Scot Petersen

About

Scot Petersen is a technology analyst at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. Prior to joining Ziff Brothers, Scot was the editorial director, Business Applications & Architecture, at TechTarget. Before that, he was the director, Editorial Operations, at Ziff Davis Enterprise, While at Ziff Davis Media, he was a writer and editor at eWEEK.

Costs of Cloud Computing at Odds With Growing Complexity

A little more than a decade into the public cloud era, the costs of cloud computing are still far from settling into predictable and repeatable patterns. The reason is why cloud computing became popular in the first place. Users can free themselves from IT CAPEX—capital expenditures—which for even mid-sized businesses can result in millions of […]

Open Source Codecs Pave Way for High-Resolution Streaming Video

NEW YORK—The compression algorithm at the center of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” has put a spotlight on an important part of the life of the internet. Compression is necessary to make files smaller so they can be downloaded and stored easily enough to make video streaming possible. However, the show’s wannabe entrepreneurs keep failing to turn […]

Dell EMC’s ‘Embrace and Extend’ Cloud Strategy Coming into Focus

LAS VEGAS—If Cloud 1.0 was Amazon renting out its spare servers, and Cloud 2.0 is all about container-based and cloud native applications, then enterprises need to get ready for Cloud 3.0. The next-generation of cloud will be something that goes beyond technology to a business operating model. Or as Dell EMC calls it, “IT-as-service.” “The […]

Media Industry Integrating New Tech to Meet Consumer Demands

LAS VEGAS—The media and entertainment (M&E) industry is still figuring out the next generation of business models for multiplatform content and video, but that has not slowed new innovations coming from vendors trying to meet the demands of the new media consumer. “Multiplatform” is indeed the new M&E buzzword, joining Ultra HD, OTT (over-the-top), HDR […]

Docker Expands Enterprise Focus as Container Ecosystem Matures

AUSTIN, Texas—At DockerCon here this week, Docker and its ecosystem partners laid the groundwork for the next phase of container-based computing. In doing so, Docker exemplified what founder and CTO Solomon Hykes said is the best attribute to good development tools: “They get out of the way” of the developer. That’s exactly what Docker is […]

Open Networking Takes Next Steps Up the Stack

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—As networking makes its inexorable move toward cloud native models and development, participants here at this week’s Open Networking Summit made several key announcements toward that end. Chief among these was the initial release of the code for the newly combined network management and orchestration effort, dubbed ONAP. The Open Network Automation Platform […]

Software-Defined Networking Pioneer Martin Casado Looks Back, Forward

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Martin Casado has a special perspective on what is going on with software-defined networking. At the Open Networking Summit here this week, he was introduced as an SDN pioneer, having founded Nicira and developed the NSX network virtualization platform. In 2012, Nicira was acquired by VMware, where Casado stayed until leaving for investment […]

IBM Tells Customers That ‘Cloud Native’ Is The Future

LAS VEGAS—IBM is going native—cloud native that is—and is telling its customers that cloud native is in their future too. Such a statement might cause some old school IBM customers to break into a cold sweat, which is why IBM isn’t pushing “cloud native” on them just yet—certainly not as hard as they are pushing […]

Google Joins Chorus of Cloud Companies Promising to Democratize AI

SAN FRANCISCO—Democracies, we have found out, can be challenging. They are also full of potential, which may be why the term is being invoked so often by major cloud vendors about the topic of artificial intelligence. During the Google Cloud Next ’17 conference this week Fei-Fei Li, newly hired chief scientist of artificial intelligence and […]

Cyber News Shows There Is No Magic Bullet for Data Security

As the annual RSA Conference approaches and vendors gather to sing the praises of their security products, let’s pause and reflect on some recent cyber-security news items. Item: Oracle released a near-record number of patches in its quarterly Critical Patch Update: 270 in all, with 118 that are remotely exploitable in E-Business Suite. Item: The […]