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Google

Google Cloud’s impact on Indian businesses

India continues to be one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and a substantial part of it is driven by the IT industry. While India is known as the software capital of the world, what is relatively unknown is the demand it is fueling for cloud services. In fact, the public cloud services market is expected to grow by 38 percent in 2017, amounting to a total of $1.81 billion this year. In 2016, it was only $1.32 billion. By 2020, these numbers are expected to reach $4.1 billion.

These numbers show the rapid strides that India is making in the cloud industry. So, it’s little wonder that all major cloud services companies are making a beeline to this country.

Google Cloud is one of the early entrants into the Indian market and it is continuing to expand its presence here. Already, it has helped many companies to make the transition to cloud services. A case in point is Hike Messenger. This company was India’s own version of the popular Whatsapp messaging service. It is estimated that there are about 100 million registered users for this app and more than one billion messages are exchanged every day. Recently, this company has expanded its services and is offering new ones like Hike Wallet and Hike News.

This company runs on the Google Cloud Platform. In a Google summit held in India, the Vice-President of Engineering and Technology at Hike Messenger, Vishvanath Ramarao, said that there is a 30 percent increase in speed after Hike migrated to the Google Cloud Platform. He further opined that Google Cloud gives Hike the flexibility to scale with efficiency, thereby reducing their time  to market.

Besides Hike, it looks like other Indian companies have also gained immensely by using Google Cloud. Some examples include Ashok Leyland, Delhivery.com, Royal Enfield, Tata Sky, Walnut and more. Such high adoption rates has helped Google to register almost a 3X growth over the last 12 months.

Currently though Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the leader in the Indian cloud market, followed by Microsoft Azure. Google stands third in terms of both market share and revenue.

To take on competition from these two players and also to get a larger slice of the prospective Indian cloud market, Google is taking many proactive steps. One of the important measures is to setup a cloud region in the Indian city of Mumbai by the end of this year.  This way, it’s customers can enjoy low latency and fast speeds. Both AWS and Azure have local datacenters already, so Google is a little late here.

Also, it’s moving actively to have a role in government and banking projects, in addition to building a diverse cloud ecosystem geared for Indian businesses.

Let’s see how much of these translate into higher revenue and market share for Google.

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Services

Social Media’s growing Influence among High Net Worth Investors

Social media is one of the biggest digital revolutions that has transformed every aspect of our life. In recent years, the influence of social media has extended to wealth management as well, with more and more High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) turning to social media for better investment decisions. A study by Cogent group shows that more than five million HNWI in the US and Canada use social media to help with their financial decisions. As a result, they are less likely to have a financial adviser when compared to non-social media users.

The big question is what drives them to use social media over traditional investment advisers.

Firstly, the traditional methods of investing do not appeal to Gen X and Gen Y investors because they are more tuned to technology than their older peers. Most of them have grown up seeing or using some form of technology such as computers, so they understand its potential and want to make the most of it.   As of now, 70 percent of Gen Y investors and 44 percent of Gen X use social media. When the millennial generation becomes affluent, the usage of social media for wealth management is only going to increase because they will be more adept in using social media.

Besides the age and mindset, the availability of information makes it easier for HNWI to make better investment decisions. Social media gives users a larger information stream that comes through many voices. This vast amount of information reduces the chances of impulse and rash decisions, which means users are more likely to evaluate their options before investing.  This is why nine out of every ten HNWI investors use social media for their research. Moreover, 70 percent of investors have changed the way they interact with an investment provider or have reallocated their investments because of something they have read on social media. These numbers go to show how a majority of HNWI trust the information on social media and are willing to manage their finances on their own.

Other than the above factors, another important reason is that the existing investment technologies used by traditional investment advisers do not appeal to many HNWI. Research shows that only 49 percent of HNWI feel comfortable with the technologies used by their advisers. This is why HNWI are two times less likely to delegate their financial research and decision making to an investment professional.

All these reasons affirm the growing influence of social media on the investment decisions of HNWI. Currently, it is estimated that 74 percent of HNWI use some form of social media and this has gone up from 52 percent in 2008. Going forward, the number of users using social media for wealth management is only going to go up due to rapid technology adoption and transfer of wealth to the millennial generation.

Above statistics show how social media has evolved into a platform for wealth management. Inspired by the success of HNWI investors, ordinary investors are also likely to embrace social media in the future for their investment decisions.

This growing use of social media presents enormous opportunities for financial service providers. It is time for these providers to change their business practices to proactively adopt social media as a part of their marketing strategy.

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Technology

Coolest Drone Videos

Drones have given us a greater understanding of the world, thanks to its capability to provide information from the remotest corners of the world where human inhabitation is impossible. In fact, drone photography has caught on in a big way, and it’s being used to capture moments from disaster zones, sporting events, concerts, nature and so much more. There are also some funny moments captured on quadcopters that is sure to bring a smile on your face.

To get a glimpse of the power of drones, we have compiled a list of the coolest drone videos for you.

Dolphin Stampede and Whales:

This jaw-dropping footage of a mega-pod of thousands of dolphins stampeding off the coast of Dana Point in California gives a rare glimpse into the life of dolphins. Also in this video, is a heartwarming close-up of a new humpback whale snuggling with its mother.

Dji Phantom flies into volcano:

This drone was sent straight into the Yasur volcano on the island of Tanna in the Pacific nation of Vanavatu. This volcano has been erupting continuously for eight centuries, so this drone brought back some spectacular images of this phenomenon to give geologists a better understanding of what’s going on here.

Angry ram takes down a drone and its owner:

In this hilarious video, a confused ram uses its horns to take down a drone hovering over it. The owner also has a close escape as he was knocked down into a bush by the raging ram.

Aerial video of tornado damage in Vilonia and West Pulaski county in Arkansas:

A tornado struck near Little Rock, Arkansas on April 27, 2014. This drone video shows the images of the disaster, including a heartbreaking footage of a home that was wiped off its foundation.  Such videos can greatly help with rehabilitation and emergency response systems.

Beijing from above:

In this drone video, Trey Ratcliff caught an aerial view of Beijing with his drone. However, he was detained by the police as drones are forbidden in the Chinese capital. He was later released and was allowed to keep the video because it gives a fresh perspective of Beijing and the everyday life here.

Drone’s eye view of Burning Man 2013:

Once a year, artists come together to create Black Rock City, a temporary city on Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The incredible creativity and energy of this event was captured by drones to give an idea of what 70,000 people can do together.

Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl:

A city called Pripyat was evacuated in 1986 due to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Almost three decades later, Danny Cook of CBS TV visited this place. The video footage he filmed using drones showed how the city had frozen in time, allowing nature to take over much of the city’s open spaces.

Koh Yao Noi:

Philip Bloom went to a Thai island called Koh Yao Noi near Phuket to showcase the beauty of this island to the rest of the world. This enchanting video is different from other drone videos as it’s shot very close to the ground to give a whole new perspective to viewers.

Drone hits groom in the head:

Drone videos like this are sure to give you a hearty laugh. During a couple’s bridal shoot, the drone hit the groom’s head and knocked them down to the ground, right when he was about to kiss his bride-to-be!

OK Go – I won’t let you down:

This rock band called OK Go used a drone camera to capture the entire dance sequence performed using umbrellas, Honda unicycles and school girls. The camera starts inside a building and zooms out into the air to provide the most entertaining dance ever. No wonder it’s one of the coolest drone videos at more than 28 million views on YouTube.

Have you come across any interesting drone videos? Do let us know by commenting below.

 

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Google

Google Cloud Acquires Bitium

Google Cloud has acquired a company called Bitium for an undisclosed sum, and this company is soon expected to become a part of the Google Cloud team.

Bitium was founded in 2012 and it provides identity and access management service for its customers. With this product, customers can give their employees a single access credential for using multiple applications like Google apps, Office 365, CRM, marketing tools, social media and more.

Also called as single sign on (SSO), this product gives customers greater security than before as IT administrators have a centralized process to control employees’ identity throughout the organization. At a time when insider activity is becoming an increasing cause of breaches, this is definitely a product that can control that.

In addition, customers need to remember only one set of username and password details to access all applications. As a result, this product from Bitium offers a high level of security and flexibility for organizations to manage their employee access and identity.

From an organization’s point of view, it’s a great way to reduce nefarious and “shadow IT” activities by its employees, as they can readily access many cloud-based applications.

These advantages are what caught Google’s attention too.

With this acquisition, Google plans to continue the good work that Bitium is doing, but all that will now happen under Google’s name. Going forward, Google plans to extend this application to its partners as well. At the same time, it plans to keep this application open for third-party providers, so that they can integrate it along with Google Cloud and G suite.

The larger reason for this acquisition is to take on competition from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. Repeatedly, research has shown that cloud security is one of the factors that deter companies from moving to the cloud, With such an identity and access management system, cloud security is greatly increased as the chances for employees to access unauthorized content is greatly reduced. Google hopes that such an increased security can enthuse more customers to opt for Google Cloud over that of AWS and Azure.

Overall, this looks like a good move for Google as it can get the much-needed edge that it’s looking for against its stronger opponents – Amazon and Microsoft.

But, how it translates will be interesting and time will best judge the impact of this acquisition on Google’s customer base and profitability.

 

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Technology

How to build a successful private cloud?

We hear so much about the public cloud industry. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google and Oracle are in the news almost every day for a new service, data center or even a new partnership or acquisition. Of late, we’ve also been hearing a lot about a hybrid cloud strategy where some data and applications are in the public cloud while the rest, mostly mission-critical data, is stored in a company’s data center. But what about private cloud? Where does it stand?

Well, to start with, private cloud is an infrastructure that offers the same benefits as that of a public cloud service, but the underlying architecture is proprietary and is designed for the use of a single company only. For example, Walmart has its own private cloud architecture and doesn’t use any of the public cloud services offered by companies like AWS and Microsoft. IN fact, it’s even urging some of its vendors to stay away from public cloud thereby triggering a war of words between Walmart and AWS.

Private cloud is more prevalent than we think. In fact, a report by Yankee Group shows that twice the number of companies prefer a private cloud than a fully managed public cloud system.

Why?

Simply because private cloud offers the best of both worlds. You get the benefits of public cloud such as scalability, uptime and reduced maintenance and at the same time, your data is more than secure than a public cloud environment. Due to these increased benefits, many companies are moving to the private cloud sphere.

If you’re one such company looking to transition to private cloud, here are some things to keep in mind while building your own private cloud.

Start with a vision

Write down the goals of your private cloud strategy as that’ll always guide you towards the right implementation. Work with different teams, understand the existing problems for your developers and IT administrators and create a set of solutions to mitigate these problems.

Create a flexible private cloud

A common problem with many private cloud architectures is the lack of flexibility. Eventually, this is what causes the cloud to fail completely. So, have a clear idea for your architecture and more importantly, make sure it is flexible enough to accommodate unknown challenges and complex failures.

Automate your infrastructure

One of the pain points of private cloud is maintenance. To avoid this, try to automate many of your routine maintenance tasks. Also, have a plan to maintain your data center, network and procurement, as these are potential bottlenecks that can slow down your overall implementation.

Test, test and test

It’s absolutely important that you build out a stable private cloud. So, test your cloud multiple times and plug in all the loopholes that comes with it. If you overlook a known bug or fail to fix something due to lack of time, then there’s a possibility for your entire system to collapse.

Overall, building a private cloud is a journey by itself that comes with pitfalls. Steer away from these pits with our suggestions.

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Amazon AWS

Why AWS chose Bahrain for its operations?

The middle-east is becoming an important destination for companies across different sectors, and the cloud industry is no exception. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that it will open its first data-center in this region by 2019. Surprisingly, AWS has not chosen the more glamorous and popular Dubai or Abu Dhabi, rather it has chosen to open three data centers in the relatively less-known country of Bahrain.

Currently, AWS is the leading cloud computing provider in the world, but competition is heating up with Microsoft and Google making ambitious plans to take the cloud battle head-on. In the light of this competitive environment, it makes sense for every company to expand its horizons to new markets, and that’s exactly what AWS is also doing.

It is planning to open up data centers in the Nordic region by 2018 followed by more infrastructure and investments in other European countries, China, Hong Kong and India.

You might wonder why the middle-east since a lot of the economies here depend solely on oil. Well, that’s changing because of the dropping oil prices. In fact, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have emerged as top tourist destinations and the governments and kingdoms of these countries are working hard to bring in more businesses for their economic development.

Traditional oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia are also looking to move beyond their oil export business and are focusing on developing other sectors of their economy. So, they’re welcoming more companies to setup shop here and this means, service providers like AWS follow suit to cater to these companies.

An interesting aspect though is the fact that AWS chose Bahrain over other popular countries to set up its operations. And that’s because Bahrain has always been a stable country with little political turmoil. The chances for it to get embroiled in controversies is also relatively less, unlike what’s happening in countries like Qatar, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The regime is business-friendly and is wooing companies to start operations here. To top it all, the cost of living in Bahrain is far less when compared to cities like Dubai that are truly becoming some of the most expensive places to live and work. As a result, the cost of labor is fairly less. Bahrain is also known for attracting talent from countries like India and Pakistan, so this is an additional incentive to start operations here.

For all these reasons AWS chose Bahrain as a key hub for its presence in the middle east and this is definitely the right move.

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Computing

What are the challenges of a hybrid cloud strategy?

When cloud first emerged as a potent technology, the reaction from organizations was mixed. Some of them jumped into the bandwagon right away while others waited until their concerns were answered, especially pertaining to security. Within a few years, AWS and Microsoft emerged as the leaders of the cloud market and their rise also shaped the industry and helped it to mature.

Today, organizations that want to embrace cloud prefer to have a hybrid cloud strategy, where they use the services of multiple vendors and also, have their own data centers. The obvious advantage of this strategy is that they can tap into the benefits of different cloud providers and leverage the power of data centers.

In fact, a research by Gartner shows that by 2020, 90 percent of organizations will adopt a hybrid cloud strategy because of the flexibility and cost-saving that comes with it.

That said, implementing a hybrid cloud strategy is anything but easy because of the huge complexities that come with it. For example, let’s say you have application A that runs on Azure, application B that runs on AWS and application C that is in your own data center. How will you control access to all these three applications? Will you use a single sign-on for easy user identity management or will you go in for a complex user management system?

The above scenario should give you a glimpse into the challenges that go with a hybrid cloud strategy. Let’s look at a few more now.

On-premise or cloud

One major challenge in hybrid cloud implementation is to decide which services should be managed on-premises and which on the cloud. This complication arises from the growing sophistication and falling prices of computing, or the CPU and RAM that power systems. Vendors like Dell and HP are providing increased capabilities, thereby giving greater value for money.

Such a scenario makes it difficult to determine if you should deploy workloads on your on-premise infrastructure or on an off-premise system that comes with a continuous consolidation of server environments.

Security concerns

Despite all the advancements made in cloud security, concerns still abound. There is a lot of skepticism about whether critical data will be safe in the cloud. Such fears lead to prohibitive costs, in many cases, especially if you have a large and complex IT infrastructure.

Planning

You could be losing thousands of dollars every month and ineffective IT systems, if you don’t plan well. You need to stay on top of the developments both in the cloud industry as well as hardware advancements in the data center industry to help you maximize the benefits of both.

Overall, a hybrid cloud strategy is being preferred over other forms of cloud implementations and rightly so because it offers many benefits. At the same time, there are also challenges that come with it. So, make sure you address and plan these challenges to truly leverage the power of hybrid systems.

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Technology

How to Identify Potential Malicious Attacks on Firewalls

Firewalls are an integral part of a network’s safety and security, and this is why they are often considered as the pillar of any cyber security program. Firewalls constantly face a barrage of attacks from different sources ranging from automated programs to experienced hackers. Though the firewall is constantly blocking unauthorized attack from unknown sources, it is nevertheless important for network managers to stay on top of their firewall performance. This helps them to identify and mitigate the effects of potential malicious attacks.

Logs Have All the Information

The first place to look for in case of an attack is the logs. Every login and activity performed on the network is recorded in the log files, therefore, look for the source of the problem in these log files. This will give more insight into the nature of attack and from this information, it is possible to know which parts of the network could be possibly compromised. Further, these log files will have information about the source of attack and this can help to identify the perpetrator as well.

Port Scanning

Hackers use port scanners to identify open ports on the firewall through which they can attack the network. In the case of potential malicious attacks, you should scan the log files for requests that came from the same IP to multiple ports. The firewall system is designed to block multiple requests from the same IP and information about these requests will be available in the log files. This will give you more insight on the source of the attack and more importantly, you can block this IP from accessing any part of your network in the future.

Understand Traffic Patterns

It is easy to identify whether the network is compromised when you know the traffic patterns. Knowing the regular bandwidth usage and the number of connections or packets transmitted per second gives a good idea about the normal traffic on the network. When these rates are much higher than normal, then it is time to examine the network for a possible security breach. To get more information about the nature and source of attack, you can go back to the log files again.

Intrusion Detection Systems

Intrusion detection systems constantly monitor the network and alert you when there is a breach. It monitors user and system activity, assesses the integrity of critical information, analyzes traffic patterns, audits the system to identify problems with configurations and its resulting vulnerabilities and provides a statistical analysis of patterns that match previous attacks.  It creates an alert immediately after it detects an attack. However, it does not block traffic even if the request is from an unauthorized source.

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Technology

Is artificial intelligence an apocalypse or just noise?

Open any tech site and you’ll have at least a dozen articles that talk about artificial intelligence. Undoubtedly, it’s the next big wave of technology that could alter the way we live, just like how Internet, social media and smartphones changed lives for us.

But this time though, it’s not just the positive thoughts and impact that’s being discussed. In fact, no piece on AI is complete without the user having to read through the negative impact of it. To top it, there are hundreds of discussions and interviews about how artificial intelligence could destroy human jobs, cause unemployment and maybe even wipe us off the planet. It’s touted as machines that can take over the human race, just like what happened in the Matrix series.

But is this reality? Will artificial intelligence really harm us so much?

Well, if you’re a pragmatist who goes by facts, the answer is a big no. Artificial intelligence is not a apocalypse that can control us or even worse, wipe us off the planet simply because it is something we’ve created and we always have the power to destroy it.

To top it, machines can never show complex emotions like empathy, decisiveness based on emotions, love, anger, stress and more. All this means, they will remain only as machines and can never replace humans as the next race to rule earth.

So, going back to our question – is artificial intelligence an apocalypse or just noise? Well, it’s definitely not an apocalypse, but it’s a lot more than just noise.

There’s some concrete and good work happening in this field and that could possibly wipe out some jobs, especially in the manufacturing and travel industry. We’ll have to view AI more as a technology like Internet, rather than one that can potentially harm us. If you look back, every major invention did bring about a shift in the nature of jobs, and AI will also be one such technology. But that’s where it ends.

We have to adapt to new jobs and a new work environment, like we’ve always done in the past. That’s it because artificial intelligence is not anywhere close to the capabilities of the human brain. In fact, John Giannandrea from Google says that AI machines are worse off than the four-year olds in terms of what they can do and understand.

But, will it get better? Yes, hopefully we’ll have AI systems that have the brains of a mature adult, minus the teenage ramblings. But by when, humans would have evolved to become more intelligent and capable to handle these machines.

To answer our question, artificial intelligence is nowhere near an apocalypse, but definitely a lot of people are generating noise around it. In reality though, the developments are concrete and happening, so it’s not just talks about intelligent systems.

So, don’t worry. Just sit back and embrace this wave as it comes.

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Microsoft

What is Azure Confidential Computing?

For years now, cloud security has been a major deterrent for many companies to join the cloud bandwagon. This is an Achilles heel for cloud service providers too, as they spend billions of dollar each year on cloud and cybersecurity. One of the aspects that could possible ease this fear and spending is encryption and other data security strategies, and Microsoft is leading the way with a new product called Azure confidential computing.

Microsoft Azure is the first cloud provider to offer a collection of security capabilities and securities under Azure confidential computing. This product’s features is expected to fill in the gaps that are present in public cloud security today.

Azure confidential computing ensures that the data that has to be processed is protected inside an enclave called Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This is an important step because if you look at past data breaches, you’ll notice that malicious intruders use administrative privileges to access data only when it is being processed. These TEEs ensure that no one can view the data or the operations that happen on it, so outside access or breach is impossible.

Microsoft goes one step further too. If it detects any change in the code, all operations are denied and the environment is instantly disabled. This mechanism is necessary to ensure that  hackers don’t use any malware or bugs to exploit the system.

All this functionality is offered to developers through the Azure confidentiality computing platform that runs on top of Intel’s Software Guard Extension (SGX) technology. With this, Azure is the first to offer SGX-capable servers in the public cloud sphere. Customers who’re enrolled in Microsoft’s Early Access program can now develop applications on this confidential computing platform.

This discussion can get you wondering about SGX. What is this and how does it help with cloud security?

Intel’s SGX is the latest technology from Intel that allows developers to protect selected code and data from disclosure or modifications. It uses different protection mechanisms to ensure that the data and code are protected even when the system that’s using it, is running. In other words, the application that’s using this selected code and data is protecting it not just from other applications running on the system, but also from the system’s own operating system, Hyper-V and even Intel’s management engine. So, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to reach this code or data.

Given these high levels of security, we can soon expect Azure confidential computing to be adopted across different organizations, particularly in the finance, healthcare, government, and artificial intelligence sectors. In oil and gas and IoT industries too, this platform can be used to protect the intellectual property of the company, regardless of which application or organization is generating and using the derived data.

In all, this is an exciting product that could pave the way for wider cloud adoption, so everyone gets to make the most of the benefits that come from cloud computing.

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