[slides] Low-Code Application Platforms | @CloudExpo @ProgressSW #SaaS #Cloud #DevOps

You have great SaaS business app ideas. You want to turn your idea quickly into a functional and engaging proof of concept. You need to be able to modify it to meet customers’ needs, and you need to deliver a complete and secure SaaS application. How could you achieve all the above and yet avoid unforeseen IT requirements that add unnecessary cost and complexity? You also want your app to be responsive in any device at any time.
In his session at 19th Cloud Expo, Mark Allen, General Manager of the Progress Corticon and Rollbase businesses, discussed and provided a deep understanding of the low-code application platforms that address these concerns.

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[video] Innovate a Platform | @CloudExpo @ReadyTalk #IoT #WebRTC

Everyone knows that truly innovative companies learn as they go along, pushing boundaries in response to market changes and demands. What’s more of a mystery is how to balance innovation on a fresh platform built from scratch with the legacy tech stack, product suite and customers that continue to serve as the business’ foundation.
In his General Session at 19th Cloud Expo, Michael Chambliss, Head of Engineering at ReadyTalk, discussed why and how ReadyTalk diverted from healthy revenue and more than a decade of web conferencing product development to start a project that reflects shifts in customer needs, cloud, dev tools, web standards, enterprise mobility and video. He covered the upsides, downsides and learnings in terms of investment, resource allocation, talent retention and technical considerations.

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Election 2016: Time to Get Back to Work | @CloudExpo #BigData #IoT #FinTech

There was a time, in the 1990s, when Silicon Valley and Redmond thought Washington DC didn’t matter. Top executives would occasionally appear in front of Congress to inveigh mostly against one another, then quickly return home to resume making money. The notion that clueless DC regulators and legislators mattered was ridiculed when it wasn’t ignored.

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Google’s New Partner in the Cloud: Intel

Amazon is the market leader in the cloud industry, but other companies are fast catching up by introducing new products and making strategic alliances. The latest in that line is Google’s partnership with Intel. In terms of market share in the cloud industry, AWS is the clear leader with a 45 percent share. Microsoft, Google, and IBM have less than 20 percent of the market share, with Google sitting at a paltry five percent, according to a report released by Synergy.

Over the last year, Google has come up with a slew of changes to make its products more competitive, and to take on leaders like Amazon and Microsoft. It all started with the hiring of VMware’s co-founder Diane Greene last November to head the cloud business. Since then, Google has introduced many new APIs that will make it easier for developers to create applications on the Google platform, rebranded its products in a big way, and has embarked on an aggressive pricing strategy as it has slashed the cost of some products by almost a whopping 80 percent. The latest in such developments is its strategic partnership with another market leader, namely Intel.

On Thursday, Google announced that both the companies are planning to closely work with each other to help enterprises move data across cloud in a more secure way. Further, both the companies would work towards identifying areas where joint integration would pay off for its customers. Specifically, high-end cloud services would be offered soon, and both the companies would be involved in joint marketing efforts.

Through such partnerships, Google aims to reach out to those businesses who haven’t moved to the cloud yet. According to a report by 451 Research, only 41 percent of applications run on public or private cloud, while the remaining sit in data centers. Though the rate of cloud adoption is expected to rise to 60 percent by 2018, there are still a ton of companies that store data and run applications on their own premise. Google wants to tap into this market segment, and encourage more people to move to its cloud. It expects price drops, new products, and partnerships with other industry leaders to do this trick.

This partnership is, in fact, an extension of the warm relationship that has been existing between the two companies for some time now. However, this time the objective is to combine Google’s cloud capabilities with Intel’s advanced hardware in areas such as machine learning, cloud cluster management, and more. Under the terms of this partnership, Google’s cluster management technology called Kubernetes is expected to be a big beneficiary. Since Intel already plays a role in this technology, more collaborations, code optimizations, and higher levels of efficiency are expected to make it a more appealing product for enterprises.

This is not the first time Google is partnering with other companies to expand its offerings. Earlier this year, it partnered with Autodesk to make it easy for entertainment companies to render 3D images, and with another company called Okta to help businesses deploy their data on the cloud securely.

Going forward, we can expect more such moves from Google.

The post Google’s New Partner in the Cloud: Intel appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

[slides] Legacy Voice and #WebRTC | @ThingsExpo @ReadyTalk #IoT #AI #RTC #UCaaS

Fact is, enterprises have significant legacy voice infrastructure that’s costly to replace with pure IP solutions. How can we bring this analog infrastructure into our shiny new cloud applications? There are proven methods to bind both legacy voice applications and traditional PSTN audio into cloud-based applications and services at a carrier scale. Some of the most successful implementations leverage WebRTC, WebSockets, SIP and other open source technologies.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Dan Cunningham, CTO of ReadyTalk, covered real world examples of how enterprises and vendors alike can modernize infrastructure without ditching existing investments.

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IBM announces new Bluemix services for greater cloud migration and data insights

(c)iStock.com/graham melling

IBM has announced a series of new cloud data services on Bluemix, its developer-friendly platform as a service (PaaS) offering, aiming to help businesses accelerate their migration and glean better insights from their data.

There are three services in total. The snappily-titled IBM Decision Optimisation on Cloud, which is in beta, helps organisations digest a large amount of data, including predictions, business goals and transactional figures, and spit them out as decision points. IBM gives the example of a retailer in need of restocking a clothing supply; by using the new feature, the retail planner can instantly get a recommendation based on all suppliers, warehouses, and other costs.

While this feature sounds like it could be inspired by Watson, IBM Bluemix Lift, a data migration tool for the Watson Data Platform, is more concerned with protection as opposed to the data itself. It can encrypt data being transferred, at a rate of up to 225GB per hour, and can continue transferring in the event of an outage or connectivity loss. IBM dashDB for Transactions, on the other hand, is a fully managed SQL database on Bluemix.

“Cloud is the platform that enables cognitive intelligence,” said John Murphy, vice president of IBM Watson Data Platform in a statement. “We’re continuing to grow our catalogue of cloud data services on Bluemix so that we can help developers and data scientists better manage and more quickly interpret data for business innovation.”

The last major IBM product news was back in October, when the Armonk giant launched what was claimed to be the industry’s first object storage service for hybrid clouds. The product was based around the technology of Cleversafe, a company which was bought by IBM last year. Among the new customers of IBM are Bitly, for the object storage, and UK construction retailer Travis Perkins for business process management.

How to Sponsor @DevOpsSummit | #CD #ML #DevOps #Docker #Kubernetes

@DevOpsSummit at Cloud taking place June 6-8, 2017, at Javits Center, New York City, is co-located with the 20th International Cloud Expo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.
The widespread success of cloud computing is driving the DevOps revolution in enterprise IT. Now as never before, development teams must communicate and collaborate in a dynamic, 24/7/365 environment. There is no time to wait for long development cycles that produce software that is obsolete at launch. DevOps may be disruptive, but it is essential.

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Tech News Recap for the Week of 11/14/2016

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 11/14/2016.

VMware announced the general availability of vSphere 6.5. SimpliVity can save your weekend when ransomware strikes. Cloud native apps will dominate by 2020. Microsoft Azure’s Kubernetes support demonstrates growing importance of containers. DDoS attacks are growing bigger, CIO’s must step up to lead digital transformation efforts and more tops news this week you may have missed!

Remember, to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news throughout the week, follow @GreenPagesIT on Twitter.

Tech News Recap

Are you wondering if hyper-converged infrastructure is a good fit for your business? Download this on-demand webinar to learn more!

By Jake Cryan, Digital Marketing Specialist

Goldman Sachs upgrades Microsoft to ‘buy’ after Azure growth

(c)iStock.com/tumpikuja

Goldman Sachs has upgraded its rating on Microsoft from ‘neutral’ to ‘buy’ after praising the company’s Azure growth.

According to a report from StreetInsider, Goldman Sachs’ Heather Bellini raised the price target from $60 to $68 noting Azure’s continued growth; 100% or greater, year over year, in eight of the past 10 quarters.

“With a large Microsoft customer base and strong C-level relationships, we believe Azure can continue to grow revenue and improve margins over time,” Bellini wrote. “Our views are supported by channel partners as well, who have commented recently that they are seeing strong uptake of Azure amongst enterprise customers, particularly as it relates to hybrid cloud.”

The remarks ring true with industry figures; according to analysis from Synergy Research over the past several quarters, Azure continues to grow more quickly than Amazon Web Services (AWS), the market leader, but ultimately barely making a dent in AWS’ market share. The most recent figures, published at the end of October, showed AWS holds 45% of the worldwide public IaaS space, more than Microsoft, Google, and IBM put together.

Recent updates from Microsoft and AWS show greater expansion both physically and in terms of partnerships. Microsoft opened German data centre regions earlier this year, and announced in September they were being managed by a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. Later that month, AWS announced plans to launch a data centre region in Paris.

Last month, Microsoft confirmed it would be increasing its prices for customers buying its enterprise software and cloud services in British pounds. On-premise enterprise software would increase by 13% to align closer to the Euro, while “most” enterprise cloud prices would rise by almost a quarter.

According to MarketWatch, shares of Microsoft went up 1% in morning trading yesterday following the Goldman Sachs note.