All posts by Erin M

Googles Cloud Services

In order to compete with Cloud giants such as Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft, Google has created two new cloud services, Cloud Dataflow and Cloud Pub/Sub, to handle Big Data necessities. Cloud Dataflow will perform very complex computations on large amounts of data in either batches or streaming mode. Cloud Pub/Sub may send and receive data from applications in a message form.
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Cloud Dataflow product manager Eric Schmidt and Cloud Pub/Sub product manager Rohit Khare have written in a blog post, “These fully-managed services remove the operational burden found in traditional data processing system. They enable you to build applications on a platform that can scale with the growth of your business and drive down data processing latency, all while processing your data efficiently and reliably. Every day, customers use Google Cloud Platform to execute business-critical big data processing workloads, including: financial fraud detection, genomics analysis, inventory management, click-stream analysis, A/B user interaction testing and cloud-scale ETL.”
The authors have described Cloud Dataflow as “specifically designed to remove the complexity of developing separate systems for batch and streaming data sources by providing a unified programming model.” This program was based on previous Google innovations such as MapReduce, FlumeJava, and Millwheel.
Cloud Pub/Sub “addresses a broad range of scenarios with a single API, a managed service that eliminates those tradeoffs, and remains cost-effective as you grow, with pricing as low as 5¢ per million message operations for sustained usage.”

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Azure Data Factory Launch

Microsoft has greatly improved its big data analytics sector through the release of Azure Data Factory, a cloud based data integration service. Azure Data Factory (ADF) has been designed to both automate and streamline moving data from sources into and organizations business intelligence and analytics system to change it into a form companies can utilize.
Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president of Information Management and Machine Learning at Microsoft, has stated, “With ADF, existing data processing services can be composed into data pipelines that are highly available and managed in the cloud. These data pipelines can be scheduled to ingest, prepare, transform, analyze, and publish data, and ADF will manage and orchestrate all of the complex data and processing dependencies without human intervention. Solutions can be quickly built and deployed in the cloud, connecting a growing number of on-premises and cloud data sources.”
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ADF is the connecting thread between services such as Azure HDInsight, Azure ML, and Power BI.
Sirosh also added “Using ADF, businesses can enjoy the benefits of using a fully managed cloud service without procuring hardware; reduce costs with automatic cloud resource management, efficiently move data using a globally deployed data transfer infrastructure, and easily monitor and manage complex schedule and data dependencies.”
The new service is very efficient and has been decreasing prices. Sirosh has commented, “At the same time, with the new cost efficiencies gained with the on-demand use of cloud resources, they were able to utilize 600 percent more compute hours and double their supported customer base.”

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Fortinet Announcement

Fortinet, a global leader in high-performance cybersecurity solutions, has recently announced improvements to its FortiCloud management system. In addition, it announced a new line of cloud managed wireless access points. This marks yet another investment into the secure wireless networking market. Fortinet’s “FortiAP-S series” wireless LAN (WLAN) APs among the most secure cloud managed Wi-Fi products in the world, so, companies will not need to compromise security while managing their enterprise wireless LAN from the cloud.

John Maddison, vice president of marketing at Fortinet, has stated “Fortinet’s new FortiAP-S series combines the flexibility of cloud management, the latest generation of wireless access point technology and the proven security of FortiGuard, all forming a secure wireless architecture for enterprise access networks. We can now apply mobile-specific security policies and updates such as application control and virus scanning directly to the wireless access points, giving the customer a layer of perimeter defense for BYOD devices.”
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The FortiAP-S series APs have a plethora of security features such as intrusion prevention, web filtering, rouge AP detection, antivirus security protection, granular application controls and more, all running directly on the access point. These features are backed by FortiGuard Labs’ threat intelligence. This level of hardware has been created through Fortinet’s extensive expertise.

Scott Fuhriman, vice president of sales and product development at TierPoint, a national provider of managed services, as said “We’ve worked closely with Fortinet to deliver best-in-class, business enabling wireless solutions that are tailored to meet the unique needs of each of our customers.”

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OpenStack And Kubernetes Integration

Mirantis and CoreOS have recently announced that they are going to pair up to integrate Mirantis’ OpenStack distribution with CoreOS’s Tectonic container platform. The two companies will offer companies the ability to utilize both OpenStack and Kubernetes, the Google-incubated container management tool, on a platform that offers enterprise-grade support as well as manageability. In this format, OpenStack will function as an engine that will manage virtual machines and containers with the aid of Kubernetes.
Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, has said “OpenStack is quickly becoming the preferred open source cloud platform for a range of technologies — VMs, containers, bare metal and whatever comes next. Project contributors like CoreOS, Mirantis and Google are helping the community offer enterprises a cohesive open source cloud solution powered by OpenStack.”
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Alex Polvi, CEO of CoreOS has also stated, “Now that Kubernetes is production-ready, companies using Tectonic and Mirantis OpenStack can have a Google-like infrastructure at their fingertips. Mirantis possesses a deep understanding of open source software and their commitment to the open source ecosystem around OpenStack is second to none. It was natural to work with Mirantis to help customers see the benefits of Kubernetes on OpenStack.” Tectonic can run on premise and public clouds. It offers a Container infrastructure platform that combines Kubernetes, CoreOS and Docker containers.
This shift has begun in the light of companies’ new interest in the idea of containers.

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GE Adds Infrastructure As A Service To Internet of Things

GE has recently announced the expansion of its Predix Internet of Things platform to provide Infrastructure as a Service, a market currently dominated by cloud giant Amazon Web Services, followed by Microsoft, Google, and IBM. However, GE hopes to stand out amongst the competition by offering these infrastructure services specifically to meet the needs of its industrial customers.
GE currently manufactures large machinery such as jet engines, turbines, and locomotives, all loaded with sensors. These sensors generate massive amounts of information.
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Predix was originally a Platform as a Service that allowed customers as well as third party developers to utilize the data from the sensors to build applications. With the expansion, the company will be providing infrastructure services to run those applications made.
While this greatly resembles the IBM cloud strategy, Harel Kodesh, CTO of GE Software has noted that there is a more focused set of services dedicated to the Internet of Things. He went on to explain that one of the main selling points was that the new infrastructure offering couples nicely with its software development platform. Also, the security layer has been designed specifically to meet the needs of companies running highly sensitive industrial equipment.
Another thing that sets GE apart from competitors like Amazon Web Services is that GE is able to understand how these large pieces of machinery work because it has built them. So, Predix will be able to process the amount of data the devices generate and also better predict the impact a given set of data will have on equipment based on factors such as temperature and workload.

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Zscaler raises $100m in round led by TPG

California based Zscaler, which provides security-as-a-service (SAAS), has raised $100 million dollars in Series B funding round. This was led largely by late stage investor TPG. Other investments have come from existing investors EMC, the storage company, and Lightspeed Ventures. The company has now raised well over $130 million dollars and its valuation last round was estimated to be at over a billion.
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Jay Chaudhry, CEO of Zscaler, has said in a recent announcement, “Our mission is to make the Internet safe for business by delivering an amazing security platform that protects our clients and enables the strategic adoption of cloud computing, mobile devices and the Internet of Things. The investment and partnership from TPG and the global relationships and experience they provide will enable us to accelerate investment in our technology, grow our customer base and aggressively scale our business to meet growing demand. We are excited to join an elite group of security companies valued in excess of $1 billion.”
The companies’ customer base has nearly doubled since last year. The company has an estimated 5000 customers, including Humana, NBC, ExxonMobil and the UK’s National Health Services, and protects over 13 million employees.
Nehal Raj, a partner at TPG, and now a Zscaler board member, has also said, “We see tremendous opportunity in the rapidly growing cybersecurity industry, and after spending significant time in the space, we found Zscaler to be the leading cloud-based security solution for the world’s largest and most demanding customers — a true SaaS platform like that of Salesforce or Workday. We are looking forward to partnering with Jay and his team to accelerate growth, most immediately by introducing Zscaler to the potential customers and channel partners within our global network.”

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Rackspace To Host Information Center

The Cloud Security Alliance has taken the initiative to unify cloud service providers to allow for the creation of a peer based information sharing center. This sharing center will be co-chaired by Brian Kelly, CSO at cloud firm Rackspace and the founder and CEO of anonymous cyber incident sharing platform TruStar, Dave Cullinane.
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Kelly has said,”The whole concept emerged from what we refer to as Presidential Decision Directive 63, which we started back in May of 1998. Under the Clinton administration they convened a group of people to look at the initiatives needed for the protection of the nation’s critical infrastructure. It had a number of directives, one of which being the formation of a range of information sharing and analysis centers, and a few of them formed immediately — financial services, information technology and telecommunications.”

In addition, Kelly has said that in 15 years these centers have been operable, they have been to learn and improve this new independent information sharing center. “I think, largely, they were ineffective for the initial 5-10 years as participants weren’t really providing anything and they were just there to consume information, and it was not really timely enough, nor was it actionable. From a security perspective, we need to represent a unified front. We have to work as one team. I need to be able to call my buddy at Amazon on a moment’s notice, and Google needs to be able to call me to tell me what they’ve found.”

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Skyscape Cloud Services Recruitment Plan

Skyscape Cloud Services Limited, an easy to adopt and utilize cloud service provider has begun an aggressive recruiting venture to aid the company’s delivery of cloud services in it’s UK sector. Skyscape has grown by 85 employees in the time frame of three years and this growth is expected to continue in the near future.
“This company has grown quickly in a short period of time becoming a successful enterprise that creates jobs and is focused on continually innovating, in order to surpass customer expectations,” said Simon Hansford, CEO at Skyscape Cloud Services. “We are at the start of a very exciting journey, and potential employees have the opportunity to be part of that and join a young, rapidly growing company. They will play a key role in supporting exciting fast-track projects that will support a revolution in public sector ICT and the delivery of public services online.”

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In order to accommodate the rapidly going digital transformation in the UK, Skyscape is looking for both experienced and passionate individuals to aid in the adoption of the cloud. They currently have thirty new jobs throughout the company including cloud technical leads, web developers and pre-sale cloud architects. Skyscape is also actively working to close the skills ago with the creation of a work placement program for individuals who wish to gain experience with the cloud. The program will both develop cloud skills while allowing undergraduates to gain experience in operations. In the month of July nine undergraduates have joined Skyscape, and the company is hoping the more will join in the near future.

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Alibaba Pours $1 Billion Into Its Cloud Computing Component Aliyun

Alibaba Group, a Chinese e-commerce company operating international and domestic online marketplaces, announced earlier that they plan to invest $1 billion (on top of investments already made) into its cloud-computing unit Aliyun. This investment will be used to expand Aliyun into other international markets. It currently has data centers in China, Hong Kong, and Silicon Valley.

 

Their plan is to target the markets in Europe, Singapore, Japan, and the Middle East, where they recently formed a joint venture with Dubai-based holdings company Meraas.

 

Along with the investment announcement, Aliyun also stated that they formed a new partnership with Yonyou Software, which claims to be the largest software vendor in China. This partnership will help Aliyun score more enterprise consumers in need of cloud computing, big data, digital marketing, and e-commerce solutions all throughout Asia.

 

Another component of global expansion is Aliyun’s Marketplace Alliance Program, which is designed to reach new clients in North America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East through partnerships with tech companies. Examples of such partnerships include Intel, Singtel, PCCW, LINKBYNET, and Towngas.

 

Amazon Web Services is a direct competitor of Aliyun. A backing from Alibaba allows Aliyun to experiment with different technologies that could help save them money as they deploy a new infrastructure.

 

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Aliyun is proof of Alibaba’s scope of being more than just an e-commerce company. They have powered projects like the first “cloud hospital” in China. If these ventures are successful, Alibaba and its units will hold stakes in almost every aspect of daily Chinese life.

 

Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang has said that “Aliyun has become a world-class computing service platform that is the market leader in China… This $1 billion investment is just the beginning; our hope is for Aliyun to continually empower customers and partners with new capabilities, and help companies upgrade their basic infrastructure.”

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Cloud News Daily 2015-07-28 23:19:51

Imperva Inc., dedicated to protecting business-critical data and applications in the cloud and on-premises, and Raytheon|Websense a global leader in protecting organizations from the latest cyber-attacks and data theft, have formed a strategic alliance to facilitate both safe and productive use of cloud applications for organizations of a myriad of sizes. This agreement allows Raytheon|Websense to implant the Imperva Skyfence Cloud App Catalog into its web security gateway products. In addition, it certifies joint interoperability that will make it easier for customers to both deploy and integrate the solutions.

Mike Siegel, Vice President of Product Management of Raytheon|Websense, has commented “As a cloud access security broker (CASB), Skyfence will strengthen our Triton platform by providing powerful, embedded risk intelligence to support reporting and decision-making. The Skyfence technology allows our current and future customers to leverage the existing Websense platform and better deal with cloud app adoption and security issues emerging from shadow IT.”
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It is essential that cloud computing organizations create or adopt a solution that can both periodically scan activity and mark new additions to the program. Skyfence can routinely monitor the environment of the cloud and will alert IT management to changes.

Mark Kraynak, Chief Product Officer of Imperva, has stated, ““IT cannot begin to define and enforce a cloud security strategy if they are unaware of the applications in use. With a myriad of cloud applications being adopted for workforce efficiency including file-sharing and collaboration, measuring what applications are being used and understanding their risk to the business are critical.”

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