Our recent blog post discussed the readiness of websites for events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but hold your horses — there is more to come in this crazy holiday shopping season.

The holidays already start well before Halloween and Black Friday is likely to extend to the end of November. In fact, since retailers opened stores on Thanksgiving Day and extended sales, Black Friday became “BLACK WEEKEND.”

With the growth of mobile and tablet devices in recent years, the way online shopping is done is gradually changing, too. According to Adobe and other sources, mobile shopping is becoming a formidable opponent to more traditional online shopping methods. Retailers are also tapping in to social media and offering mobile-only deals. Naturally, there was a plethora of coverage on these new trends, so for MASHUP FRIDAY here is a roundup:

• Black Friday beats Cyber Monday for mobile shopping
• Black Friday, Cyber Monday: 4 SMB Lessons
• Black Friday Results Are In: The Centerpiece of a Huge Multi-day Bricks-and-Clicks Shopping Spree
• Record online sales seen this holiday season, Black Friday deals continue through Cyber Monday

Oh, and stay tuned for Green Monday on December 10 and Free Shipping Day on December 16 — seriously. Green Monday kicks off what should be the heaviest week of the year for online shopping, where we could see several billion dollar spending days, punctuated by Free Shipping Day on Friday, December 16.

If your business wants to deliver satisfying mobile experiences contact an Internap CDN specialist or check out our CDN Buyer’s Guide.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have once again generated record-breaking profits for online retailers. With sales estimated at $1.5 billion, representing a 30% increase over last year, consumers show no signs of decreasing their online spending. But without the right IT Infrastructure, connectivity and Internet performance in place, you risk your business missing out on the billion dollar shopping weekend next year.

Whether you already have an established ecommerce presence, or if you’re a retailer looking to expand into the online sales arena, there are a few things to keep in mind in order to be successful.

Prepare for seasonal upticks – Is your website prepared to handle a huge influx of visitors? While you can likely predict everyday traffic, how will you prevent performance issues that can result from sudden increases in demand? Your Internet provider may compensate you for downtime, but that will not make up for lost sales and disgruntled customers.

Optimize performance – Simply put, faster Internet performance equals a faster buying experience for online consumers. Even with redundancy in place to minimize the risk of downtime, your site can still suffer from poor performance. With reliable, secure connectivity and faster speeds, online buyers will become repeat customers, resulting in more sales for your business.

Reduce latency – Successful online retailers understand that latency, or delays in the transmission of data over the Internet, can severely impact the user experience. This problem can be prevented with optimal routing of traffic to reduce latency, jitter and packet loss. With so many online shopping options available to consumers, there is no room for error when it comes to optimal website performance.

Year after year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday break sales records and exceed expectations. Successful online retailers are prepared to handle these high-volume shopping events because they know their customers expect a seamless experience.

A good example of this is one of Internap’s clients, Vermont Teddy Bear. Since 80% of their products are sold online, the ability to scale up during busy season is critical. With Performance IP™, Content Delivery Network (CDN) and colocation services from Internap, Vermont Teddy Bear was able to handle a 700% spike in traffic with no downtime. With minimal effort from the IT staff, they were able to support the holiday rush while ensuring connectivity, reliability and uptime for their online business.

To learn more about how Vermont Teddy Bear uses Internap’s combined services to ensure a high-quality customer experience and accommodate increases in demand, read the case study.

It’s never too early to start reflecting on New Year resolutions for 2013, including those that relate to business infrastructure services and planning. With a new year, there is a sense of starting with a clean slate and having the opportunity to improve over prior years. Often, the goals and objectives remain the same, but a fresh approach may deliver results that ultimately hit the mark. Goals such as reducing infrastructure costs, improving network performance and increasing resource efficiency tend to rollover from year to year. Consider these proposed resolutions to help you achieve your business infrastructure goals and move forward.

Resolution #1: Create a detailed inventory of company servers and business applications.

• What are server types, quantity, use and location?
• What is the utilization per server?
• What disaster recovery environments exist for mission critical applications?

Resolution #2: Assess critical needs and identify infrastructure services required to meet them.

• What are the development, web, mission critical, disaster recovery needs?
• What are the network performance requirements for key applications and users?
• How quickly does a new server need to be provisioned and for how long will it be used?
• What are the needs related to the physical location of a server? Is nearby colocation an option? Does distance matter?
• Is it necessary to retain management of servers or is managed hosting a viable option?
• Is cloud computing an option for certain needs?

Resolution #3: Identify opportunities to consolidate and decommission infrastructure and applications.

• What applications are able to reside on the same server?
• Are multiple applications serving the same or similar needs?

Resolution #4: Survey the market to evaluate the benefit that is derived from infrastructure service providers such as Internap.

• Consider cost savings that result from the right mix of services and resources, e.g., hybrid solutions.
• Consider patented technologies that are available such as Internap’s Managed Internet Route Optimizer™ (MIRO) that optimizes network performance and solves latency issues.
• Consider premium colocation that results in economies of scale in a secured environment along with a portfolio of ancillary services.
• Consider the ability to meet diverse needs with a single provider, from colocation to managed hosting to cloud services.

Resolution #5: Set up a system to track infrastructure assets and services on an ongoing basis.

• Establish a periodic review to manage infrastructure assets and delivery.
• Identify tools to assist with asset management and control.
• Utilize tools that are provided by IT Infrastructure services providers such as Internap, which include device visualization, monitoring and remote management capabilities.

To learn more about how Internap can set your business infrastructure up for success, contact us today.

Naturally, performance is key to the Sahara Force India Formula One Team, and also to the IT infrastructure that Internap provides. Well, let me assure you that performance was alive and well this weekend at the Circuit of the Americas.

I had the privilege of attending the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, Texas and spending some time in the Sahara Force India garage. Attending a race in person is a completely different experience than watching it on TV. The sound of the engines is absolutely deafening, the speed at which the cars go by is almost impossible to believe and the excitement is physically exhilarating. One might say it is a full body experience in every way, complete with a racing pulse that lasts for hours. By the end of the day, my head hurt, my ears were ringing, my feet throbbed and I had a sunburn. It was absolutely glorious.

The return of Formula One to the United States was truly a spectacle and one of the most exciting races of the season. Lewis Hamilton’s pass of Sebastian Vettel to grab the lead by the scruff of the neck and win the race was thrilling, and assures that all eyes will be on the season-ending race in Brazil this weekend.

With only one race remaining in 2012 and our foray into Formula One complete, I can tell you that I have new respect for everyone involved in this sport. The amount of effort expelled, number of hours worked and miles logged across the globe is staggering. Sure, the drivers get all the glory on the podium, basking in the spotlight and being doused with champagne. But it’s truly a team sport, and it certainly takes an F1 village to make a Grand Prix weekend happen.

Best memories of the weekend? Looking up for the first time at the massive hill into turn one at the circuit. Mind boggling. Watching the drivers on the podium come out wearing big black cowboy hats. Nice touch, Texas! Listening to Paul Di Resta, Nico Hulkenberg and Jules Bianchi talk Formula One in our exclusive Driver Q&A session – priceless.

To learn more about how Sahara Force India leverages Internap’s “performance package” for success, watch this video.

To discuss the global trends of cyber security, we must first discuss the motivation behind the actors who are delivering malware into environments, running distributed denial of services attacks and causing breaches across the industry. There are three main reasons for performing malicious attacks on a corporate environment: for profit, espionage and hacktivism.

For Profit, we see a lot of trends coming from Eastern Europe in which simple tools are used to steal personal identifiable information (PII) that can be used by the malicious actors or sold to anyone willing to purchase the data from the underground marketplace. These attacks are generally website compromises that lead to databases containing encrypted PII. The style of the attack is more of a smash and grab. This was recently seen with the breach at the Revenue department of the State of South Carolina where over 387,000 credit and debit cards were taken. Of the 387,000 records, only 16,000 were unencrypted and revealed in plain text.

There was a time when these types of illegal transactions took place in dark places and were unknown to the general public, but that’s no longer the case. The malicious actors now even offer free samples, verification services and replacement packages if cards are no longer valid. The size of the economy is largely unknown, but there was a researcher at McAfee that estimated the size to be in excess of $750 billion in 2011.

For Espionage, there is a completely different set of tools and goals. You are finding more long-term attacks. Spear phishing is used more prevalently in an attempt to deliver malware into an environment. We find that the attacks are primarily coming from Asia, and the intent is to escalate privileges until a level is reached in which data can be transferred quietly and efficiently out of an environment through a compromised third-party server. Attack experts believe that the malware’s first phase is to collect sensible information on the target networks and in a second phase, to erase tracks of its operation. It then destroys the infected machines making the subsequent forensic analysis by computer experts difficult. For example, there is an ecommerce site that has purchased a /32 bit subnet allowing them six hosts per segment, and the owner is only using one for his web server and another for a database server. The host web server is compromised with a recent zero-day exploit. The malicious actor would compromise the site, unknowingly to the ecommerce operator, and set up a communication tunnel from which they would transfer stolen data. The data will then be transferred to a collection server and then retrieved by actors located at the true origin of the attack. Before completing their mission, they would whip out the communication path so that there is not trace that they ever were there, making forensics impossible. This is a common technique used to transfer data without the true source being revealed.

For Hacktivism, this is a cause of social protest or to promote political ideology. Hacktivists employ operations such as denial of service(s), information theft, data breach(es), and website defacement(s). These are certainly not new tactics and were used back in the mid-90s by groups such as the Cult of the Dead Cow. We have seen groups stand up and act as both Robin Hood and Prince John in one. Robin Hood, in which they stand for righting the wrongs that has been committed on the Internet. For example, a group identifying a person who wrongfully committed Internet crimes against a minor that drove that person to take their own life. This person who committed the crime would have their lives published on the Internet for all to see and for law enforcement to track. The Prince Johns are those of the group who do not see the truth in what the other are attempting to do. They use the tools and access to use on low security financial institutions and targets of a convenient and easy nature to compromise. According to the study “Data Breach Investigations Report,” published by Verizon, hacktivists stole almost twice as many records of ordinary cyber crime from organizations and government agencies. Hacktivists are showing incredible skills and we expect the attacks to increase in numbers as well as impact. They were the representation of their generation and performed their operations of denial of services, information theft, data breach and website defacement.

To learn more about cyber crime, join Internap and Alert Logic for a Cyber Crime Evening Reception on December 5th. Click here to register.

References:
https://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2011/10/exposing-market-for-stolen-credit-cards.html
https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/press/cybercrime-business-digital-underground-economy-517
https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/22460-Energy-Sector-Cyber-Espionage-Chinese-Hackers-are-not-Alone.html
https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/4986/cyber-crime/they-are-not-what-you-think-they-are-they-are-hacktivists.html

Guest Contributor Stephen Coty is a member of the Alert Logic Security Research Team

I’ve spent a good part of the last few years traveling to speak at trade shows, conferences and customer sites. A good rule of thumb is to have a prep call ahead of time to discuss the important details, like who will be attending and what they care about. This week I didn’t have the time to do so and I was reminded why it’s a good rule of thumb.

I moved to Atlanta last year and hadn’t yet been able to attend any Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) events and as fate would have it, Internap was offered a seat on yesterday’s panel for the TAG Infrastructure Society. I’ve done my share of speaking engagements, so I agreed and brought the typical Internap background slides. The topic title was interesting: “The death of hubs and switches.” Since this sounded like the change in client-side networks and Internap is a service provider, I thought sharing our perspective from the other side of the Internet would be an interesting view. Internap’s solution portfolio includes data center services (such as Colocation, Managed Hosting and Cloud) and optimized connectivity across the Internet, but a client’s internal network is outside of our domain.

When I arrived, the other panelist, David Quinn, Managing Director of IP UtiliNET, had set up a very nice miniature campus network on a single table with a small server, fiber switch, splitter, media converter, video camera and IP phone. By attaching a mobile network device, he had created a fully operational network with Internet connectivity. Being a technology geek at heart, I was suitably impressed and wanted to learn more about this demo environment. However, I had also just realized that I might not have the right slides for the audience…

David’s presentation touched on many topics, from the isolated networks that exist in traditional businesses today to tactical examples of how being able to correlate data from multiple device types (e.g., phones, cameras and automation systems) can enable 911 dispatchers to better assist first responders in the future. His presentation was more focused on the technology and supported the next-generation design that was working on the table.

As we moved into the panel questions, it highlighted that this is the fundamental difference between internal IT and cloud services. There are concrete devices and wires required to build the campus network, while the service provider offers abstract services. These services expect ubiquitous Internet access, and as more interactive and rich media content is being delivered, the need for more bandwidth in more places increases. If the cost of providing high speed internal network connectivity can be lowered via next generation networks, that enables more users to consume those services and it becomes a self-supporting cycle.

While I could have brought architecture diagrams and can speak to the technologies used to create the Internap cloud services (which I think the audience would have enjoyed), this would have defeated the purpose of the cloud. At its core, the cloud is usually a multi-tenant system that offers services that could be provided internally, but are managed by a service provider. The service provider handles the technology details, management and scaling, ultimately providing the service more flexibly and at a lower cost than implementing the service as a single tenant model internally.

In the end, this was a panel discussion and the very different, but complementary, perspectives provided a more complete view of how campus networking is changing and newer networking designs can liberate the IT budget, potentially for additional services for their end-users.

BTW, if you are one of the many organizations no longer asking “if cloud?,” but “which cloud?,” check out our eBook: Cloud Buyer’s Guide.

Self-Actualization.

College was the first time I heard the phrase. It’s a heavy statement. Academic. Aspirational. A cross between a Yoga Master and the happiest old man you’ve ever met; the best outcome in a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Self-actualization, along with the rest of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, instantly stuck with me.

Sometime in the past couple years, while working on new features at Ubersmith, I had the eureka moment that the Hierarchy of Needs applied to much more (less?) than life. Googling quickly dispelled me of the thought that I’d come up with a new idea, but I didn’t fully agree with the versions I found.

While all of these individual elements are independently important, the real fun starts when they work together.

Core Functionality

Gotta start somewhere, right? Whether actions or information, there are a set of items that are absolutely non-negotiable for the product to be a success. Consider this a version of the Minimum Viable Product – there is a base set of functionality that makes your app an attractive option to the intended market. Simply put, the most basic implementation that yields the required result.

Reliability

The next level focuses on whether someone can count on you. This means the underlying infrastructure has to be rock solid, repeatable, credible. This means a lot. This means the redundancy put into your data center choices, your infrastructure platform (servers, cloud, etc.), your code quality, related (and sometimes external) APIs, CSS, HTML and browser compatibility. This is where most fail, mostly because it’s a tall order.

This is the coffee maker without auto-on timers and Wi-Fi, but makes coffee reliably, every morning, when you need it most. This is the car without power locks, windows or or GPS with 175,000 miles on the odometer, which starts every time.

Usability

Once the core functionality and safety of the product are established, the next focus is on making those tasks intuitive. This means taking into account concepts like mental models, Fitts’ Law, contemporary conventions, clear primary and secondary actions, visual cues and about a million other things that we continue to learn about every day.

Your application is a story, not a scavenger hunt. Great experiences construct a clear narrative that helps people self-segment themselves quickly and includes subtle roadsigns to help them achieve their individual goals, all while trying to be as invisible as possible.

Design

At heart, the design carries two burdens. Functionally, it needs to reinforce the established usability decisions, and aesthetically, it establishes the tone and feeling of the entire experience.

On the functional side, we have a lot of conversations on reinforcing visual hierarchies, concentrating attention, understanding how tone and color impact emotions, etc.

Aesthetically, the times are (always) a changing, and in rapidly evolving platforms like the internet, it’s important to remain contemporary. Art and design establish the look and feel of an era: Art Deco, Web 2.0, The Crusades, etc. and you will quickly look dated if the design component isn’t evolving as actively as the underlying code.

Finally, don’t fall into the trap of picking and choosing trendy elements and plugging them into your app. Though it may look visually similar, your carbon-copy probably didn’t have the same requirements, and the beautiful face now starts working against the lower-level decisions you’ve made.

Experimentation

Here’s where it starts to get inspirational. When you’ve nailed the underlying tenants of a great application, then you can start to pave the way. You can start introducing conventions, and with the trust of the user and a proper narrative, your audience will embrace it rather than reject it.

As long as you’re not undermining any of the established trust, the experimentation should be at every level of the pyramid. The most common experimentation seems to be in design and usability, which often generate faster user feedback, but push yourself to look further down into the stack.

tl;dr
As we see it, the underlying idea is compounding trust. Trust that the functionality exists, trust that the design reinforces hierarchy, trust that you have the user’s best interest at heart. Once you’ve nailed that trust, have fun and do something notable.

Online video gaming capabilities have completely changed the landscape of the industry during the past few years. Countless independent and second-tier games that otherwise never would have hit the market have been produced, because they could be hosted online or downloaded, avoiding the expense of producing boxes, disks and other physical media. As the video game industry progresses into the next generation and more consumers become comfortable in a world without disks, it is important to consider the extent to which disks really matter in the video game sector.

Steam, Origin, the PlayStation Network Store, Xbox Live, the Nintendo Virtual Console marketplace and even digital download centers from major retailers like GameStop and Amazon.com are fueling an industry that is beginning to value the convenience of digital downloads over the security of owning a physical copy of a game.

More consumers are working to put disks behind them and turn to a digital-only lifestyle. This trend comes at the intersection of mobile device use and the widespread availability of video-streaming services. As these trends continue to grow, you may notice that more consumers are realizing that having their games stored on a third-party server makes more sense than keeping it on a disk that could scratch or break at any time. While business models still need to evolve in this area, we are getting close to a video game industry where content delivery stems from colocation facilities and managed hosting centers instead of boxed copies of games shipped through the mail to various retail locations.

Other than the Wii-U, there is still almost nothing that is certain about the next-generation consoles. There is plenty of speculation and a lot of assumptions being made based on ongoing industry conditions. However, there is one relative certainty — upcoming consoles will be built for greater digital download and game streaming functionality. Rumors that next-gen systems may be digital-only were quickly shot down, but in such a way that the move toward digital video gaming would continue to expand.

This trend makes a lot of sense if you look at the trajectory of the console video game industry. Over the past few generations of systems, it is clear that consoles are becoming more and more like PCs. Then something funny happened this time around — the ability to download software upgrades, patches and system improvements extended the generation beyond the usual five-year life cycle.

The extended life of consoles comes into focus when you consider the interplay between console and PC gaming.

In the past, console gaming and PC gaming were considered widely distinct because PC capabilities change so quickly and are built around different control systems. But motion sensing, touchscreens and the ability to plug console controllers into PCs have broken down the barriers. As a result, the superior performance of PCs and game delivery models are the only gaps between the two sectors.

With the extended console lifecycle about to end, many console makers seem to be getting jealous of PC functionality. Free-to-play massively multiplayer online RPGs are raking in the cash while major releases on the PC perform better than their console counterparts. At the same time, PC content delivery is much more focused on digital distribution and game streaming than the consoles.

These factors have allowed the PC gaming industry to monetize types of video games that the console market cannot match at this point. As next-generation consoles are designed, the move to make them more like PCs could continue. This will likely lead to an industry that is even more strongly built on digital downloads, content streaming and data center hosting taking the place of disks and physical media.

If you want to know more about streaming and content delivery networks, check out our CDN buyer’s guide.

I know many are still storm-stricken, dealing with the aftermath of superstorm Sandy and now Wednesday’s Nor’easter. Our heartfelt thoughts go out to those who haven’t, and probably won’t for a very long time, recovered. For those of us not in the area, one only need look at before and after photos to see the devastation and destruction. So many of you have been, and continue to be, out there on the front lines to bring back some semblance of “normal” to the affected areas. We want to say THANK YOU to each and every one of you.

But what has been most inspiring is the spirit of camaraderie, the willingness to come together for the greater good. There were countless acts of kindness by neighbors and strangers alike. While some things have returned to operation, today, still some one million children are in shelters and hundreds of thousands are without power in the region. Clearly, there is still a long, long road to recovery ahead.

Just the basics: food, water, clothing and shelter are still hard to come by, not to mention medicine, supplies and other necessities. So, for those who want to help or need it, here is some information:

• Donate, volunteer, give blood or otherwise contribute via the American Red Cross. To donate, call 800-Red-Cross or text the word “Redcross” to 90999 to make a $10 donation.
• Save the Children is also working to provide relief to families and their children. Visit www.savethechildren.org to donate.
• Get updates on volunteer opportunities, donation drop-off locations and current on-the-ground updates via Twitter: Official Occupy Sandy Relief NYC
• Find a location for much needed blood donations in the New York/New Jersey area. To donate, call 800-933-2566 or visit www.nybloodcenter.org.
• Check out this article to learn about other ways to help.

By the way, if you are looking for work space with power and Internet access, our NY office on 29 Broadway is available. Please direct message @Internap on twitter for more details.

Congratulations Hi-Rez Studios for receiving a coveted 2012 Excalibur Award!

The Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) wrote this on its website about Hi-Rez Studios’ award: “Not long ago, slow networks and servers were restricting gamers’ ability to enjoy fast-paced multi-player games online. To meet their business and customer requirements, Hi-Rez implemented a “bare metal cloud” hosting solution offered by Atlanta-based IT Infrastructure provider Internap. With Internap’s bare metal cloud solution, Hi-Rez is achieving higher economic efficiencies — and the superior performance that its customers demand — with the high levels of flexibility and scalability that conventional cloud services offer.”

So, what challenges do online gaming companies face in today’s increasingly competitive and segmented market? What are the elements involved in launching an online game from development, to publishing and distribution? If you are wondering about the answers to these questions, another gaming customer of ours is participating with us on our webcast this afternoon: “How to launch a warrior: News from the online gaming front.”Join Infinite Game Publishing at 2 PM ET as we discuss these topics and more. It’s not too late to register.

^{Excalibur 2012 Award Logo: (C) Technology Association of Georgia}