Seemingly every tech vendor seems to have a cloud strategy, with new products and services dubbed “cloud” coming out every week. But who are the real market leaders in this business? Gartner’s IaaS Magic Quadrant: a who’s who of cloud market article shows Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for IaaS. Research firm Gartner’s answer lies in its Magic Quadrant report for the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market.
It is interesting that missing from this quadrant figure are big-name companies that have invested a lot in the cloud, including Microsoft, HP, IBM and Google. The reason is that report only includes providers that had IaaS clouds in general availability as of June 2012 (Microsoft, HP and Google had clouds in beta at the time).
Gartner reinforces what many in the cloud industry believe: Amazon Web Services is the 800-pound gorilla. Gartner has also found one big minus on Amazon Web Services: AWS has a “weak, narrowly defined” service-level agreement (SLA), which requires customers to spread workloads across multiple availability zones. AWS was not the only provider where there was something negative to say on the service-level agreement (SLA) details.
Read the whole Gartner’s IaaS Magic Quadrant: a who’s who of cloud market article to see the Gartner’s view on clould market today.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon’s New Unlimited Cloud Storage Is Absurdly Cheap
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/amazon-unlimited-everything-cloud-storage/
The steady march towards cheaper cloud storage has just turned into a sprint. Rather than being merely competitive with leaders like Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud, Amazon has decided to undercut their pricing by more than half. In some cases, much, much more.
Amazon’s Unlimited Everything plan means that you now can stash all of your digital stuff in your own private Amazon cloud locker for $60 per year. That’s compared to the $100 per year that individual Dropbox users pay for a plan capped at 1TB (there’s also a $15 per month unlimited plan for business accounts), $120 per year for 1TB on Google Drive, and $240 for the same amount on iCloud. Throw in Amazon’s three-month free trial offer—and consider that truly unlimited plans aren’t even an option for individual users on most rival services—and the unprecedented value of Amazon’s Unlimited Everything Plan comes more into focus.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud security is the biggest obstacle
IT leaders suspect the transition to cloud services, for two reasons. The second is the protection of privacy and the second, perhaps even greater concern, related to information security.
Businesses are not able to get IT experts, who are able to monitor and manage cloud services.
Researchers finger at the service providers in the cloud. Cloud Sellers sometimes make even intentionally services security verification difficult.
“Companies have been too long only on the assumption that they use service provide products and services are safe. However, the information for breaking the Party suffering is always the customer”
In the current situation, more and more, the company agrees to move to the cloud for the more important data. This is likely to increase the importance of information security.
“Data leakage is and will remain our customers’ concerns and number one in the cloud transition to a threshold question”
Cloud services are a good example of a business, where security solutions are lagging behind other technology strode forward.
“For many cloud service providers will be security to mind only when companies have already succeeded in selling new technology solutions,”
Especially for the earlier generations of solutions are not in his view, a very vulnerable when security is applied in layers and afterwards.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/CIO/2015-03-27/Pilven-suurin-este-on-tietoturva-3218116.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud security still not up to scratch, research warns
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/cloud-security/4929/cloud-security-still-not-up-to-scratch-research-warns
Despite being one of the main obstacles to embracing cloud, security hasn’t developed at the same pace as other tech, according to Ovum
Although security remains one of the main reasons businesses are not moving to the cloud, it is also lagging behind the evolution of cloud technologies, presenting an even bigger problem.
So claims research by analyst form Ovum and secure managed cloud provider FireHost, which suggested that an IT skills shortage has made it hard for companies to manage cloud services. However, it said such challenges are being exacerbated by the fact that cloud providers are making it hard to implement security measures within these services.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Insight’s EMEA prez: It’s not our fault cloud sales are slow, blame the NSA
Firms’ fluffy white services payoff is due in 2016, adds gros fromage
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2015/03/30/insight_emea_president_nsa_slow_sales_cloud_payoff/
Services investments made by box-peddling shape shifter Insight Enterprises will start to pay dividends in Europe from next year, regional head honcho Wolgang Eberman has predicted.
We are told the company spent the best part of last year stabilising the “classic business” – reselling – in Europe, “that is why you saw top line growth and real profitability gained”, the exec said.
“We strongly believe there is a huge market out there, not only for selling the Office 365 license, but really landing and managing it… that is to come over the course of the next six months.”
He reckons the dynamics of the market over the last thirty years – technology being sold by technology people to technology people – hasn’t solved the issues facing businesses. He reiterates that most businesses haven’t seen IT as a competitive weapon.
“The consequence is because they talk technology, its very hard for the business decision makers to understand the impact… they need to become business technology experts.
“This is a major transformation, not a three month change,” he adds.
Last year Cisco got rid of 6,000 staff and brought in 7,000 fresh faces with a new set of skills to sell technology differently.
So with this body of work required at Insight, and businesses in Europe still concerned about NSA snooping, when will the cloud start to significantly replace traditional reselling at the company?
“The real breakthrough will happen in 2016,” he tells us. “There’s still a lot of nervousness in the system, particularly in Europe with regards to the NSA scandal, that didn’t help at all.”
“You can get over-nervous and sensitive and with that you miss the need for ability… the global environment which is very competitive and volatile, it is very important that you don’t miss agility and you are picking your bets as a company.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google cloud addicts: Now you can juggle your web apps from your Android smartie
Devs with iPhones will have to wait
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/30/google_adds_android_control_app_for_cloud_platform_managers/
Google developers looking to keep an eye on their cloud processes now have an app for Android, dubbed Cloud Console, that will allow remote monitoring of the Chocolate Factory’s Cloud Platform.
“Imagine being away from your desk and receiving automatic alerts when an issue occurs in your Google App Engine app,” said Michael Thomsen, a product manager on the Google Cloud Platform team in a blog post.
“Or waiting at the airport and stopping your test VMs before leaving for vacation. With the beta launch of Cloud Console for Android, managing Google Cloud Platform from your phone or tablet is possible.”
Google has said an iOS version of Cloud Console is under development
Manage Google Cloud Platform on the go with Cloud Console for Android
http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.fi/2015/03/manage-Google-Cloud-Platform-on-the-go-with-Cloud-Console-for-Android.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Hudgins / Google Drive Blog:
Google makes photos and videos from Google+ Photos available in Drive
Your photos and files, together in Drive
http://googledrive.blogspot.fi/2015/03/photosindrive.html
To get started, just look for the new Photos menu in Drive for Android, iOS and the web. From there you’ll be able to manage your photos and videos alongside other types of files.
You’ll start seeing your photos in Drive today—immediately if they’re new, and a few weeks for your entire library—so give it a try,
You can optionally choose to create a Google Photos folder in your “My Drive”, which will allow you to organize your photos and videos into folders.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Not So Dynamic Updates
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/not-so-dynamic-updates
Typically when a network is under my control, I like my servers to have static IPs.
Unfortunately, in the default Amazon EC2 environment, you don’t have any say over your IP address. When you spawn a server in EC2, Amazon’s DHCP server hands out a somewhat random IP address. The server will maintain that IP address even through reboots as long as the host isn’t shut down. If you halt the machine, the next time it comes up, it likely will be on a different piece of hardware and will have a new IP.
To deal with this unpredictable IP address situation, through the years, I’ve leaned heavily on dynamic DNS updates within my EC2 environments. When a host starts for the first time and gets configured, or any time the IP changes, the host will update internal DNS servers with the new IP. Generally this approach has worked well for me, but it has one complication.
If I controlled the DHCP server, I would configure it with the IP addresses of my DNS servers. Since Amazon controls DHCP, I have to configure my hosts to override the DNS servers they get from DHCP with mine. I use the ISC DHCP client
This method of wrangling a bit of order into such a dynamic environment as EC2 has worked well for me, overall. That said, it isn’t without a few complications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google cloud addicts: Now you can juggle your web apps from your Android smartie
Devs with iPhones will have to wait
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/30/google_adds_android_control_app_for_cloud_platform_managers/
Google developers looking to keep an eye on their cloud processes now have an app for Android, dubbed Cloud Console, that will allow remote monitoring of the Chocolate Factory’s Cloud Platform.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AWS flops out massive D to vaporise big data rigs
Cloud titan makes a play for Map Reduce and massively parallel workloads
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/01/aws_flops_out_massive_d_to_vaporise_big_data_rigs/
Big data’s a fine concept, but when it meets the real world of buying kit to run it on things can get nasty because the cost of the rigs required to crunch lots of data can be very considerable.
All those models now get the fun of competing with Amazon Web Services (AWS)m which has just created a new instance type for its elastic computing service (EC2), designed for “processing multi-terabyte data sets”.
The new D2 instances run on Intel Xeon E5-2676 v3 CPUs at 2.4 GHz (bursting to 3.0GHz) and come in four sizes, as explained in the table below.
The d2.8xlarge instance throws in Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) and all of the new types include elastic block store optimisation. AWS wants you to use newer Linuxes on these instances, preferably its own distro, in order to access faster storage access speeds (thanks to new bits inside Xen). The new D2 instances give big data users an interesting alternative. It won’t be long, of course, before Google, Microsoft or a niche player trumps these new rigs’ specs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon’s clouds are da bomb, say EU data protection watchdogs
AWS meets Europe’s privacy requirements, whatever they may be worth
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/01/amazon_privacy_europe/
Amazon’s cloud services have been declared safe by Europe’s privacy rights watchdogs.
The Article 29 Working Party (a group made up of all Europe’s national data protection authorities), led by the Dutch CNPD, has found that Amazon Web Services’ standard contractual clauses meet all the requirements of EU data protection – whatever they may be worth. The rules are undergoing some degree of reform at the moment.
According to the working party, Amazon cloud customers can be sure that even when their data is transferred across the world, under the so-called “controller-to-processor” clauses it will still get the same level of protection as if it was stored in the European Union.
Following the Edward Snowden revelations, cloud customers have been concerned about where their files are held and processed, and who has access to them. Companies including Amazon have sought to capitalise on the fear of foreign surveillance by guaranteeing data is stored in countries specifically selected by customers. (Microsoft is having a spot of bother with that plan.)
In the EU, Amazon customers can choose to have their data stored in Dublin in Ireland or Frankfurt in Germany. The latter option was launched in October.
According to Amazon, its cloud services are being used by government agencies, educational institutions, and large enterprises, including Shell.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scott Johnston / Official Google for Work Blog:
Google Drive for Work and Google for Education get new security features including admin alerts, ability to set sharing settings by department
http://googleforwork.blogspot.com/2015/03/keep-all-of-your-work-more-secure-with.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ex-NASA OpenStack pioneer Nebula sucked into black hole
Cloudy firm goes poof, citing ‘immature market’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/02/openstack_cloud_pioneer_nebula_evaporates/
Nebula, one of the earliest OpenStack-based cloud computing startups, has closed its doors, effective immediately.
“We are incredibly proud of the role we had in establishing Nebula as the leading enterprise cloud computing platform,” the company wrote in a notice on its homepage on Wednesday. “At the same time, we are deeply disappointed that the market will likely take another several years to mature. As a venture backed start up, we did not have the resources to wait.”
Nebula was founded in 2011 by a team led by former NASA CTO Chris Kemp, who was instrumental in building components of what later became OpenStack while at the space agency’s Ames Research Center.
Specifically, Ames gave the OpenStack project Nova, the compute engine and fabric controller that underpinned its own infrastructure cloud – which not coincidentally was also called Nebula.
From those promising beginnings, however, cloud computing has since grown into one of the most buzzed-about trends in the market. With myriad companies all now vying for a piece of the OpenStack market – ranging from startups like Mirantis to established tech titans like HP, IBM, and Red Hat – Nebula was increasingly feeling the squeeze.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pumping billions into data centres won’t guarantee you an empire
Please take note Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/01/data_centre_economics_of_scale/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Snowden didn’t scare many out of US clouds says Forrester
A quarter of CIOs bail from US clouds, but only a third of those leave for fear of spooks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/02/snowden_didnt_scare_many_out_of_us_clouds_says_forrester/
Analyst outfit Forrester has asked the question “Did PRISM Cause An Exodus From US Clouds?” and found the answer is yes. At least a bit.
The firm asked “1,668 non-US technology and business decision-makers” whether “In the past year, has your company explicitly halted or reduced your spending with US-based companies for Internet-based services (e.g., cloud, online service/outsourcing) due to these security concerns?”
26 per cent said yes, they had.
But the company’s next question, “What are the reasons you have decided to move away from using US-based companies for Internet-based services?” found 34 per cent of those asked said “Fear of intelligence community spying” was the reason for their departure. Others reasons for repatriating data or services included local laws, or greater comfort doing business with domestic providers.
The second question was answered by “427 non-US technology and business decision-makers whose firms have explicitly halted or reduced their spending with US-based companies for Internet-based services due to PRISM-related security concerns.” We’re not sure it is sound to do the math on this one and declare that a 34 per cent of 26 per cent means about eight per cent of people pulled data from clouds for fear of spying, because the exact nature of the samples isn’t explained.
The study concludes that organisations using any cloud service providers from any nation need to look for suppliers who give them more control over security, because if the spooks don’t get you, the crims will.
“Your business partners are accountable to their governments, and you can’t expect them to put your interests above their own or those of their government.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dropbox surpasses 10M Japanese users, inks biz cloud deal with SoftBank
https://www.techinasia.com/dropbox-softbank-partnership/
Dropbox co-founder and CEO Drew Houston was in Tokyo this morning to announce the firm’s partnership with SoftBank Commerce and Service (SoftBank C&S). Speaking at the New Economy Summit, Houston also announced that Dropbox has surpassed 10 million Japanese users since opening a Tokyo office last October.
Houston explained that the partnership with SoftBank C&S – Japan’s largest information and communications technology distributor – aims to bring Dropbox for Business to one million Japanese users over the next five years. SoftBank C&S will also become the primary reseller and distributor for Dropbox for Business in the domestic market.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Review: Adobe Acrobat Pro DC’s electronic signatures are its killer app
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2906502/review-adobe-acrobat-pro-dcs-electronic-signatures-are-its-killer-app.html
No other competing PDF utility has anything like the new electronic signature features in the new Acrobat. But you’ll have to subscribe to Document Cloud to get it.
With the new Acrobat DC, Adobe offers a killer app that could lure at least some users back from cheaper PDF editors: electronic signatures. Signatures are an essential part of business, and one that’s now made much easier with the new Document Cloud service you can get on subscription with Acrobat. No other competing PDF utility has anything like it.
The new Acrobat pushes PDFs to the cloud. No, not that cloud: Instead of incorporating new features into its Creative Cloud subscription service, Adobe is introducing a new cloud, called the Document Cloud (DC for short), a document-management and document-signing service for which Acrobat is the interface, on desktops, tablets, and mobile phones.
Adobe’s EchoSign electronic signature service is no more—because its features are now built into Acrobat Pro DC and the Document Cloud (it’s also included with Creative Cloud subscriptions). You get unlimited signatures
You’ll need a desktop version of Acrobat DC that includes a Document Cloud subscription to send PDFs out for electronic signatures.
Adobe has created a very useful cloud service, albeit one that’s segregated from other cloud services, but the integration of electronic signature sending and tracking is the thing that sets it apart from other PDF applications. If you don’t need signing but you still need Acrobat for other functions, then you might consider using the perpetual version with the cloud service of your choice.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloudy McCloud Cloud HP just said public cloud ‘makes no sense for us’
Exec admits it’s no Amazon, Google, or Microsoft
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/08/hp_cries_uncle_in_cloud_fight_says_public_cloud_makes_no_sense_for_it/
HP has finally conceded defeat in the public cloud wars, admitting that it just doesn’t have what it takes to do battle with the likes of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
“We thought people would rent or buy computing from us,” HP cloud boss Bill Hilf told The New York Times on Wednesday. “It turns out that it makes no sense for us to go head-to-head.”
The startling admission comes mere months before HP is due to split into two companies. Come November, HP’s PC and printer honcho Dion Weisler will be the new CEO of HP Inc, while current HP CEO Meg Whitman will become chief exec of the newly created HP Enterprise, a company dedicated to serving businesses’ data center needs.
Don’t expect public cloud to be one of HP Enterprise’s major offerings, though. According to Hilf, HP will focus on providing private and hybrid cloud infrastructure to companies, while at the same time acting as a supplier to public cloud providers like Microsoft and Rackspace.
HP’s got a cloud it wants to sell you
The problem HP faces is that companies who want to build “Google scale” clouds are increasingly turning to so-called white box ODMs to build their servers, rather than buying off-the-shelf kit from big vendors. Amazon hasn’t bought a name-brand server in years. And Facebook, through its leadership in the Open Compute Project (OCP), is showing other companies that they don’t need major-label expertise to get what they need for their data centers.
Less ambitious companies, however, may not want to go over the financial and logistical hurdles of dealing directly with Chinese manufacturers. For them, HP has come up with Cloudline, a new range of servers with OCP-style specs. But even HP’s close partnership with Taiwanese mega-manufacturer Foxconn can’t change the fact that the margins on such products must necessarily be razor-thin.
HP’s current idea is to sell customers a combination of hardware infrastructure and the software to tie it together. It’s even borrowed a buzzword from Oracle to describe these integrated offerings: “engineered systems.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Amazon announces new Elastic File System storage service for EC2 machines; preview coming soon — Amazon Launches New File Storage Service For EC2 — At its AWS Summit in San Francisco, Amazon today announced the launch of the Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), a new storage service …
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/09/amazon-launches-new-efs-file-storage-service-for-ec2/
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Amazon announces new machine learning platform to help developers build, validate, optimize, and run batch predictions with their models
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/09/aws-wants-to-put-machine-learning-in-reach-of-any-developer/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon whisks desktop apps into cloud bazaar in virty PC push
New marketplace brings subscription software to WorkSpaces
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/10/aws_desktop_sw_marketplace/
AWS Summit Amazon Web Services cut its teeth providing data center infrastructure in the cloud, but lately it’s made some coin serving up virtual desktops, too. Now it has expanded that offering with new services that allow IT admins to purchase and manage desktop applications via AWS.
Amazon first jumped into the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) biz in 2013, when it debuted Amazon WorkSpaces at its AWS re:Invent conference that year. The idea is that AWS uses its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to spin up virtual machine instances running Windows desktops, which customers access remotely via client software.
When El Reg tried out WorkSpaces last year, however, we found it pretty clunky compared to some rival VDI offerings. Maybe that’s why Amazon has decided to sweeten the pot.
At the AWS Summit in San Francisco this week, Amazon unveiled AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps, an extension of the AWS Marketplace that allows customers to browse, search, and purchase prepackaged applications to run on their WorkSpaces instances.
Jassy said the marketplace offers more than 100 applications in 11 categories at launch, with more to be added as time goes on. “You’ll see McAfee, Adobe, TurboCAD, WinZip … a broad selection of apps that you can consume by the month,” he said.
It’s not immediately clear what AWS will charge for these applications – and curiously, some of those included in the list are open source or freeware that can easily be downloaded and installed at no charge. Currently, however, AWS WorkSpaces come with a minimal set of free utilities at the base price, with add-on commercial software bundles billed at an additional $15 per month.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alibaba forms automotive, ‘smart living’ business units
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/10/us-alibaba-restructuring-idUSKBN0N10VM20150410
(Reuters) – China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N), the world’s biggest e-commerce company, has formed an automotive unit and a ‘smart living’ division in the past week, the firm said on Friday, as it ramps up its cloud computing, hardware and big data operations.
Alibaba, like many rival Chinese tech firms, is racing to introduce Internet and computing capabilities to various kinds of everyday products, ranging from televisions and home appliances to cars.
In this packed field, China’s online shopping titan is banking on its big data analysis and cloud computing abilities to provide an edge, as it looks to repeat the successes it has seen in overall e-commerce with more specialized categories.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AWS joins Azure and Watson in bringing machine learning to big data
Retail secrets offered to the wider community
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2403570/aws-joins-azure-and-watson-in-bringing-machine-learning-to-big-data
AMAZON WEB SERVICES (AWS) has announced that it will soon offer machine learning as an option to customers.
The technology is the same creepy stuff that uses algorithms to recommend things that you might also like when you browse Mazon’s retail site.
Amazon said at the AWS Summit in San Francisco this week that it will help customers to use the big data at their fingertips in more intelligent ways.
The news follows hot on the heels of Microsoft’s introduction of similar technology in the Azure Cloud platform earlier in the year, and IBM’s Watson which has had the facility for some time.
“Amazon has a long legacy in machine learning,” said Jeff Bilger, a senior manager with Amazon Machine Learning.
“It powers the product recommendations customers receive on Amazon.com. It is what makes Amazon Echo able to respond to your voice, and it is what allows us to unload an entire truck full of products and make them available for purchase in as little as 30 minutes.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud DNS, VPN, HTTPS load balancing … Google looks at rivals, thinks: Yeah, we’ll do all that
Someone’s been busy in the Chocolate Factory
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/13/google_cloud_networking/
Google has expanded its portfolio of network services, with the aim of ensuring that customers of its cloud infrastructure have responsive, low-latency websites.
On Monday, the online ad-slinger announced general availability of Cloud DNS, its managed DNS service. For a monthly fee, Google will handle DNS requests for as many as thousands of DNS zones, priced on a sliding scale. (Sorta like the services provided by Dyn et al.)
“The charge is per zone per month (regardless of whether you use your zone), and you also pay for queries against your zones,” Google explained.
Monday’s announcement also included the launch of a new pricing tier for the DNS service. Customers who manage more than 10,000 zones will now pay just $0.03 per zone per month.
At the same time, Google also expanded its HTTP/HTTPS load balancing service to include 12 new points of presence, including Chicago, Dallas, Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Miami, Munich, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, and Stockholm.
Google also took the occasion to debut a VPN service that allows Google Compute Engine customers to connect to their cloud servers via the encrypted IPSec protocol. The service is billed according to Google’s general networking pricing, with the additional $0.05 per hour VPN fee waived during the beta period.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Puny humans flub ANOTHER Google cloud patch
Immaturity or radical transparency: you be the judge
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/14/puny_humans_flub_another_google_cloud_patch/
No-one says running a globe-spanning cloud is easy, but Google’s just borked its own cloud for the fourth and fifth time in a few weeks.
This time the problem was with Google Compute Engine instances in us-central1, which experienced elevated packet loss last Friday. The problem wasn’t a shocker – it lasted 14 minutes – but was noticed and duly fixed.
“To prevent similar incidents in future, we are changing procedure to include additional validation checks while configuring routers during maintenance activities. We are also implementing a higher degree of automation to remove potential human and communication errors when changing router configurations.”
The company’s since reported another packet loss incident that struck on Sunday, US time
Tomi Engdahl says:
Godaddy virtual servers are down
http://www.technationnews.com/2015/04/13/godaddy-virtual-servers-are-down/
Tons of websites were today lost in cyberspace because Godaddy suffered a massive failure in its virtual servers service.
While this website is actually hosted in a virtual server in Godaddy, we have a bunch of websites down and we have no explanation of the reasons of this long and total failure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Updates Azure Media Services With Live Encoding, New Media Player And More
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/13/microsoft-updates-azure-media-services-with-live-encoding-new-media-player-and-more/
Microsoft is launching a number of new features for its Azure Media Services audio and video streaming platform today.
The highlight of this update is support for live encoding, which is now in preview. This builds on Microsoft’s existing live video capabilities for the service, but as a Microsoft spokesperson explained to me, this new feature now allows Azure’s media customers to “deliver a true Cloud DVR experience.” Live encoding gives Azure users the ability to build their own live workflows with live transcoding for multiple formats, archiving, just-in-time packaging (so you only render streams for the kinds of devices that actually request them), and dynamic encryption.
While Live Encoding is now in private beta, Microsoft also today launched the Azure Media Player, which now gives content owners an automated online player solution (instead of having to build their own) that supports all the usual industry standards like HTML5 video, Media Source Extensions and rights management through Encrypted Media Extensions. The focus here is on open standards, but on older browsers, the player can fall back on Flash or Silverlight.
Tomi Engdahl says:
HP Helion: We haven’t left the open cloud space
NYT quote was misinterpreted, apparently
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2403947/hp-helion-we-havent-left-the-open-cloud-space
HP HAS REAFFIRMED its commitment to the hybrid cloud as the Helion brand slinks towards its one-year anniversary.
The news comes hot on the heels of a report in The New York Times suggesting that the company has all but given up trying to compete in the open cloud space against the likes of Google and Amazon.
Helion product management SVP Bill Hilf was quoted as saying: “We thought people would rent or buy computing from us. It turns out that it makes no sense for us to go head-to-head.”
In a hastily issued guest blog post, Hilf explained: “In the past week, a quote of mine in the media was interpreted as HP is exiting the public cloud, which is not the case. Our portfolio strategy to deliver on the vision of hybrid IT continues strong.”
Hilf goes on to point out that HP operates one of the largest OpenStack-based public clouds, and that HP’s “public cloud services are also used by customers that require them as a component of their overall cloud and hybrid delivery strategy”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Avere cuddles Google, continues with Amazon. Label that under ‘It’s complicated’
The Chocolate Factory adds substance to its cloud
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/15/avere_google_amazon_cloud/
It’s double your dates time: Avere has evolved its FXT front-end filer accelerator into a cloud storage gateway, first with Amazon and now with Google.
On-premises workloads and data sets can be pumped out from an on-premises NAS array through the FXT Edge Filer to Google’s Cloud Platform.
The Chocolate Factory has been adding substance to its cloud with the Glacier-beating Nearline capability, a raft of services like DNS and VPN, an Android cloud console app and links with VMware’s vCloud Air service.
Avere said that, with its FXT Edge filers, users can “deploy and scale compute in Google Compute Engine using both on-premises and/or Google Cloud Storage resources. It is the only solution on the market today that lets companies finally connect the dots between cloud computing and on-premises storage”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tears of a cloud: Don’t be let down by backup and disaster recovery
A quick redundancy can be a good thing
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/24/risk_window_cloud_backups_dr_risk/
For many, the advent of cloud storage was a blessing. Cherished pictures and videos, contact lists, documents and more could be automatically put online and saved (theoretically) forever.
Enterprises took notice as well and now, cloud backups are fairly standard practice. However, business and individuals have one significant difference: the amount of data they have to back up.
For an individual user, backing up their archive of photos takes no more than a few minutes.
For a business, this process can take days or even weeks to establish redundancy – and you can add more days to pull that back down.
Between you and your target data centre there are several variables at play, including both your ISP and those your backup service gets their connectivity from. Maybe the data centre burns down during the transfer, leaving you high and dry.
Perhaps the ISP on the other side of the country is getting swallowed by a hurricane, or maybe someone drove into your node and your ISP can’t get out to repair it until after the weekend.
If anything goes wrong somewhere on the way, not only is it out of your control as the administrator, but you’re also at fault for not planning for that possibility. That’s not healthy for your career, nor is the downtime good for productivity.
Maybe some day the net will be fast and robust enough that an entire lifetime of business data can be uploaded to the cloud and backed up in a small enough window of time that nothing can conceivably go wrong, but that is simply not the case today – at least not for everyone.
Fortunately, disaster-proof recovery offerings do exist that let you to maintain an internal focus of control in your data centre.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Difficult to measure the benefits of the cloud
The Finns are at the forefront of the study, smartphones and cloud services used. Introduction of new technologies does not in itself tell anything yet, but the transition to a new activity must be justified by the improvement in competitiveness and efficiency. It is attacking is still often difficult to measure.
Both cloud services had brought a big change in the operation.
Lync meetings earlier instead of physical meetings. It will automatically save the use of time and travel expenses.
VaBe was transferred to SharePoint from the old system, in which all staff recorded the report, contract and offer their own proposals for the machines. CEO Markus Lehtinen, previously working up some weeks spent searching for information. Now all the necessary information is available everywhere, including on mobile devices.
It is a big question, how the software giant adapts to the future of virtual work environment with the tools to keep in principle, be free of charge. Most likely, Microsoft is impossible to move the same earnings logic tiers and the future of cloud computing services to the world.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2690:pilven-hyotyja-vaikea-mitata&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Box adds depth through Verold 3D modelling acquisition
It’s hip to be square. Especially if you’re a cube
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2404168/box-adds-depth-through-verold-3d-modelling-acquisition
CLOUD STORAGE and productivity vendor Box has announced the acquisition of 3D modelling company Verold.
The move will see the Verold team integrated into Box with a view to combining the technologies, allowing 3D conversion and previewing directly from Box’s content platform.
Box is keen to note that this is going to be a premium feature, a reminder that, in this highly competitive and burgeoning market, competitors are leaping on every opportunity to give their platform the edge. And in this case corners and depth as well.
“There’s a massive opportunity today to transform the way people share and engage with their content in every industry,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box.
“With Verold’s technology, we’re extending our world-class content previewing and collaboration platform to interactive 3D content, opening all new-use cases across manufacturing, engineering, consumer products, and media and entertainment.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hybrid IT? Not a long-term thing, says AWS CTO
Cloud security now ‘much stronger than on-premises’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/16/hybrid_it_its_not_a_longterm_thing_says_amazon_web_services_cto/
AWS Summit Hybrid IT — systems that are part on-premises and part public cloud — is simply a path to the cloud, not a destination, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels and told the 3,000 attendees at the AWS (Amazon Web Services) Summit in London yesterday.
“We have built a whole set of services that allow you to run seamlessly together [services] on-premise [and] in the cloud,” Vogels said.
“However, you have to realise that in our eyes hybrid IT is not the endpoint … There will be less and less data centres over time. Hybrid IT is the path to more cloud usage. Many more of your applications and services will move over into AWS.”
It often makes sense to extend into the cloud for scalability, sometimes called “cloudbursting”, or for resilience.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon CTO destealths to throw light on AWS data centre design
All-black outfit to explain it ain’t just about the white boxen
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/16/aws_data_centre_architecture_amazon_cto_werner_vogels/
Ask Amazon about its AWS data centres and you’ll get get this response: Amazon doesn’t talk about its data centres. Until its chief technology officer pitches in, that is.
AWS is becoming to many what Windows once was: a platform for doing business. It has started as something that let enterprises free themselves from the yoke of owning their own servers. Now it’s letting them deliver new services.
Another important group of customers are internet pure plays who, again, don’t need to set up and run their own servers and infrastructure. These include everything from fundraising efforts such as Just Giving, a service for individuals and groups to raise funds online, to Omnifore – music streaming infrastructure employed by SiriusXM and Sony Music Unlimited.
Just Giving and Omnifore sit between their customers and the raw AWS infrastructure that for the non-techie is still difficult to knit together. What they rely on are hundreds of thousands of servers and network switches that Amazon has custom designed and built, working with Intel and others. Servers are grouped into, yes, data centres, which comprise Amazon’s Availability Zones, which themslves in turn make up regions – there’s 10 regions and 28 zones.
Each region is comprised of two or more Availability Zones and each zone has at least one data centre. No one data centre serves two Availability Zones, while some Zones are served by up to six data centres. Data centres must also be on different power grids, so no one power outage can take down a Zone.
Availability Zones are AWS’s way to circumvent the problems of back-up and latency that traditionally dog wide-area computing. Traditionally, a company in, say, New York might have disaster back-up in New Jersey, with data also replicated across the US in Los Angeles.
However, according to Vogels: “This old replication was deemed not fit for scale. One transaction is 1-2 milliseconds and replicating that will cost you 100 milliseconds. Then if you have to do fail over from New York to LA it’s a nightmare – failing back is even worse. Integrating a failed system into a live system is a nightmare.”
To solve latency, Amazon built Availability Zones on groups of tightly coupled data centres. Each data centre in a Zone is less than 25 microseconds away from its sibling and packs 102Tbps of networking.
As for those data centres, each is capped at 80,000 servers – determined to be the upper optimum limit – but contains at least 50,000. Servers are built by Amazon, working with Intel and other manufacturers. These aren’t cheap-o boxen, according to Vogels.
“Don’t think these are white-box servers,”
Amazon has also stripped out unwanted features that come with standard, off-the-shelf servers. Gone are audio chips and power transformers
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ravello unravels mystery of ESXi on AWS, Google
Emulating CPU virtualisation extensions in the cloud for home or training lab fun
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/17/ravello_unravels_mystery_of_esxi_on_aws_google/
Ravello Systems, a purveyor of cloud hypervisors, has created a way to run VMware’s ESXi in clouds from Amazon Web Services or Google.
Does that sound nutty given that VMware itself and plenty of other cloud/managed services providers will happily give you a Virtzilla environment? Yes and no. Yes, because it seems like rather a hassle. No because vCloud Air and VMware cloud partners aren’t really set up to do servers-by-the-hour.
Ravello’s therefore figured out how to nest ESXi inside its own HVX cloud hypervisor, complete with emulation of Intel VT and AMD-V virtualisation extensions, so that ESXi virtual machines can then be run in the AWS or Google cloud.
The company’s given this offering the name “Inception”
Tomi Engdahl says:
30 per cent of servers, storage and switches now sold to clouds
US$16.5 billion spent on public cloud alone in 2014 says IDC
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/20/30_per_cent_of_servers_storage_and_switches_now_sell_to_clouds/
Three in ten servers, storage arrays and ethernet switches are now being sold to clouds, either private or public, says abacus-wielder IDC.
The company’s Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker for 2014′s fourth quarter found that “total cloud IT infrastructure spending grew by 14.4% year over year to $8.0 billion”, accounting for 30 per cent of all IT infrastructure spend. That’s up from
Across the entire year, the market-watcher reckons “cloud IT infrastructure spending totaled $26.4 billion, up 18.7% year over year from $22.3 billion; private cloud spending was just under $10.0 billion, up 20.7% year over year, while public cloud spending was $16.5 billion, up 17.5% year over year.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Optus fires up Azure clone for Australia
Cloud strategy coming real soon now says telco
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/20/optus_fires_up_azure_clone_for_australia/
Australia’s second-largest telco, Optus, has hopped aboard Microsoft’s cloudwagon by flicking the switch on its own Azure service.
The Optus Managed Cloud has been given the Azure Pack treatment, meaning Optus is now a member of the Microsoft Cloud OS Network of providers that can offer cloud based on Microsoft’s platform.
Membership of that club means one’s cloud can operate as either a standalone Azure clone or link with Microsoft’s own cloudy kit. Or both.
However a network member does it, the idea is that a local company like Optus can provide personal care and attention while also offering a platform that is extensible.
Optus acquired its Azure-hued capabilities along with Ensyst, an outfit it slurped late in 2014.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NTT adds two bit barns to gathering global cloud
Embiggens RagingWire and plans new build in Mumbai
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/20/ntt_adds_two_dcs_to_gathering_global_cloud/
NTT is continuing to expand its global cloud footprint, last week announcing plans for major new data centres in America and India.
In Sacramento, according to Data Center Knowledge, subsidiary RagingWire is the expansion vehicle, with a third campus that added 180,000 square feet (with 14 MW of power capacity) to its existing half-million square feet.
The power capacity of the complex now totals 52.7 MW.
Over in Mumbai, the company yesterday announced plans to splash US$100 million on a DC due to enter service before the end of the year.
While it’s an enterprise player both under its own name and various subsidiaries, chiefly Dimension Data, NTT told Data Centre Knowledge it still maintains a sales strategy of attracting customers with colocation and using that to build contact for cloud services and enterprise consulting.
DiData is also home to a major NTT VMware push: the OpSource cloud that NTT had a minority stake in was rolled into Dimension Data in 2012, to create its Cloud Solutions platform using VMware hypervisors.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Announces Azure Service Fabric, A New Framework For Building Highly Scalable Cloud Services
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/20/microsoft-announces-azure-service-fabric-a-new-framework-for-building-scalable-cloud-services/
Microsoft today announced Azure Service Fabric, a new Azure service that aims to make it easier for developers at startups and ISVs to create highly scalable cloud applications.
The idea is to give developers the tools necessary to build cloud apps without ever having to worry about scaling and having to rearchitect their infrastructure to keep up with growth.
To do so, Service Fabric combines microservices with the company’s expertise in orchestrating and automating them across distributed systems. Service Fabric will also offer Visual Studio and command-line tooling and application lifecycle management support.
Service Fabric sits between the different microservices that make up a modern application and the cloud the application is hosted on.
Even though many of us probably equate microservices with Docker containers, this first version of Service Fabric will focus on Microsoft’s own technologies and Java applications. Microsoft plans to launch support for Docker and its own Windows Server Containers with the next version of Windows Server and it will then also support on-premise support for Service Fabric running on Windows Server. Linux support is also on the roadmap and Microsoft plans to give developers who currently use its other cloud services guidance for moving to Service Fabric if they want to do so.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Exclusive: BlackBerry acquires Israel’s WatchDox, to open R&D center in Israel
http://www.geektime.com/2015/04/21/exclusive-blackberry-acquires-israels-watchdox-to-open-rd-center-in-israel/
According to Geektime sources, BlackBerry has acquired Israeli WatchDox for an estimated $150 million. Both companies provide secure solutions that are favored by government leaders and Hollywood moguls
WatchDox is a fast-growing startup in the $10 billion security market, reportedly taking business away from the likes of EMC.
WatchDox is available as SaaS, a virtual appliance or a hybrid. Employees or business partners can transfer files from their personal mobile devices to company computers and vice versa. The enterprise can also track and audit who accessed the file and allow creators to wipe files from any device, even after they have left the network.
It’s like Dropbox with an extra layer of watchfulness. Cloud applications like Google Drive can also be integrated with WatchDox.
WatchDox has gained traction with governments and banks, enterprises that need an extra level of security in the cloud. The company reportedly has close to $10 million in annual revenue. It claims that its customers include “over 150 of the Fortune 1000, including the largest civilian federal agencies, 6 of the top 12 private equity firms and most of the 6 major Hollywood studios.”
Favored by Hollywood
For a movie producer, there is no worse fate than someone leaking a movie script or plot before a movie gets into theaters. Studios rely on hype and anticipation to get people to shell out close to $10 for a movie ticket. It’s not a hypothetical threat. That’s what happened to Sony Pictures last year, when more than 50 movie scripts were leaked.
As a result, Hollywood has become one of WatchDox’s major clients, and the company heavily markets itself to the industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Whoops! AVG data centre KO’d by ‘unplanned’ outage
Anti-spam software hit, firm says all will be well again ‘soon’
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/09/avg_data_centre_outage/
Security biz AVG has been hit by an outage at its US data centre, possibly affecting its customers’ email security services across all regions.
The US data centre hosting the AVG Business CloudCare Email Security Service was the subject of an unplanned maintenance outage this morning, the company confirmed in a statement.
“[The] anti-spam portion of the AVG Business CloudCare service could have been disrupted as a result, possibly affecting email security services customers in all regions,” said a spokesman.
The company has 197 million active users and 101 million mobile users.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon to Offer Window Into Web Services Business
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/amazon-wants-to-be-corporate-americas-data-center-1429748256-lMyQjAxMTE1MTI1MjYyNzIwWj
When Amazon.com Inc. reports its quarterly earnings Thursday, it will, for the first time, provide financial information on an important division: Amazon Web Services.
AWS has grown over the past decade into a front-runner in the race to build a big business in cloud-computing services. It offers to replace traditional corporate computing—a complex assemblage of hardware and software housed in a company data center—with a la carte services over the Internet.
That innovation set in motion an information-technology shift that is squeezing the sales and margins of vendors of hardware, such as Dell, EMC Corp. , and Cisco Systems Inc., and of software, including Oracle Corp. and VMware Inc. Along the way, it attracted direct competition from Google Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., International Business Machines Corp. and Microsoft Corp. that, by all accounts, it is winning handily.
Companies spend more than $300 billion on servers, software and IT services each year, but growth in those markets is flat, said Richard Villars, an analyst at IDC.
The infrastructure-services market, which Amazon dominates, doubled in 2014 to more than $9 billion, and is expected to expand to $16 billion in 2016. “It’s clearly where companies are spending money to transform their business,” said Mr. Villars.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Box launches Developer Edition to power enterprise applications from third parties
http://www.geekwire.com/2015/box-launches-developer-edition-to-power-enterprise-applications-from-third-parties/
SAN FRANCISCO–Box announced a new Developer Edition of its cloud storage platform today that’s designed to offer third-party developers the ability to leverage the company’s storage tools in applications. The service will make it possible for developers to take advantage of the work that Box has done around security, compliance and other features inside their own applications.
Another key component of the service is that it allows developers to manage the users of their application inside the Box administration console without exposing that to their users – or even letting those users know that they’re using Box at all.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amazon Swings to Loss Despite Jump in Sales
E-commerce firm’s cloud computing business posts revenue of $1.57 billion
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/amazon-swings-to-loss-despite-jump-in-sales-1429819649-lMyQjAxMTA1MzI2MzMyNTMyWj
Amazon.com Inc. finally revealed financial details about its secretive cloud computing division, but it was otherwise business as usual in the first quarter for the e-commerce giant.
The Seattle company reported a loss despite rapidly rising sales, as it continued to spend heavily to fund a variety of projects such as drone delivery and streaming-video deals, as well as warehouse construction.
The big disclosure Thursday was a first-time look at the financial performance of Amazon Web Services, which was created in 2006 and provides computing power to startups and other companies such as Netflix Inc.
The division’s revenue rose 49% to $1.57 billion in the quarter, which would put it on pace to generate more than $6 billion in sales this year, although Chief Executive Jeff Bezos in Thursday’s earnings report called it a “$5 billion business.” Analyst estimates for AWS revenue have ranged between $6 billion and $9 billion.
Amazon said operating income for AWS was $265 million in the first quarter, just $20 million above the year-earlier total. That follows the company’s pattern of spending nearly all the money it takes in on its various businesses. The operating margin was about 17%.
Amazon didn’t disclose AWS’s overall profitability, nor other metrics like head count, making it difficult to draw too many conclusions about the business.
Still, it is now quantifiable that AWS is Amazon’s fastest-growing business. The division now represents 7% of Amazon’s overall revenue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rackspace in Crawley: This is a local data centre for local people
But everywhere is 127.0.0.1 for Uncle Sam
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/24/rackspace_data_centre/
Rackspace has completed its Crawley data centre in West Sussex, and claims that it is among the most power-efficient in the UK.
The new facility is 130,000 sq ft in area, and the site covers 15 acres in all. It is designed for up to 50,000 servers. The amount of power available is initially 6MW across two suites, with plans for 12MW across four suites. Its physical security includes a perimeter fence, badge readers, and fingerprint scanners.
The data centre is scheduled to open in May, took 15 months to build, and was designed by Digital Reality with Rackspace. It will be Rackspace’s 10th data centre in the world.
The Crawley warehouse is built to Open Compute Project (OCP) standards.
The facility has a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of 1.15, whereas Rackspace states that the UK average is 1.7 – the lower the better.
The data centre is connected to Rackspace’s London metro fibre ring and to the European long-haul route using DWDM (dense wavelength-division multiplexing) fibre.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google chips at Amazon’s Glacier with Cloud Storage Nearline
All your data in 3 seconds for a cent per GB per month
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/11/google_chips_at_amazons_glacier_with_cloud_storage_nearline/
Google wants to take a chunk out of Amazon’s Glacier storage business with a cloud-based archive service that can start retrieving data in three seconds.
The Google Cloud Storage Nearline service, now in beta, charges one cent per GB per month for data at rest.
“Many of you operate a tiered data storage and archival process, in which data moves from expensive online storage to offline cold storage,” said product manager Avtandil Garakanidze.
“We know the value of having access to all of your data on demand, so Nearline enables you to easily backup and store limitless amounts of data at a very low cost and access it at any time in a matter of seconds.”
The secret sauce behind the service, he explained, is that it uses the same bucket and object storage operations as the rest of Google’s cloud storage, which cuts costs and development work for the web ad giant. Data is stored in multiple locations for faster access and there are OAuth and granular access controls on transfers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Machine Learning Can Bring to IT Security
http://www.securityweek.com/what-machine-learning-can-bring-it-security
Last week, Amazon announced a new AWS service called Amazon Machine Learning, designed to “make it easy for developers of all skill levels to use machine learning (ML) technology.” The service is based on the same ML technology Amazon uses to anticipate efficiencies in supply chain management or detect fraudulent transactions, and is a counter-punch to the Microsoft Azure Machine Learning service announced last February.
Amazon’s claim is that, “The service uses powerful algorithms to create ML models by finding patterns in your existing data. Then, Amazon Machine Learning uses these models to process new data and generate predictions for your application.”
ML is something that the financial industry has utilized for decades to spot fraud. For example, many of us have had experiences when our credit card provider has contacted us to confirm the legitimacy of a recent purchase.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
AWS revenue confirms Amazon’s cloud computing dominance as Microsoft and Google give chase — With Amazon Atop the Cloud, Big Tech Rivals Are Giving Chase — Amazon unveiled the financial performance of its powerful growth engine for the first time on Thursday, and the numbers sure looked pretty …
With Amazon Atop the Cloud, Big Tech Rivals Are Giving Chase
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/technology/amazon-reports-big-profits-in-its-cloud-computing-business.html
Amazon unveiled the financial performance of its powerful growth engine for the first time on Thursday, and the numbers sure looked pretty — especially compared with big companies like Microsoft and Google that are chasing it.
While Amazon is primarily known as an online retailer, its revenue and its stock market returns for years have been energized by an entirely different kind of commerce: renting processing power to start-ups and, increasingly, established businesses.
Amazon helped popularize the field — known as cloud computing — and largely had it to itself for years, an enormous advantage in an industry where rivals usually watch one another closely.
But the other tech powerhouses have since awoken to the fact that they were nowhere in a market that could soon be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Microsoft, Amazon’s crosstown rival, is especially committed to the challenge, and is in furious pursuit.
At the moment, there is no contest: Amazon is dominant and might even be extending its lead. Its resources, however, are fewer than most of its competitors, who have tens of billions of dollars stashed away. And if there is one thing that cloud computing demands, it is heavy investment to set up enormous data centers around the globe.
Amazon said in its first-quarter earnings report that its cloud division, Amazon Web Services, had revenue of $1.57 billion during the first three months of the year. What is more unusual at a company that often reports losses, the cloud business is generating substantial profits. The company said its operating income from AWS was $265 million.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is AI the Killer App for Cancer?
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/ai-killer-app-cancer/
Remember Watson, IBM’s supercomputing Jeopardy! champ and gourmet chef? It’s growing up. Watson skipped university and took a career as a super-elite MD deploying AI software and predictive analytics for research trials at blue-chip healthcare institutions. Yet Watson still needs a whole lot of schooling before making independent decisions and in the meantime, nurses and physicians have the final say. IBM, spotting this opportunity, has said it is investing $1 billion in a new cognitive-computing business division called Watson Healthcare Cloud.
It’s no surprise that a tech goliath like IBM is betting big on AI in a huge marketplace like healthcare, but innovation tends to be bottom-up—and a number of startups are looking for novel ways that AI applications can improve patient outcomes and slash costs in America’s health-industrial complex. Some are exploring AI tools to design new structures for drugs based on the mechanics of the disease; others are tapping into terabytes of health data to make specific recommendations for individual patients.
Here are a few others worth keeping our eyes on
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle, Accenture, in cloudy consulting cuddle
This is how Big Red is going to migrate you to the cloud
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/30/oracle_accenture_in_cloudy_consulting_cuddle/
Oracle and Accenture are cuddling in the cloud.
The pair have announced “The Accenture Oracle Business Group”, a joint operation that will see the consultancy cook up “solutions” based on Oracle’s cloudy applications.
There’s talk of “accelerators, prebuilt adapters and industry-specific extensions” that will help Accenture do more stuff, faster, with Oracle’s cloudy apps. “Pre-integrated enterprise-class cloud solutions and a robust service catalog to help simplify migration to the cloud and accelerate overall innovation” is also on the agenda.
The latter sounds interesting: Oracle recently said 95 per cent of its software will soon be cloudified. Big Red wouldn’t be doing that if clients didn’t want to make the move.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud markets are six companies trade
Announced the first week of the study, according to Synergy Research Group AWS public cloud services are more popular than the other four major cloud company, namely Microsoft Azure, IBM, Google and Salesforce.com total.
Synergy’s lead analyst John Dinsdale pointed out that despite the AWS leading role in space of the virtual infrastructure, market is still has space for other service providers.
Last week, AWS announced the launch of excellent performance figures for the first quarter. The first three-month net sales climbed to 1.6 billion dollars. Annual basis, sales were up 49 percent.
“AWS to develop by the end of a five billion dollar enterprise growth continues – and its pace only accelerated.”
“The cloud market is the six companies, each of which sales may grow by the end of the year more than five billion dollars. AWS, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco and Salesforce can all declare, quite rightly, its market leadership in their respective niche areas,”
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/CIO/2015-04-30/Pilvimarkkinat-ovat-kuuden-kauppa-3220879.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sean Gallagher / Ars Technica:
Microsoft’s Azure Stack will let enterprises run the cloud platform in any datacenter
Your own personal Azure: Microsoft’s new Azure Stack for private clouds
New Windows Server 2016 and Hyper-V previews to drop this week.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/04/your-own-personal-azure-microsofts-new-azure-stack-for-private-clouds/
Technology Lab / Information Technology
Your own personal Azure: Microsoft’s new Azure Stack for private clouds
New Windows Server 2016 and Hyper-V previews to drop this week.
by Sean Gallagher – May 4, 2015 6:01pm EEST
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A new WIndows Server 2016 technical preview drops this week, along with a host of new cloud tools based on Azure.
Today at Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Chicago, the company’s executives will make a set of major announcements about the company’s server, management, and cloud offerings. At the top of the list is Azure Stack, a cloud infrastructure platform that packages the capabilities of Microsoft’s public Azure cloud for use by customers in private data centers and public hosting services. Microsoft also announced Microsoft Operations Management Suite, a set of Azure-based management tools that will help companies manage public and private cloud infrastructure as well as virtual and physical Windows and Linux servers. Lastly, there’s a new preview of Windows Server 2016 and the Systems Center 2016 systems management platform. The new Server 2016 preview includes the first release of Nano Server, a minimal Windows Server environment designed for “headless” cloud and virtual server applications that greatly reduces the server operating system footprint.