12 hot application from Israel

Want to be better organized, make music with distant friends, avoid your ex, socialize your shopping experience? Israelis have made an app for that.
By Abigail Klein, Israel21C

Made-in-Israel mobile applications have been changing radically how we get from one place to another (Waze, GetTaxi); share videos and photos (Glide, for example), monitor our health; edu-tain our children and many other areas of our lives.
New apps are popping up all the time. Here are some of the newest blue-and-white apps for business and pleasure.

1. 24me
Forbes recently named 24me as one of “7 Great Apps to Simplify Your Life.” This iOS 8-ready app is touted as a next-generation personal assistant because it not only keeps you on top of your to-do list but also has cool features such as task-management and bill-paying components.
24me clip

2. Any.do
Any.do is a suite of integrated mobile productivity apps. Its original time-management app made the App Store’s “Best Apps of 2012″ list and also won Android’s Best App status. Now used by an estimated 10 million people, Any.do allows users to manage daily tasks through voice command or touchscreen. Any.do Moment prompts users to do a daily productivity ritual, while Cal assigns tasks to calendar events and merges to-do items with specific meetings. A reward feature lets users win prizes and coupons for completing tasks.Click here for more.

Any.do clip

3. VocalReferences
This Android and iOS app offers merchants a set of tools to capture, display and share video and text testimonials from customers to display on their website and on social media, among other platforms. VocalReferences is also available via Yahoo Commerce Central, the Yahoo Small Business Center and Yahoo’s Web Hosting product. Customers giving the testimonials can use the app to share feedback with friends.
VocalReferences clip 

November Newsletter – Internet Of Things (IoT)

Vega newsletter is published monthly by Vega BI, and distributed to our partners to facilitate pursuit of a common interest in top-notch technologies.
More objects are becoming embedded with sensors and gaining the ability to communicate. The resulting information networks promise to create new business models, improve business processes, and reduce costs and risks.


Introduction
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and the Internet.

A thing, in the Internet of Things, can be a person with a heart monitor implant, a farm animal with a biochip transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire pressure is low - or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network. So far, the Internet of Things has been most closely associated with machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in manufacturing and power, oil and gas utilities. Products built with M2M communication capabilities are often referred to as being smart. (See: smart label, smart meter, smart grid sensor)

IPv6’s huge increase in address space is an important factor in the development of the Internet of Things. According to Steve Leibson, who identifies himself as “occasional docent at the Computer History Museum,” the address space expansion means that we could “assign an IPV6 address to every atom on the surface of the earth, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths.” In other words, humans could easily assign an IP address to every "thing" on the planet. An increase in the number of smart nodes, as well as the amount of upstream data the nodes generate, is expected to raise new concerns about data privacy, data sovereignty and security.

Although the concept wasn't named until 1999, the Internet of Things has been in development for decades. The first Internet appliance, for example, was a Coke machine at Carnegie Melon University in the early 1980s. The programmers could connect to the machine over the Internet, check the status of the machine and determine whether or not there would be a cold drink awaiting them, should they decide to make the trip down to the machine.

Kevin Ashton, cofounder and executive director of the Auto-ID Center at MIT, first mentioned the Internet of Things in a presentation he made to Procter & Gamble. Here’s how Ashton explains the potential of the Internet of Things:

“Today computers - and, therefore, the Internet - are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly 50 petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data available on the Internet were first captured and created by human beings by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital picture or scanning a bar code.

The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy - all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world. If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things - using data they gathered without any help from us - we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling and whether they were fresh or past their best.”

The Internet of Things: Dr. John Barrett at TED

For more ...... See Vega's November  Newsletter

Brazil leads creation of Internet governance initiative

Summary: The country's steering committee teams up with ICANN and WEF to create "essential mechanism" that will influence the way the global Internet is run.
By Angelica Mari for Brazil Tech

Six months after hosting governance conference NETMundial, Brazil is leading the creation of a permanent platform to discuss improvements in the way the Internet is managed.

The country's Internet steering committee CGI, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) are the organizations behind the initiative, which is presented as a collaborative group that will be coordinated by stakeholders across the globe.

According to the organizers, the idea is to turn the NETmundial initiative into an "essential mechanism to advance the creation of policies and governance for the global Internet."

"Dialog is essential, but the global community is now ready to take action. The NETmundial initiative channels this energy to offer practical solutions in Internet governance to solve immediate needs," says ICANN president Fadi Chehadé.

The platform has been described as a "meeting point", where stakeholders will be able to put ideas forward, discuss them and attract the support to make them reality if necessary. In that sense, the WEF support icomes in handy, given its reach within the business community.

But the initiative's "caretakers" CGI and ICANN, as well as supporter WEF, will not be responsible for any activities regarding the selection of financing of the projects and are keen to stress the collaborative nature of the initiative. To that end, the organizations have started a process of putting together the group's coordinating council and this will be done through a nomination process, open until December 6.

Some 20 individuals from all continents - from governments and academia/technology experts to private sector and the civil society - will take part in the Council. In addition, the CGI and ICANN will take two seats each, while the WEF and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will take up individual seats in the coordinating group for the initiative.

Demi Getschko, board member at the CGI and chief executive at the Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br), highlighted that the individuals that, as well as the organizations that kickstarted the initiative, the Council will have no decision-making function other than ensuring that the platform functions properly.

"All Council members will also have to support and agree with the principles that came out of the NETmundial meeting in São Paulo earlier this year," he told ZDNet.

According to Getschko, the collaborative work within the Internet governance initiative will be carried out mostly online and there is no set agenda for meetings, online or in person.

For now, the only goals in terms of timescales are that the Council should be in place by year end and that some form of inaugural meeting will take place in January 2015 so the initiative can start its activities.

Brazil's role in global Internet governance

The NETmundial initiative follows a conference with the same name, organized by the Brazilian government and held in São Paulo in April, in the aftermath of the National Security Agency spying scandal that included Brazil as one of the non-adversarial countries being monitored by the United States.

Back then, the Brazilian government said that the US government's plan to end its contractual oversight of ICANN over certain key aspects of Internet addressing and naming also made NETmundial "even more timely."

But Dilma Rousseff's government stressed that it wasn't intending to seize control of the Internet - rather, it was advocating for a more globalized mechanism that would allow discussions around Internet governance to take place in a multistakeholder environment.

Local Internet steering group CGI was responsible for a manifesto document that described principles for Web use and governance and was ultimately used as a foundation for Brazil's Marco Civil da Internet (also known as the country's "Internet Constitution"), passed a day before the April event and guided many of the debates at the conference.

Senior government representatives, academics, Internet heavyweights and supporters of Brazil's campaign to secure a more democratic and decentralized web all attended the São Paulo event, wheretwo documents were produced collaboratively to set the initial agenda of the group and future governance goals.

According to CGI's Getschko, while the documents are not a mandatory set of rules for supporting organizations and countries, they "paint a picture of aspirations and commitments from the overwhelming majority of the international community to guide Internet governance from that point on."

The Internet pioneer adds that the fact these discussions started in Brazil and the steps the country has taken towards a multistakeholder model for Internet governance meant the country was an obvious leader for the NETmundial initiative, despite the fact that other nations were also involved in the original debate.

"Through CGI, Brazil is a good paradigm in that area and ended up serving as an inspiration for the process of horizontally integrating all sectors and also with regards to the meeting results, which generated a letter with fundamental principles that should guide future steps in Internet governance," Getschko says.
"So when it came to following up on all those discussions that NETmundial started, CGI was naturally approached to be part of this continuation and also make it happen," he adds.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things overview

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and the Internet.

A thing, in the Internet of Things, can be a person with a heart monitor implant, a farm animal with a biochip transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire pressure is low -- or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network. So far, the Internet of Things has been most closely associated with machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in manufacturing and power, oil and gas utilities. Products built with M2M communication capabilities are often referred to as being smart. (See: smart label, smart meter, smart grid sensor)

IPv6’s huge increase in address space is an important factor in the development of the Internet of Things. According to Steve Leibson, who identifies himself as “occasional docent at the Computer History Museum,” the address space expansion means that we could “assign an IPV6 address to every atom on the surface of the earth, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths.” In other words, humans could easily assign an IP address to every "thing" on the planet. An increase in the number of smart nodes, as well as the amount of upstream data the nodes generate, is expected to raise new concerns about data privacy, data sovereignty and security.

Although the concept wasn't named until 1999, the Internet of Things has been in development for decades. The first Internet appliance, for example, was a Coke machine at Carnegie Melon University in the early 1980s. The programmers could connect to the machine over the Internet, check the status of the machine and determine whether or not there would be a cold drink awaiting them, should they decide to make the trip down to the machine.

Kevin Ashton, cofounder and executive director of the Auto-ID Center at MIT, first mentioned the Internet of Things in a presentation he made to Procter & Gamble. Here’s how Ashton explains the potential of the Internet of Things:

“Today computers -- and, therefore, the Internet -- are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly 50 petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data available on the Internet were first captured and created by human beings by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital picture or scanning a bar code.

The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy -- all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world. If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things -- using data they gathered without any help from us -- we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling and whether they were fresh or past their best.”

                                                                  The Internet of Things: By Dr. John Barrett at TED

Israeli start-up is Samsung’s secret weapon against Apple Watch

LifeBEAM’s bio-sensing technology will be embedded in the Simband platform for wearable health devices
By David Shamah, Start-up Israel

Israeli’s LifeBEAM, a maker of bio-sensing technology to monitor pulse, calories, and other vital signs in athletes, is now a central player in the tech world’s next big product war.

LifeBEAM tech will power devices built using the new Samsung Simband platform, the Korean tech giant announced. Those devices are set to be Samsung’s answer to the Apple Watch – reflecting another facet of the ongoing struggle between the two companies for dominance in the device world.

Samsung and Apple have for years vied in smartphone sales. Apple’s iPhones are by far the biggest sellers in the US, accounting for about 40% of the market (that figure does not include data on new sales of the iPhone 6 series; statistics have not yet been compiled on those sales), with Samsung’s devices constituting about 25%-30% of phones sold. The two companies compete in the tablet space as well, with Samsung in second place in number of tablets shipped, behind Apple. At the end of Q2 2014, Apple had sold 16.4 million iPads worldwide over the previous 12 months, compared to 11.2 million tablets Samsung had sold.

Now, the battle between the two companies is shifting to wearables. Apple is releasing its first wearable, called Watch, which is due out next March. Samsung is already a veteran in the wearable space, already on the fifth iteration of its Gear watch – but as with other products, Apple’s entry into the wearable space means that competitors, Samsung included, are going to have to raise their game a notch in order to compete.
And Samsung is responding with the Simband platform, which the company hopes will outdo the Apple Watch as a health-focused device. The platform isn’t necessarily being deployed for use in consumer devices (although it could be used like that); Samsung, according to industry analysts, is hoping that developers will use the platform to build innovative health and fitness oriented applications and devices. The Simband platform will make use of six sensors to measure heart rate, blood flow, skin conductivity (how much a user sweats), skin temperature, and other data.

AirHop app lets you make calls without a cellphone plan

PayPal awards an Israeli team $100,000 prize for ‘absolutely disruptive’ technology

By David Shamah, Start-up Israel

Taking advantage of a little-known feature in iOS, AirHop lets users “hop” onto another person’s device (if it’s also running the AirHop service) to make a phone call or send a text in exchange for a PayPal-enabled payment.

Paypal was impressed enough with the project to award the Israeli team behind it $100,000 in its just-completed “BattleHack for Good” contest, held at Paypal headquarters in Silicon Valley.

“Good” in this case is defined widely. According to the rules, teams had to come up with an app that made a positive social contribution while using APIs from PayPal, which processes online payments, or its credit card acquirer components Braintree or Venmo. As PayPal is a payments business, any app using its technology would most likely be a commercial-oriented one. But the hacker teams pulled through, creating 14 new apps, ranging from helping the visually impaired to creating an open marketplace for education.

But it was AirHop, created by Tel Aviv hackers Shai Mishali and Pavel Kaminsky, that was good enough to score the $100,000 PayPal prize. Calling AirHop “extraordinary,” John Lunn, a top PayPal executive and Battlehack judge, said that it was “absolutely disruptive. What [the team from] Tel Aviv built from a technology standpoint was incredible. I’ve never seen it before.”

The app takes advantage of an obscure feature of Apple’s operating system for iPhones and iPads called the Multipeer Connectivity Framework, which lets apps cobble together a peer-to-peer network using WiFi, Bluetooth, and any other connection protocol in the area in order to utilize another user’s cellphone features. Basically, it allows users to create a “mesh network” in which user devices are chained to one another, extending services far beyond their range.

The technology could, for example, extend cellphone or Internet connectivity to users located out of range. One user in a service area could connect to others beyond the area where cellphone service or WiFi extend, with each device acting as a sort of relay station to pass service capability onto the next device.

Digital crime thrives in Brazil

Summary: Online cybercrime 'schools' and a vast array of products and services focused on those wishing to enter the life of digital crime are more easily available in Brazil than any other country, says study.
By Angelica Mari for Brazil Tech


Brazil has a thriving scene of cybercrime online "schools" offering training programs as well as a vast array of services offering financial data obtained illegally, according to a recent study on the country's digital underworld.

According to the study "The Brazilian Underground Market - the Market for Cybercriminal Wannabes?" by Trend Micro, Brazil is the only country where training services are offered to budding criminals in such a comprehensive manner.

Anyone with basic computing skills can enter the cybercrime world through training offered online, with plenty of "how-to" videos and forums information is exchanged with peers, as well as specific theory-only or hands-on training services, with the option of full support when the training ends.

An example of training uncovered by the study is the sought-after topic of how to perpetrate bank fraud. Typically, cybercriminal wannabes learn the fraud workflow, then move on to how to use the tools needed to capture data at a cost of R$1.499 ($579).

Brazilian online thieves can also easily shop for products such as phishing tools, lists of usernames and passwords for eBay, PagSeguro (a Brazilian PayPal equivalent), Mercado Livre (the local version of eBay) and others, as well as credit card number generators and software that modifies information of bills paid online, therefore directing the funds to the criminal's account.

In addition, Brazilian cybercriminals offer an array of services such as malware-checking for as about R$30 ($12) for one month to R$150 ($58) for six months. Services, products and training can be paid for via bank deposits, PayPal transfers or bitcoins.


"Cybercrime in Brazil is increasingly developing. The supply of software, services and malicious malware is growing and prices are dropping. This survey serves as a warning to users about the problem of digital security and to the measures they should take in terms of their online behavior," says Fernando Mercês, researcher at Trend Micro.

Top 10 music apps from Israel

In our ongoing series of “top 10” apps from Israeli developers, ISRAEL21c tunes in this time to applications that enhance your music experience.

 by Abigail Klein Leichman  , Israel21C 

Some applications are meant to help music students get the most out of their lessons, others to amp up the karaoke experience, empower budding DJs or simplify music sharing among friends. What they have in common is their blue-and-white origin.

1. Serendip Media is a social music discovery app for iPhone and iPod Touch, connecting users with others who have similar musical taste, and automatically building a playlist of the music they are sharing.

2. Tonara tracks playing in real time and flips digital score “pages” automatically. The score synchronization feature allows musicians to review their practice sessions and, in the future, will power stage-management functions such as automatic lighting or supertitle changes at concert venues and opera houses. Carmel Ventures injected $4 million into the company, calling it a “disruptive technology … designed to transform the music learning and practicing experience.”

3. Yokee  from Famous Blue Media lets you sing along and record your favorite songs from YouTube music videos, and share your karaoke creations with others. It offers special effects like echo and reverb. Available for iOS and Android devices.

4. EQuala  social radio app lets you listen to friends’ music instantly, by following them and adding their choices to the personalized playlist. A “music DNA” created for each user helps you identify others with similar musical taste. The app’s newartist promotionplatform, Feature.fm, stemmed from EQuala’s need to monetize. Featured songs replace audio ads, minimizing disturbance in the listening experience and providing artists with a new level of exposure.

5. Piano Dust Buster 2.0, from award-winning interactive video game developer JoyTunes, is an interactive iPad game to teach beginning piano. The player helps a virtual granny dust her piano, in the process learning the musical notes and rhythm of the instrument. A 3D virtual keyboard activates the app for those players without a real one handy. There’s a special mode for practicing sheet music, and players collect points for a job well done. Piano Mania  is JoyTunes’ answer for more advanced players.        
 Piano Dust Buster Trailer clip

6. Recorder Master, also from JoyTunes, provides beginner recorder players with different interactive game levels that are actually music lessons designed to develop a variety of skills, such as fingering technique, tone production of a single note, correct rhythm and timing of complete melodies. This app won a bunch of international awards when it was released in 2010.  
Music Game for Recorder clip

7. Fusic allows fans to step into their idols’ shoes by recording their own cover versions of their favorite songs — which are then spliced into the corresponding music video in minutes. Once done, the Fusic video can be shared through social media channels. The app is gaining traction, with stars like Mariah Carey putting their stamp of approval on it. Fusic is available on iPhone, iPad and iPod formats; an Android version is expected in late 2014.

8. DJ Mix Box from instruMagic lets iPhone users “play with music” by providing live sets of loops and sounds. You can loop in and out of the mix, blend in sound clips and tweak DJ effects by tilting the device.

9. Songful, also from instruMagic, turns an iPad into a virtual guitar. Users choose any chord page from Ultimate Guitar’s 200,000-song collection and then strum the “strings” and tap buttons to progress from chord to chord. The app costs $2.99 but there is a free alternative, ZAP Guitar, without a link to Ultimate Guitar’s site.    
Songful guitar app for iPad clip

10. Jamstar works with your actual guitar and your iOS or Android device’s microphone. You can learn to play rhythm, chords, scales and popular songs with the help of tutorials geared to beginners to advanced players. Real-time feedback lets you know if you’re playing correctly, and you can share your performance with friends, family and teachers.

IT Spending in Brazil to Grow 5.7% in 2015

IT spending in Brazil is forecast to total $125.3 billion in 2015, a 5.7% increase from 2014 projected spending of $118.5 billion and much of this spending will be driven by the digital industrial economy, according to Gartner, Inc.


Cassio Dreyfuss, research vice president at Gartner, provided the latest outlook for the IT industry today to an audience of more than 1,400 CIOs and IT leaders at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is taking place here through October 30.

“Enterprises today compete globally in all industries. Despite economic deceleration, Brazil demonstrates that IT is well-entrenched in the enterprise core strategy and is seen as a tool for competitiveness development, in best and and in challenging times, as well” said Dreyfuss. “Software, IT services, and mobile data services will post double-digit growth in 2015, with strong IT demand from vertical industries like banking and securities, manufacturing, natural resources, not to mention consumer markets.”

For 2015 versus 2014, Gartner’s projections show that the devices segment (including PCs, tablets, mobile phones, and printers) in Brazil is projected to total $19.1 billion, a 1% increase from 2014 spending. Data center systems’ spending is expected to exceed $3 billion, a 7% increase from 2014. Software spending will total $5.7 billion, up 13.7%; IT services spending will reach $21.5 billion in 2015, up 13.7%t; and telecom services is projected to total $75.9 billion in 2015, a 4.2% increase from 2014.

Every Business Units is a “Technology Startup”

There is a dramatic shift in IT spending power. There is a shift of demand and control away from IT and toward digital business units closer to the customer.

“Thirty-eight percent of total IT spend happens outside of IT already, with a disproportionate amount in digital initiatives. By 2017, it will be over 50 percent,” Dreyfuss said. “Digital startups sit inside your own organization, in your marketing department, in HR, in logistics and in sales. Your business units are acting as technology startups. Today, every budget is an IT budget, frequently outside of the CIO control--but not outside of the CIO purview. IT Leaders must be called to participate in those decisions, to address issues such as IT economic effectiveness, architecture integration and security optimization.”

Gartner estimates that 50% of all technology sales people are actively selling direct to business units, not IT departments. Millions of sales people, and hundreds of thousands of resellers and channel partners are looking for new money flows in the fluid digital world, and they are finding eager buyers.


Become a Bimodal Organization
Bimodal IT , formally supporting two modes of operation, offers a solution to exploit dynamic business opportunities while maintaining operations excellence in its foundation systems. Mode 1 is what Mr. Dreyfuss calls “enterprise strength IT”, and the systems that support it must be reliable, efficient, scalable and secure. Mode 2, “opportunistic IT”, is driven by often unanticipated opportunities, emphasizing flexibility, agility, and speed (like a startup).

Dreyfuss used the example of smart machines to highlight the type of disruption that characterizes digital business. Smart machines are an emerging “super class” of technologies that perform a wide variety of tasks, of both the physical and the intellectual kind. For example, school computers have been grading multiple choice tests for many years, and now they are grading essays, unstructured tests that require analysis.

“Not only is the grading more accurate, but students actually work harder on their essays when they know they are being graded by a smart machine,” Dreyfuss said. “Other professional tasks won’t be far behind: financial analysis, medical diagnostics, and data analytics jobs will be impacted.

Smart robots will appear not just on the manufacturing floor, where they do physical work, but in the workplace and even in the home. Smart machines will automate decision making. A modern airplane is a perfect example: hundreds of sensors--Internet of Things at its best--feeding robots that make decisions collaboratively.

Impact of Digital Business on Jobs
Internet of things will generate vast amounts of new information and smart machines will take care of part of it. Digital businesses will impact jobs in different ways. The synergy among technology families--social and mobile tools, for instance--triggers the creation of totally new business models and processes. By 2018, digital businesses will require 50 percent fewer business process workers. However, at the same time, digital business will drive a 500% boost in digital jobs.

First global social network for doctors

G-Med, the world’s first and only global social-professional network exclusively for physicians, allows doctors anywhere to consult with colleagues, manage multinational research projects and offer virtual services to patients.

by Abigail Klein Leichman  , Israel21C

‘The ability to have discussions on medical and paramedical issues between physicians all over the world is very exciting,’ says Israeli neurosurgeon.     Launched in Israel last year, G-Med proved so popular that its founder, Hagar Mordoch, took it global at the end of 2013. Today this unique social network has about 20,000 users from more than 50 different countries.

That kind of diversity was just what Dr. Sagi Harnof needed when he recently began planning brain surgery for a patient who is a Jehovah’s Witness. This religion forbids blood transfusions. Harnof, deputy chief of neurosurgery at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, rarely encounters Jehovah’s Witnesses and so he presented the case via G-Med.

“I got comments from colleagues in North and South America and Europe,” says Harnof, who is one of the site’s two medical advisers. The online guidance helped him strategize the best surgical procedure for the patient’s health and religious beliefs.

“For me, the ability to have discussions on medical and paramedical issues between physicians all over the world is very exciting. There are no borders for medicine, and it’s only natural to talk between professionals and share thoughts,” Harnof tells ISRAEL21c. “It’s only the beginning, but I feel it’s a very nice platform to communicate between physicians.”

Brazil Builds Internet Cable To Portugal To Avoid NSA Surveillance

Brazil is building a cable across the Atlantic to escape the reach of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The move is one of many ways the Brazilian government is breaking ties with American technology companies -- but it won’t come cheap.

The 3,500-mile fiber-optic cable will stretch from Fortaleza to Portugal, with an estimated cost of $185 million, Bloomberg reported. Of course, none of this will go to American vendors.

 

Last year,  Edward Snowden leaked documents that showed the NSA was accessing personal information of Brazilian citizens, including listening to phone calls of President Dilma Rousseff, its embassies and the state-owned oil company Petrobras.

"As many other Latin Americans, I fought against authoritarianism and censorship and I cannot but defend, in an uncompromising fashion, the right to privacy of individuals and the sovereignty of my country," Rousseff said at the U.N. that year.

“The arguments that the illegal interception of information and data aims at protecting nations against terrorism cannot be sustained. Brazil, Mr. President, knows how to protect itself. We reject, fight and do not harbor terrorist groups," she said.

Brazil has already switched its dominant email system from Microsoft Outlook to a state-developed platform called Expresso, and last November required all government agencies to use state-owned companies for their technology services.

Brazil is the seventh-largest economy in the world. U.S. companies could lose as much as $35 billion in revenue in the next two years, as buyers doubt the security of their connections, according to research group Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

The cable is set to be constructed in early 2015, overseen by state-owned company Telecomunicacoes Brasileiras SA, known as Telebras

October Newsletter – Telecommunication’s Revolutionized Platform

Vega newsletter is published monthly by Vega BI, and distributed to our partners to facilitate pursuit of a common interest in top-notch technologies.
During recent months, we have published technical reviews on latest platform related solutions: SDN, NFV and OpenStack. Our technical review this month is on how Telecommunication industry can use OpenStack as cloud infrastructure for implementing NFV and SDN, in order to reduce costs and increase competitiveness.

OpenStack as Telecom platform for SDN and NFV strategy 

Over the past decade, the IT industry has experienced significant changes brought on by the widespread adoption of virtualized technology and cloud based data centers. The need for scalability, reduced infrastructure cost, optimized operation , maintenance, and speed to market with new applications are a few of the key factors that drove this revolution.

More recently, enterprises increasingly look to open source cloud solutions, and OpenStack specifically as the leading open source cloud technology.

In the Telecommunication industry, Network Operators and Telco are now facing the same challenges and require similar core architectural advances. Their networks are comprised of large, siloes proprietary platforms that are becoming increasingly difficult to scale, manage, and operate. The primary challenge is how to quickly deploy and operationalize new services while maintaining economic efficiencies.

Often, the cost and complexity are amplified because the hardware-based appliances that are dedicated to performing a single function within the network have short lifecycles and consume large amounts of space and power. And, the rapid growth of data and multimedia applications is causing exploding network traffic at the same time that NO revenues from new services are stagnating.

The combination of market conditions and network constraints is demanding that Network Operators and Telco pursue a cloud based approach much like that adopted by the IT industry. However, technologies and design principles used as the basis for typical IT cloud applications cannot be applied directly to network services without accounting for carrier-grade requirements.

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), coupled with Software Defined Networking (SDN), offer a way for Network Operators and Telco to address these problems. By deploying OpenStack as the enabling cloud platform, NOs have a proven way to implement NFV and SDN to leverage the benefits of open source software to further reduce costs and position themselves as competitive.

The Telecommunication industry currently stands on the cusp of a new era in network management.  SDN and NFS promise to revolutionize the industry by enabling carriers to have more dynamic control over their resources and environments. This new-found level of control will allow Network Operators and Telcos to make real-time adjustments to network conditions as needed, diverting assets to high-volume users or redirecting traffic in the event of a localized outage.

Given such bold assertions, mobile operators may wonder how exactly they can come to obtain these capabilities. The answer is cloud-based computing and network platforms – most notably, OpenStack.

 For more ...... See Vega's October  Newsletter

UniVerve - Bringing Microalgae Promise to life

UniVerve Ltd. initiates the establishment of microalgae farms as feedstock for Biofuel, Food

supplements and Feed, based on its patent-pending technology. The combination of UniVerve's selected microalgae strains, its production system’s efficiency and the commercialization of the complete biomass produced, results in an innovative production process with profitability levels anticipated to exceed those currently achieved by the microalgae industry.

UniVerve's cultivation and harvesting system is scalable and simple to construct, operate and maintain. Thanks to its high yield and low energy consumption the production cost of an oil barrel as feedstock for biofuel is expected to be up to USD 50. The ability to profitably produce a commodity such as oil makes this award-winning technology a game changer also in the production of high value/small market compounds for food, cosmetics, pharma and more. UniVerve's microalgae strain contains triglycerides that can serve as feedstock for biofuel, Omega-3 EPA that can serve as feedstock for human food supplements, and full protein that can serve as feedstock for aquafeed.

This presents UniVerve with a tremendous Opportunity. The Biofuel market value was $56BL in 2012; it is expected to reach $113BL by 2020. The Omega-3 market value was $25BL in 2011;

it is  expected to reach $35BL by 2016, due to reduced availability and capture of Peruvian anchovy, the major source of omega-3 oils and the rapid growth in the volume consumed in Asia. The Biomass for feed market value was $15BL in 2011 and is growing as a result of an increase in the quantity of on-shore fish production. The global shortage of feedstock (oil, Omega-3 and protein-rich biomass), drives up the price of these commodities, so fuel, food & feed players are constantly searching for alternatives, which will lower COGS and save hedging cost. Microalgae are natural producers of these materials, thus they present immense commercial potential as valuable feedstock for these industries.


UniVerve’s multi-faceted business development strategy includes the establishment of microalgae farms, singly or in joint ventures, as well as technology licensing. Farms may be designated for combined oil and food/feed production or for food/feed production alone. UniVerve's revenues will include license fee, royalties, consulting fee and dividends, depending on the model chosen by each client.

UniVerve began constructing its first farm in Israel, which is planned to reach 85 hectares by 2019 (see picture). As the regulatory and infrastructure support systems for Biofuel in Israel are at an early

stage, UniVerve’s first farm in Israel will be an Omega-3 rich biomass production farm. Algal Omega-3 and biomass exporters already presented UniVerve with letters of intent for the purchase of the entire production, which is expect ted be replaced by a binding off-take agreement in Q1/2015. UniVerve received great interest from potential off-takers in Europe, USA and Asia and plans to begin the establishment of a second farm in Israel by 2016.

UniVerve has begun business development in Asia and partnered with a strong engineering company, United Engineers Limited from Singapore (UEL), as its EPC partner. UniVerve, with UEL support, already found leading Chinese companies from the biofuel, Omega-3 and aquafeed industries that are interested to become off-takers of materials from UniVerve's future farm in China, planned to be established by 2017.

OpenStack as Telecom platform for SDN and NFV strategy

Changing Telecom industry landscape

Over the past decade, the IT industry has experienced significant changes brought on by the widespread adoption of virtualized technology and cloud based data centers. The need for scalability, reduced infrastructure cost, optimized operation , maintenance, and speed to market with new applications are a few of the key factors that drove this revolution.

More recently, enterprises increasingly look to open source cloud solutions, and OpenStack specifically as the leading open source cloud technology.

In the Telecommunication industry, Network Operators and Telco are now facing the same challenges and require similar core architectural advances. Their networks are comprised of large, siloes proprietary platforms that are becoming increasingly difficult to scale, manage, and operate. The primary challenge is how to quickly deploy and operationalize new services while maintaining economic efficiencies.

Often, the cost and complexity are amplified because the hardware-based appliances that are dedicated to performing a single function within the network have short lifecycles and consume large amounts of space and power. And, the rapid growth of data and multimedia applications is causing exploding network traffic at the same time that NO revenues from new services are stagnating.

The combination of market conditions and network constraints is demanding that Network Operators and Telco pursue a cloud based approach much like that adopted by the IT industry. However, technologies and design principles used as the basis for typical IT cloud applications cannot be applied directly to network services without accounting for carrier-grade requirements.

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), coupled with Software Defined Networking (SDN), offer a way for Network Operators and Telco to address these problems. By deploying OpenStack as the enabling cloud platform, NOs have a proven way to implement NFV and SDN to leverage the benefits of open source software to further reduce costs and position themselves competitive .

The Telecommunication industry is currently stand on the cusp of a new era in network management. SDN and NFS promise to revolutionize the industry by enabling carriers to have more dynamic control over their resources and environments. This new-found level of control will allow Network Operators and Telcos to make real-time adjustments to network conditions as needed, diverting assets to high-volume users or redirecting traffic in the event of a localized outage. Given such bold assertions, mobile operators may wonder how exactly they can come to obtain these capabilities. The answer is cloud-based computing and network platforms – most notably, OpenStack.

Brazilian IT Firms Demand that Government Loosen Tax Burdens

Brazil’s IT sector is expected to account for 6% of GDP by 2022, according to Brasscom President Sergio Paulo Gallindo.
Posted by: Silvia Rosa , Nearshore Americas

The high tax burden is one of the major barriers to the development of the information technology and communication sector (ICT) in Brazil.  

Brazil has the third highest corporate and indirect tax rate among the G20 countries, and on average this accounts for 34% of income, behind only the United States (40%) and Japan (35.64%), according to a KPMG survey published this year.

Faced with such challenges, last August a group formed by the major market players, including the Brazilian Association of Software Companies (ABES), the Brazilian Association of IT (Assespro) and the Brazilian Association of ICT (Brasscom), sent the Brazilian presidential candidates a program called “For a Digital and Competitive Brazil”. The initiative aims to improve IT companies’ competitiveness under the next Brazilian government.

Market data shows there are over 70,000 ICT companies in Brazil today, which account for 8.8% of the Brazilian GDP. The Brazilian IT industry is the seventh largest market worldwide, with an investment of US$61.6 billion in 2013.

“It is necessary to give the ICT segment the importance it deserves. Today, this sector employs 1.3 million professionals and it represents 4.6% of the Brazilian GDP, excluding the telecommunications industry, and it is expected to reach 6% of the Brazilian GDP by 2022,” said Sergio Paulo Gallindo, president at Brasscom.

The high tax burden harms the competitiveness of Brazilian companies in comparison to other emerging markets. Brazil is 53% more expensive than India, for example. Considering the regional tax rates, the taxation on Brazilian companies can exceed 40% of revenue, and it represents 38% of the Brazilian GDP.

For this reason, among the main demands of IT entities are a reduction in cost of capital for IT companies, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises; more tax incentives for using big data platforms; and tax relief on cloud services.

In general, taxes are even higher for equipment manufacturers, which have to pay IPI tax, a federal exercise tax on all industrial goods. On the other hand, companies that develop and license software are taxed according to the tax rate applied to the service sector, which involves up to eight different tax rates.

How malware writers' laziness is helping one startup predict attacks before they even happen

Summary: Siemens is impressed at what Israeli security startups CyActive can do – developing ways of mitigating attacks before they can take place.

By David Shamah for Tel Aviv Tech 

Biblical-style prophecy may be a thing of the past, but Israeli security startup CyActive is developing technology that can predict what exploits malware writers are going to come up with next, allowing developers to come up with a way of mitigating the attacks — even before the malware agent behind it is even created.

The technology, which CyActive has been working for about a year, is garnering attention in the enterprise — to the extent that the company announced several weeks ago that it had received a "substantial strategic investment" from the venture capital Unit of Siemens. CyActive didn't say how much it got, but Ralf Schnell, CEO of the Siemens' unit, said that he was "particularly excited" by CyActive's approach "to securing industrial and utilities assets. CyActive’s founders are leaders in the field and the company’s unprecedented cyber security technology turns the economic equation in favour of the defender".

Abetting CyActive in its prophetic efforts are the technical limitations of malware writing — or, some would say, the laziness of the malware writers themselves. According to CyActive CEO Leron Tancman, malware — like legitimate software — is often derivative, and even advanced attacks have the same core components as earlier versions.

"You can see very clearly what the 'kill chain of exploitation' is, the methods hackers are using now and the variants they are likely to use," Tancman said. "Even the major attacks of recent years, such as Flame, Stuxnet, and others, use a similar core."

Stratasys Opens ‘World’s Most Advanced’ 3D Printer Factory In Israel

3D printing giant Stratasys’  love affair with the Startup Nation is nothing new; it merged with Israeli company Objet in 2012 and moved its headquarters to the central Israeli city of Rehovot. Now Stratasys announced that its newest plant in Israel will be the most advanced 3D printer factory in the world.

by Maya Yarowsky, NoCamels 

The company plans to open the world’s most advanced 3D printer manufacturing company in Kiryat Gat, a southern Israeli city that is already home to tech giants like Intel, which recently injected $6 billion into its chip plant there, HP, Kinetics and many more. Though little is known about the new plant, which opened this past Monday,    Stratasys CEO David Reis said that the plant will hire hundreds of new employees in the southern and coastal regions of Israel, a statement that made Finance Minister Yair Lapid more than happy. At the inauguration of the plant, Lapid praised Stratasys technological breakthroughs and its keen commitment to keep its industry and manufacturing in Israel.

Indeed, Stratasys is a source for Israeli pride; the company is in the country’s top-ten stocks traded abroad with an impressive market cap of $6 million. In addition, the company invests in the native ecosystem by hiring local engineers, developers and employees, and by establishing offices across Israel. Though Stratasys originated as an American company, founded by S. Scott Crump in Minnesota, the industry-leader quickly realized the talent and development potential in Israel.

Now the company is quickly sealing its place as one of the biggest 3D printing companies in the world. Last year Stratasys acquired the creator of the 3D printers for at-home use, MakerBot, as well as Solid Concepts this summer, the world leader in rapid prototyping through 3D printing (also known as additive manufacturing).

SEE ALSO: Israeli 3D Printing Co ‘Objet’ Merges With American ‘Stratasys’

$6bn upgrade deal set to bring Intel's 10nm project to Israel

Summary: A long-running drama seems to have been resolved, with Kiryat Gat likely to be where Intel's new chips are manufactured.
By David Shamah for ZDNet

The Israeli government announced on Monday that it has approved a plan submitted by Intel last April to upgrade its Kiryat Gat fabrication plant — likely putting to an end the long-running drama of where the company would manufacture its new 10mm chips.

The chips are seen as crucial to Intel, as they will feature in the wearable, Internet of Things, and Perceptual Computing devices that Intel sees a big future in.

Monday's announcement constitutes the Israeli government's response to a proposal submitted by Intel to spend $6bn to upgrade the Kiryat Gat plant. No details were given by Intel on what the upgrade would entail, and the company hasn't yet commented on the Monday announcement, although an source said that the deal means that it is "practically a sure thing" that Intel will officially announce it is manufacturing the 10nm chips in Israel in the coming days.

Although the announcement did not contain any details of exactly what Intel would be doing at the plant, it said the upgrade would turn the fab into "the world's most advanced technology for the production of micro-electronic components".

The deal is a good one for both Intel and Israel, the country's finance minister Yair Lapid said in the announcement. Intel gets grants of up to $600m and a substantial discount on corporate tax rates over the next decade. In return, Intel promises to hire an additional 1,000 workers, and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on products and services. Whatever Israel loses in the taxes and grants, said Lapid, it would make up in the enhanced economic activity Intel's upgrade will provide.

Intel, according to sources, has been of two minds on where to build the 10nm plant – in Israel or Ireland. The two countries have been lobbying for Intel's business, offering incentives and tax breaks – as would be expected, said Mooly Eden, Intel's international SVP and CEO of Intel Israel. At an event in Tel Aviv earlier this year, Eden said that both governments "know how the game is played. In today's world, this is how governments bring jobs in".

As an Israeli, Eden, of course, would prefer to see the plant in Israel, but for Intel the decision was purely economic. That said, the investment made sense for the government, Eden added. "Israel gets back a lot more from Intel that it does from other multinationals. Over the years Intel has invested $10.8bn in Israel. Taking into account all of the services and outside contractors we use, Intel's activities on Israel is responsible, in our estimation, for some 30,000 jobs in the Israeli economy."

The competition between Israel and Ireland for the new plant has been conducted in a very gentlemanly fashion, with no name-calling or the like, and in fact there was speculation that it was Ireland that Intel had chosen for the 10nm plant, after the company announced that it had spent about $5bn upgrading its Leixlip facility over the past several years.

September Newsletter – OpenStack

Vega newsletter is published monthly by Vega BI, and distributed to our partners to facilitate pursuit of a common interest in top-notch technologies.

OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of computers, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. 

About OpenStack

OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface.

OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement, massively scalable, and feature rich. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.

OpenStack lets users deploy virtual machines and other instances which handle different tasks for managing a cloud environment on the fly. It makes horizontal scaling easy, which means that tasks which benefit from running concurrently can easily serve more or less users on the fly by just spinning up more instances.

For example, a mobile application which needs to communicate with a remote server might be able to divide the work of communicating with each user across many different instances, all communicating with one another but scaling quickly and easily as the application gains more users.

And most importantly, OpenStack is open source software, which means that anyone who chooses to can access the source code, make any changes or modifications they need, and freely share these changes back out to the community at large. It also means that OpenStack has the benefit of thousands of developers all over the world working in tandem to develop the strongest, most robust, and most secure product that they can.

Who uses OpenStack?

P  Corporations

P  Service providers

P  VARS

P  SMBs

P  Researchers

P  Global data centers looking to deploy large-scale cloud deployments for private or public clouds leveraging the support and resulting technology of a global open source community.

How is OpenStack used in a cloud environment?

The cloud is all about providing computing for end users in a remote environment, where the actual software runs as a service on reliable and scalable servers rather than on each end users computer.

Cloud computing can refer to a lot of different things, but typically the industry talks about running different items "as a service"—software, platforms, and infrastructure. OpenStack falls into the latter category and is considered Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Is OpenStack Ready For Production?

Though OpenStack still lacks the polish of competitive approaches, it is sufficiently rich in its service offerings and most of the core components are stable for production environments.  Moving to OpenStack is now about taking a calculated risk.

Vendors like Red Hat, Canonical, Mirantis, OpsCode, Persistent, have launched testing tools and programming toolkits to make OpenStack deployment and programming relatively painless. You need Linux system administration skills and might need some beginner scripting skills, but the tutorials are easy to follow – you can deploy OpenStack in a multi-node environment in a matter of hours. 

ª  Are there issues with release rollouts?   Yes, but the issues are marginal compared to the situation in 2012 or 2013.

ª  Are the data models across L2 and L3 networking layers perfect?    No, but they are on the right track and there is better commitment from vendors with skin in the game. The current design is good enough to interoperate with existing networking topologies.

ª  Is there any coolness to the platform?    Absolutely – look at Heat for orchestration and Ceilometer for metering. These are value added services, going beyond basic Compute/Network/Storage services.

ª  Are consulting and support services available?   Yes, and growing. Vendors like Mirantis, MetaCloud, and Persistent are deploying OpenStack and offering development services for their customers.

 For more ...... See Vega's September  Newsletter