By Victoria Wagner Ross, Featured Contributor
Ericsson, the Swedish telecom provider, has purchased a majority stake of a platform in service provider Apcera. It has done this because, “Cloud technology is disrupting the global ICT infrastructure market, and service providers must modernize to provide more value to their customers,” according to its press release to CloudTech on Friday.
Closer to home, LA based ConnectX, the space-based supercomputing company, unveiled in a press release on Friday its bold mission to unlock the value and insight of all Big Data by creating the first space-based supercomputing platform.
I had an opportunity to exchange a Q & A with Lance Parker, CEO and founder. The premise for this space-based supercomputing service is due to current limits of cloud computing. “Distributed cloud computing was not designed for the exponential growth in Big Data. It needs a new platform,” according to Parker. “To achieve this, we have to rethink network, storage and computing systems to tap into this enormous opportunity.”
The website for ConnectX provides a thought provoking message to the current state of cloud computing:
‘Big Data is information stored from all Internet interactions from everyone and data every company and government produces as they operate. It can also be machine or sensor generated data. From the beginning of time until 2002, the world created 5 Exabytes (5 billion gigabytes) of Big Data. Put another way, if every word ever spoken by every human being in history were digitized to text that would equal 5 Exabytes. We now create that amount of Big Data every 10 minutes. In two years, that will be created every two seconds!’
Due to the network backup in the cloud, security issues are raised and information cannot be assimilated for decision making.
ConnectX is the result of collaboration of experts in aeronautics, mathematics, physics, engineering, security and business. Its goal is to replace the current cloud computing, storage and network infrastructure being used for Big Data with cloud supercomputing platform.
Parker explains that ConnectX with a completely new data structure will send, receive, store and process massive amounts of Big Data at a much lower cost to companies and governments.
ConnectX will create this next-generation Big Data computing and communication platform using powerful but miniature satellites that leverage the environment in space: extreme cold, no resistance, and zero gravity. The system further replaces binary code with a new symbol structure for optimized transmission, storage, processing and delivery of analyzed data.
Q. How many competitors are in the marketplace for cloud computing and storage?
Parker: First, we will provide network transmission, storage and computing for Big Data. Storing is one aspect of the system and we have an entirely new architecture specifically designed for Big Data. Last I checked there are 2000 Big Data companies. However, they are all using the same ill-equipped architecture in the cloud to handle the exponential growth of Big Data that is described on ConnectX.com.
Q. What are your immediate challenges?
Parker: The challenge is really convincing people that things can be done in a new way…something that any company faces as they try to change the status quo. That will be an area that I am focused on.
Q: What is unique in your technology platform to meet the needs of business and governments for your service?
Parker: The advantages are that ConnectX is a technology and economic disruption. Companies do not have the right infrastructure in the cloud to handle all of their Big Data. Our system will allow the transmission, storage and analysis of as much as they like. Also, similar to the economic disruption that occurred from the transition companies performed from an in-house enterprise data warehouses ($100,000 Tb/year) to the cloud environment ($900 TB/year), we see the same order of magnitude in cost savings in our system. Why? Because we do not have the costs associated with a typical data center: real estate, electricity, cooling and staff. Also, our technology leverages the space environment to accelerate the capacity of the system.
Lance Parker has multiple patents in mobile, security, communications and satellite systems. Because Lance invented this concept and a unique way to secure information in satellites, Vint Cerf, the inventor of the Internet, selected him to be on the industry panel for the interplanetary network. You may find more information on the ConnectX website.
Editor’s Note: This Article originally appeared on examiner and is featured here with permission.
