Last week on Pro: quarterly wrap-ups and OpenStack

Last week, we wrapped up our second conference of the year, as paidContent Live in New York City drew a packed house and standing-room-only workshops. More than 40 innovators, analysts, and content creators joined us on stage to discuss the future of digital media. Meanwhile, over on GigaOM Pro, our analysts took a look at the consumer products market, including new products and developments in OTT and streaming content services, as well as initial analysis of last week’s OpenStack Summit.

Note: GigaOM Pro is a subscription-based research service offering in-depth, timely analysis of developing trends and technologies. Visit pro.gigaom.com to learn more about it.

Cloud: Understanding the State of OpenStack
David Linthicum

Analyst David Linthicum provides his takeaways from last week’s OpenStack Summit in Portland, OR. As the cloud computing standard continues to gain in popularity, Linthicum sees it as an increasingly important competitor to Amazon Web Services, especially as OpenStack gains traction with companies such as IBM, Rackspace, and HP (as well as many smaller startups). Linthicum offers his analysis and opinion on OpenStack’s future as a viable cloud computing standard, and offers suggestions on what major hurdles still exist for OpenStack’s interoperability and compatibility for the industry.

Connected Consumer: Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
Paul Sweeting

Analyst Paul Sweeting looks at recent developments in consumer products market – the past quarter was anchored by the CES expo in Las Vegas and closed with new buzz about a potential smart watch from Apple (and offerings from other competitors). The past quarter also saw new developments in consumer-facing copyright laws in the US and Europe in response to the newly-emerging used digital goods market. Sweeting looks at the proposed changes to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as well as other potential copyright law reforms targeting content aggregation services. He also reviews the past quarter in the OTT market, including services such as Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu, who are actively producing their own original content as well as serving up existing content on demand. Sweeting also provides a near term outlook on the consumer products market, including game consoles, connected TVs, streaming content services, and smart watches

Social: Social first-quarter 2013: analysis and outlook
Stowe Boyd

Analyst Stowe Boyd highlights some of the biggest developments that emerged in the social business marketplace. Kicking things off with Marissa Meyer’s elimination of Yahoo’s WFH policy, Boyd provides data on the remote work habits of US workers across multiple industries, and the continuing consumerization of enterprise solutions, led by the likes of Salesforce and Microsoft and supported by hybrid consumer/enterprise products such as LinkedIn, Behance, and Mendeley. With continuing changes in business culture and the release of products such as Tempo and Mailbox, Boyd delves into the changing role of social tools in the workplace and wonders who comes first in the workplace – the business or the worker?