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News

Gaming Giant Razer Buys Cloud Startup Nextbit

It’s an acquisition season, and the latest comes from Razer, a gaming company that has bought a cloud-based startup called Nextbit for an undisclosed amount.

Nextbit has been having a dream run since its inception. The founders had a vision to build a smartphone around the cloud, so it can allow the seamless use of apps and content. Such an idea would give you the flexibility to access anything you want, without worrying too much about the phone’s storage size or its platform. The founders believed that such a product would greatly enhance the experience of users.

To achieve their vision, they started a fundraising campaign in Kickstarter with a financial goal of $500,000. The campaign was started on 1st September 2015, and within 12 hours, they reached their goal of $500,000. They raised $1.3 million in two weeks, and this surpassed their expectations, as they had aimed to raise $500,000 only over a month. Buoyed by the success of their campaign, Nextbit got down to creating their product, that was touted as the first cloud-based smartphone and the smarter of smartphones.

Within a year, the first cloud smartphone called Robin was shipped to Kickstarter backers and general customers. This device uses cloud storage to store files that have not been used for some time, so users can enjoy more space in their phone for frequently used apps and files. Due to this innovative idea and its huge popularity, Razer acquired Nextbit for an undisclosed sum, though it is speculated that the founders got a sizeable equity in the deal.

As per the terms of the deal, Nextbit will continue with their innovation, but will be a part of a bigger company. According to a blog post by Tom Moss, one of the co-founders, published in Nextbit’s community forum, Nextbit will operate as an independent unit within Razer, and will be focused on providing unique mobile design and experience.

This deal was in the pipeline for some time, and this is why Nextbit stopped selling its Robin smartphones and their accessories. However, the company promised that it will offer warranties for another six months, and will provide software updates and security patches until February 2018.

For Razer, this acquisition is another attempt to diversify its portfolio, so it can better withstand the shocks from any single market. In fact, if you look back, this strategy is in tune with the company’s policies over the last few years. Though it began with selling mouse for PC gamers, it expanded into other areas such as keyboards and headsets, which was the most logical expansion to widen its products. Next, it acquired a company called Nabu to make a foray into wearable technology and Leviathan Mini to add portable speakers to its product portfolio.

This acquisition of Nextbit is a little different from its previous ones, as it is entering an unchartered territory, even by its own standards. It’ll be interesting to see how this acquisition plays out for the company, and also for Nextbit’s customers.

The post Gaming Giant Razer Buys Cloud Startup Nextbit appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Microsoft

Microsoft Australia Gets a New Head

Microsoft is looking to make a big impact in the Australia New Zealand (ANZ) region this year, and to this end, it has brought in Steven Worrall as the new managing director of its Australian business. In this role, Worrall has the responsibility to ensure that Microsoft meets the needs of its customers in the ANZ region, and also continue to cater to the more than 11,000 partners and independent software vendors that work on the Microsoft platform in Australia.

Though this sounds like a huge responsibility, Microsoft believes Worrall has the skills and experience to handle it. He joined Microsoft in 2014 as the Director of Enterprise and Partner Group – a division that is responsible for driving business and building a strong relationship with customers and partners. He had done remarkably well in this role, as he showed strong results and improvements in the areas of productivity solutions, cloud, and mobility platforms.

Worrall was offered this job after Pip Marlow, the long-standing director of Microsoft Australia, quit her job to take up a new role as the chief executive of strategic innovation at Suncorp. After accepting this position, Worrall told The Australian Financial Review  that he would make the most of his stint at the top, especially at a time when Microsoft is on a roll world over, fueled in part by the phenomenal success of its cloud platform, Azure. It’s other cloud-based products such as Office 365 and Dynamic 365 are also enjoying a huge popularity, and Worrall plans to extend their application further in the ANZ region.

At the same time, he also opined on the skills gap that exist in cloud technology, and promised that he would work on this area to ensure that Microsoft’s capabilities reached every customer and partner to the fullest extent possible.

Worrall could not have asked for a better time to lead Microsoft, as the company is gushing ahead in the cloud business. Last week, it’s quarterly results exceeded the expectations of investors and analysts, with a substantial chunk of revenue coming from its cloud business. Worrall is the right choice for this position, as he has the experience and skills to steer the Australian business in the right direction, and to contribute to the overall profitability in a big way.

Before joining Microsoft, Worrall worked in IBM for 22 years, and held various roles in the areas of sales, marketing, software and finance. In his last stint at IBM, he was responsible for furthering IBM’s software business in the Asia Pacific region, and more specifically, for promoting its cloud-based services.

Besides experience, Worrall also has a solid academic background as he holds an Honor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and an MBA degree in Business from Macquarie University.  In addition, he is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a board that aims to promote excellence in governance and also to provide solutions on issues faced by Australian directors.

On the personal front, Worrall lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.

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Microsoft

Cloud Drives Up Microsoft’s Profits

Cloud is undoubtedly driving the profits of big techies like AWS and Microsoft, as the recent financial results show. On Thursday, Microsoft released the results for the fourth quarter of 2016, and it shows a four percent increase in overall earnings.

It reported a net income of $5.2 billion or $0.66 a share, when compared to $5.02 billion or $0.62 a share a year ago. Overall, Microsoft’s revenue rose to $24.09 billion from $23.8 billion almost a year ago. These numbers beat the expectations of Wall Street, so Microsoft’s shares are trading at all-time highs, and it closed at $64.27 at the end of trading on Thursday, which is almost a one percent increase through the day.

Much of this rise in its profits has come from its cloud business, signaling that cloud computing is the future of Microsoft. Sales from Azure cloud computing platform increased by 93 percent from a year ago, and revenue from its “intelligent” cloud segment rose by eight percent to reach $6.9 billion.

What is surprising about this increase in revenue is that it includes the impact of LinkedIn’s acquisition, which was an astronomical $26.2 billion, making it one of Microsoft’s biggest acquisitions. The revenue from LinkedIn was also only minimal, as the deal was finalized only on December 8th, which means, it includes only a few weeks of LinkedIn’s revenue.

Much of this foray into cloud can be attributed to Satya Nadella, as he strengthened this line of business after he took over as the CEO of the company. In a way, he has reinvented a company that was struggling with a failing PC business.

For many years, Microsoft didn’t have much idea on which direction it should pursue after its Windows software hit a plateau. It tried to compete with Google in search and Apple in smartphones – both of which unfortunately misfired. Satya Nadella came to the fore during this uncertainty, and has taken the company in the right way.

He and his team found much success in moving applications like Office to the cloud, and creating business around it, so Microsoft can compete with the likes of AWS and other top players in the cloud market. In many ways, cloud computing represents one of the biggest technological shifts that Microsoft has had in years, and has proved to be a huge revenue generator for the company.

Probably the good news for Microsoft and its investors is that other aspects of its business also brought in some revenue for the company. Microsoft Office business, for example, showed strong growth as revenue rose by ten percent to $7.4 billion, though much of it came in the form of online subscriptions to Office 365. Surprisingly, its older Windows software business did well too. In fact, there was a five percent increase in revenue from Windows operating system. Also, revenue from Microsoft’s corporate customers also saw an increase of five percent.

In all, Microsoft has done well over the last quarter and it expects to have a good first quarter in 2017 too.

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Computing

Swift Transportation Benefits from Cloud

There are many case studies of companies that have benefited from the use of cloud technology, and today, we’re going to see about a transportation and logistics company that has transformed its business with cloud. Swift Transportation is the largest common carrier in the United States, and operates more than 18,000 trucks.  Founded in 1966 by Carl Moyes, this company has seen tremendous growth over the last four decades. It is a publicly listed company and is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.

Not so long ago, commercial drivers of Swift Corporation spent more time doing data-entry and other mundane tasks, than diving, and this will lowering their overall productivity and morale. The process entailed drivers to go to a customer’s site and browse through more than 60 forms to identify the right one for each kind of load. After taking out the form, the driver has to manually enter the details of the trip. This process was time-consuming and was also prone to manual data-entry errors. Sometimes, drivers have to make four to five trips a day, and this data-entry was frustrating them because they are paid to drive and not enter data.

To address this problem, Swift Transportation turned to the cloud. As a first step, it issued new Android-powered Samsung tablets to the drivers of all 18,000 trucks, and all the apps were connected to Microsoft Azure.

These mobile devices are connected the truck’s dashboard, so drivers cannot take them out and use it for external inspections. The software installed in these tablets have a more navigated workflow, so drivers can find what they want, enter pertinent information, and can get on the road within minutes. Such a streamlined process saves time, and reduces frustration for drivers as they don’t have to spend a ton of time looking for the right form and entering elaborate manual data in it.

The software was developed in partnership with a company called Blue Dot Solutions. Developers of this software sat with drivers and got a feel of what they want and the problems they face. So, the software completely caters to the needs of drivers, and is undoubtedly much faster than the manual process of entering data.

In addition, these mobile devices collect information about the truck on which they are installed. Such information can include engine performance, mileage, and other pertinent data, so it can be shared with the driver, and also can help the company to get a first-hand idea of the state of each truck. Such a data can identify maintenance problems even before they occur, and can be fixed right away. This way, downtimes and late deliveries can be avoided, not to mention the improved safety that comes with it.

On top of it, such data can help the company to get a better insight into its business operations, revenue and more, using which strategic decisions can be made to fill any existing gaps.

In all, cloud is changing the nature of operations of Swift Transportation and is streamlining the processes and making it more efficient.

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News

HPE to Buy Cloud Cruiser

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is on an acquisition streak, as it has acquired a cloud metering and billing company called Cloud Cruiser.  The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, and the acquisition is expected to be complete by the end of this year. This is the second acquisition that HPE has made in a week, with the earlier one being its acquisition of a company called SimpliVity for a whopping $650 million.

Founded in 2010, Cloud Cruiser provides analytics and software to help vendors measure the cloud services used by businesses and other IT departments. In other words, this company provides metering software to track the use of public and private cloud services. The idea behind this software is to offer an accurate picture of the scope of cloud services currently used by different companies, and their current and future need. With this information, service providers can determine the potential gap that exists between their client’s current usage and needs, and help to fill it with the right services.

This Northern California company has so far obtained a funding of around $20 million, and has an impressive list of clients that include Accenture, Microsoft, TD Bank, and Ford. HPE is in fact, Cloud Cruiser’s largest client, accounting for a major chunk of its revenue. This company’s cloud metering service is used by HPE’s Flexible Capacity arm of business, that allows customers to manage their own data centers with a pay-as-you-go model. However, the rising costs of Cloud Crusier was proving to be expensive for HPE, so it’s little surprise then that HPE is acquiring this company.

If you look closely, HPE stands to gain much in this acquisition. Firstly, HPE doesn’t have to pay money any more for the cloud metering services, and this is definitely a smart way to save money. Secondly, this acquisition fits perfectly with HPE’s Flexible Capacity business, and it can extend this service in a more effective manner for its customers. Currently, HPE offers a pay-as-you-go model, so Cloud Cruiser’s service can sure help to meter and bill more efficiently, not to mention the analytical information that can be gained from it. Thirdly, HPE is already embarking on a hybrid cloud strategy, and this is most evident with its acquisition of SimpliVity. In this sense, this acquisition is expected to give a further boost to HPE’s strategy.

On completion of this acquisition, Cloud Cruiser will become a part of HPE’s Data Center Care portfolio in its Technology Services Support division. The co-founder and CEO of Cloud Cruiser, David Zabrowski, will join HPE and will report to Scott Weller – the SVP of Technology Services Support. Coincidentally, Zabrowski served as VP and General Manager of HPE from 1997 to 2002. So, this will be a reunion of sorts for the CEO too.

Overall, this acquisition will be a good one for HPE as it can further its growth strategy as well as help it to save costs. As for Cloud Cruiser, this is a good end.

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Microsoft

What is Sage 50c?

Sage 50c is a cloud-based accounting software from Sage –  a leading provider of accounting and payroll software. Most of Sage’s products are geared towards small and medium sized businesses, as they’re the ones that need a good amount of automation within limited budgets. Likewise, Sage 50c is also programmed keeping these businesses in mind.

Sage 50c is an cloud version of Sage 50, that was earlier known as Peachtree Accounting. With this new software, users can run Sage 50 on the cloud instead of their local machines, thereby saving them time and resources. They no longer have to worry about their systems being compatible with the software, as all the specifications are handled by cloud providers.

Also, since this software is cloud-based, it can be accessed from any device and location. For example, a user can start working at home on his or her laptop, and complete it from a mobile device while commuting to work; such is the accessibility of this new software.  It gives greater flexibility to employees, especially the millennial generation, as they prefer to have a better work-life balance than the other generations.

In many ways, Sage 50c is like Office 365. Both these software are cloud versions of the parent software, and this is probably why Sage 50c comes with Office 365 Business Premium version. This integration was announced by Sage last July during its summit conference in Chicago, and it is expected to be available for small and medium businesses across different global markets this year. Sage plans to start first with its UK and Ireland market, where it will be available by the end of this month. It’s not clear why Sage chose the UK as its first market for Sage 50c, though some reports speculate that it wants to establish a market before Britain completes all formalities for exit from the European Union (EU). By spring, Sage 50c is expected to be available in the US ,Canada, Germany, and France.

This partnership between Sage and Microsoft extends the benefits of this accounting software greatly. In fact, the combination of Sage’s accounting software with Microsoft’s Excel is expected to help millions of small and medium businesses around the world to better manage their finances and payroll.

Besides the integration of Office 365, other new features in Sage include Sage Contact – a tool that syncs with Microsoft Outlook to give users instant access to the details of their contacts, so they can get all the related information within seconds.  In addition, Sage 50c comes with a feature called Mobile Invoicing that’ll help businesses to record their expenses and generate any necessary invoices remotely. They can even photograph receipts and capital expenses, and upload the same to their account, to help them better track their finances and also to reduce workload during an audit. Businesses can also choose to tie Sage 50c with their bank accounts to give them an instant view of their financial status at any time.

Sage 50c comes with some Business Intelligence reporting tools as well to give businesses an insight into their operations and performance. In all, it’s going to be an exciting year for Sage and its customers.

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Amazon AWS

MUFG, a Leading Japanese Bank Moves to the Cloud

Cloud is growing at such an enormous pace that it is hard not to embrace it, regardless of the sector in which a company operates. This is probably why we’re seeing companies across all sectors move some or all the operations to the cloud, along with the twin objective to save money and gain the benefits that come from it in the form of increased operational efficiency and higher productivity. The latest in that list is the banking industry, especially in Asia, that has always been known as a traditional industry with a conservative mindset. All that is changing now, as banking giants like the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), a well-known Japanese bank, is leading the way in cloud adoption.

MUFG announced that it is moving some of its operations to the cloud, and has chosen Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its partner for this transition.  This change is expected to save the bank a whopping 10 billion yen or $87.2 million over years, not to mention the better quality of service it can offer for its customers. Currently, Japanese banks including MUFG are well-known for their not-so-user-friendly banking systems and slow processing times, and much of this is attributed to the fact that they use legacy systems where patchworks and updates don’t work so well.

With this transition, MUFG aims to be the first bank in Japan to offer a simple, convenient and yet sophisticated banking interface that’ll make it easy for customers to do all their banking transactions. In addition, it plans to introduce many fintech products that’ll expand its customer base and boost its revenue and market share in the long run. Also, MUFG plans to move its research operations to the cloud, so it can get better insights into customer behavior, and maybe even design products that’ll fill gaps in customers’ needs. All this means, cloud is likely to fuel MUFG’s strategic expansion over the next few years.

Besides better customer interaction, MUFG is also expected to save a lot of money. Presently, all data is stored in the company’s data centers that are becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. As data grows, this bank is forced to invest in more capital expenditure and this is also proving to be expensive for the company. With this shift to AWS, all data will be hosted at AWS’ datacenters, so MUFG doesn’t have to worry about capital expenses or maintenance. This is how it is expected to save more than 10 billion yen over the next five years, without cutting back on other areas of operations. The company plans to invest this additional saving back into the business, especially in areas of strategic IT investments and tech talent, so it can further improve its operations in the long run.

Overall, this move represents a big shift in the mindset of Japanese banks as they scramble to remain competitive in today’s business environment, and at the same time, provide the most easy and user-friendly interface for its next generation of banking customers. In this sense, it’s a great start for Japanese banks.

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Computing

Olympics Official Cloud Provider – Alibaba

Alibaba has entered the world of big budget advertising, as it joins the ranks of giants like Coca-Cola and Samsung, thanks to a deal between Alibaba and the Olympics Committee, under which Alibaba is the official lead sponsor of Olympics Games until 2028.

Besides being the lead sponsor, Alibaba will also provide cloud computing and data analytics services until 2028. This is obviously a big opportunity for Alibaba as it takes on global leaders in the cloud market such as AWS, Microsoft, and Google. Currently, Alibaba’s cloud service called Aliyun is nowhere near the ranks of giants like IBM, AWS and Microsoft, but it hopes that this can change over the next decade or so.

In a way, this is a strategic move by Alibaba as it gives them the much-needed exposure on the global stage. There is no event greater than the Olympics, and being a lead sponsor, means Alibaba is going to be known across all countries that’ll participate in this event. This exposure can propel Alibaba into the limelight, and can even help to increase its revenue and profits.

Other than this benefit, it gives a huge boost for its marketing campaigns as the company can now sport the Olympics logo in all its marketing material. It’s the first Chinese company to do so, and is also the first Chinese sponsor of the 2022 Winter Olympics slated to be held in Beijing. The revenue that it’ll gain from such an exposure is likely to run into billions, and even has the potential to put the company right among the top cloud players of the world. Specifically, the benefits for the Chinese market are expected to be simply enormous, as it can create a separate Olympic channel to sell its merchandise geared towards a Chinese audience.

Over the last few months, Alibaba is plagued by counterfeit products, and it’s doing its best to weed out these violators. According to Jack Ma, the CEO of Alibaba Group, it has employed more than 2,000 people to identify those who are selling counterfeit products on its e-commerce sites, and the company hopes to remove this problem at the earliest. The International Olympic Association also understands this problem, and even lauded Alibaba’s efforts in this regard.

Despite this drawback, the Olympic Committee accepted Alibaba, and this could be partly because of a heavy sponsorship fee. At this point, the amount of money paid by Alibaba for this coveted partnership is not known. Jack Ma refused to divulge into the details, and opined that this is not just a sponsorship, but a partnership deal.

If you’re wondering how Alibaba got this idea, it simply took lead from the Chinese government’s new policies. Recently, the Chinese government called on all local companies to promote the sporting sector in a big way, and Alibaba simply took this idea to the next level.

Alibaba’s first event will begin in 2020 at Tokyo. It’ll be interesting to see how much money Alibaba will make from the deal, and if it’ll be more than what it spends by way of cloud computing infrastructure and the hundreds of millions of dollars as sponsorship fees.

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News

ProtectWise Gets Another Round of Funding

A lot of innovation is happening in the cloud, and much of it is coming from startups. Fortunately, venture capitalists understand the importance of cloud innovation and the role of startups in a cloud ecosystem, and this is why these startups get a reasonable amount of funding to continue their operations. The latest cloud startup to get a $25 million funding is ProtectWise, a cloud security company based in Denver, Colorado. Investors who participated in this round of funding include Top Tier Capital Partners, Tola Capital, Arsenal venture Partners, and a few other unnamed venture capitalists. With this round of funding, the total amount of capital raised by the company so far has touched $67 million.

This company was founded by Scott Chasin and Gene Stevens in 2013 to provide the highest possible levels of visibility on any network. With about 70 employees, this company has grown rapidly over the last three years. Its flagship product, ProtectWise Grid, records all networking activity that happens in your organization’s internal and external network, including the cloud system where your data is stored and the network through which it is accessed. This information is indexed and analyzed to identify any breaches, or even threats, so that it can be fixed at the earliest. In many ways, this product acts as the CCTV camera of your organization’s network, and it can even be rewound to see how and when a hacker entered your network.

Such information can be invaluable in today’s business network, as there is a marked increase in the number of hacking incidents. According to a report titled Global State of Information Security, and released by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, there has been a 38 percent increase in breaches during 2016 when compared to the previous year. This includes a 28 percent increase in cloud architecture and mobile device breaches. This situation is not expected to improve in 2017, according to the same report, and this means, businesses are looking for ways to protect their network in every way possible.

Given this scenario, it’s no surprise that companies like ProtectWise are getting the funding to continue their operations. Though this approach to cyber security has been tried in the past, what makes ProtectWise Grid unique is that all this protection happens in the cloud, as this is where visibility is the lowest. Typically, network recording appliances in the cloud are stored on large storage systems that takes many months to analyze. As a result, it’s hard to find breaches as they occur, and sometimes, it’s identified only after much data has been lost. To avoid such a situation, ProtectWise is based on advanced algorithms that analyze massive amounts of data within a short time, so breaches and vulnerabilities can be identified at the earliest. It breaks down complex data into small and manageable blocks, so that it’s easy to analyze.

Let’s hope this product can break many of the barriers that exist in cloud security and provide us with a clean and efficient system for protecting data.

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News

HPE Buys SimpliVity

Cloud market is booming, and every company wants to expand their presence. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is no exception, as it plans to have a larger footprint in this sector within the next few years. To this end, it has acquired a company called SimpliVity for $650 million in cash.

SimpliVity was founded in 2009, and is based in Westborough, Massachusetts. Over the last eight years of operations, this company has raised $276 million in four rounds of funding, according to Crunchbase. It specializes in the making of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) – a $2.4 billion market with a strong growth of more than 25 percent a year. HCI saves companies billions of dollars every year in technology and infrastructure costs, as it combines computing, storage, and networking into a single component. To cash in on this trend, SimpliVity created its own HCI product called OmniCube that runs on many hardware such as Lenovo, Dell, Cisco, HPE, and Huawei.

Its flagship product, OmniCube, provides a simple and scalable architecture to achieve the highest levels of performance while ensuring data protection. Users can start with a single node, and can expand it to a global network of nodes to move and protect data across different physical locations.

With HCI being such a hot market, SimpliVity had big plans for its future. In March 2015, it obtained a funding of $175 million from investors based on its valuation of $1 billion. However, those investors are taking a beating now because HPE is paying only $650 million for the company.

This brings up an important question of why SimpliVity decided on an offer that’s almost 35 percent less than the company’s worth. If you look at the IPO tech market, it’s come to a standstill since 2015. Nutanix, a competitor, took the IPO route, but was not as successful as it was expected to be. Also, experts opine that the tech IPO will not improve any time soon, and is only expected to get worse. Given this scenario, SimpliVity’s directors thought this was a good offer., and decided to take it, even if it meant the last round of investors have to lose $350 million.

As for HPE, this is a sweet deal as it can expand HPE’s existing capabilities. It is also likely to fit into HPE’s strategy of making hybrid IT simple for its customers, as more companies are looking for ways to create a secure and resilient IT infrastructure at affordable prices. With this acquisition, HPE aims to get a larger market share in the hybrid cloud platform –  platforms that run applications partly on clients’ private servers and partly on public cloud servers.

In addition, HPE’s sales is expected to get a big boost from OmniCube’s revenue, thereby making it a double treat for the company. In fact, when SimpiVity’s product and market reach is combined with HPE’s existing product line and marketshare, it can be a deadly combination. The best part is customers get to enjoy these added benefits, and HPE can hope to get more revenue, even if it was a bittersweet end for SimpliVity.

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