Russian Android users are becoming a very popular target right now, thanks to the Asacub and Svpeng malware families.
If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.
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Android Ecosystem Faces Growing Banking Malware Threat - The Merkle
How Bears Breed Unicorns: Inside Cal's Vast Startup Ecosystem CALIFORNIA Important as it is, the center is only one part of the startup ecosystem, a sprawling web of resources that includes an array of graduate and undergraduate classes, startup accelerators, incubators, competitions, mentoring, and funding mechanisms ... |
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How Bears Breed Unicorns: Inside Cal's Vast Startup Ecosystem - CALIFORNIA
The Startup India initiative, launched in January 2016 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, recently completed one year of existence. Shailendra Singh, Joint Secretary and CVO (Chief Vigilance Officer) at Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), took the stage at the Make in India Karnataka conference to talk about the journey so far, learnings, and the future of the Startup India initiative.
Organised by the Government of Karnataka in association with Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), the Government of India, and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the event saw sector-specific tracks and general discussions.
Shailendra Singh noted that the past year, the Startup India initiative has been an incredible journey of learning and the team never thought it would progress like it did. In the initial stage, the Startup India team had to decide which department would handle different roles and then start building on it from the ground-up. He said,
At Startup India, we are trying to build an ecosystem at the national and state level. We want to take care of startups at every stage starting from registration of a startup as a company to necessary compliances, mentoring, incubation, funding, and exit.
Singh also mentioned that all updates, be it progress so far, plans in action, and also future plans are updated on the Startup India website. He encouraged the audience to regularly visit the platform and share feedback with the government.
As Startup India is just a year old now, Singh joked that the initiative qualifies as a startup itself as it is undergoing a lot of learnings and taking inputs from the Indian population. Talking about some of the initiatives, he shared the following:
Startup India had made company registration easier and now a new company can be incorporated within two days. DIPP has also written to different states to make their norms easier and assist startups in focussing on the job and at hand instead of tip-toeing around compliances.
While the government had passedthe 10,000 crore Fund of Fundsand is the process of deploying it, Singh noted that even though the startup funding environment has not been ideal in India, the Fund of Funds is not aimed at disrupting or replacing existing models. He said,We are of course not disturbing the channel through which startups approach an angel fund or VCs.
Singh also noted that they got feedback that banks don't provide loans to startups because innovative startups are considered to be high-risk ventures. To counteract this Singh noted,
We are formulating a credit guarantee scheme of Rs 2,000 crore and hope to launch it within a month. This should take care of funding issues.
Singh noted that the government and its many bodies are helping startups validate their startup ideas through its network of mentors, incubators, and also with the government acting as a customer to many upcoming startups. Singh said,
Earlier startups were looking at only 2530 percent procurement which was done by the government. Now startups can compete with major players.
To further level the playing field, the government has also removed turnover and experience criterion for micro, small, and medium enterprises. All these measures were put into practice by interacting with the general public and understanding their pain points.
DIPP has also made the process of filing patents easier by reducing the filing charges by 80 percent and also providing a panel of 1,000 facilitators to help with the different nuances involved ranging from filing patents to intellectual property rights (IPR) issues.
While patent filing and raising funds are critical to a startups success, Singh noted that startup incubators have historically been shown to be the most important stakeholder for the startup ecosystem. Singh said,
All developed countries where startups are flourishing because they have really worked on incubators and they are doing well. That is one place we are lagging behind in. Anyone with a good idea should enter an incubator and come out with a ready product.
Many ministries, National Institute for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, DST, and MSME are working on developing world-class incubators. The government is also inviting corporates and academic institutes to work together to build incubators. Singh said,
We should have 1,000 world-class incubators in the country to take the startup ecosystem forward.
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