The Parallels team is pleased to announce we will be guest sponsors of the ACEs Conference, where we will present our industry-leading, cross-platform solution, Parallels® Mac Management for Microsoft® SCCM. ACEs is different from other IT conferences. Instead of just focusing on technology seminars, this platform-agnostic conference aims to help professional IT leaders expand their […]
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In the past few days, the WannaCry ransomware has attacked organizations all over the globe, in over 100 countries. It is believed to be the biggest attack of its kind ever. The malware enables the attacker to target endpoints without the users’ knowledge, which is exactly why endpoint protection is so crucial. This is causing massive issues in businesses all around the world. As of Sunday,
“More than 130,000 systems have already been compromised.” (Kessem, 2017)
Using a network monitoring tool is an ideal way to classify every PC, tablet, and smartphone on your network to determine if they are safe or not. An agentless monitoring tool gives your company the ability to see and control managed, unmanaged, and IoT devices. In addition, 99% of computers are vulnerable to exploit kits, making unmanaged computers a serious threat to your network. The number of data breaches is growing exponentially, with more advanced malware and technology making it easier for hackers to get inside.
[Download Our Webinar on 20 Critical Security Controls Every Modern Company Should Have]
This is why a powerful endpoint compliance strategy is so crucial. There are no endpoint agents required for network access control authentication, which enables seamless visibility of every device and type connecting to your network. Network Access Controls can also help you detect and take action against suspicious endpoints the instant they access the network. It can also protect you against hacked Internet of Things devices, such as the Nest Thermostat, Phillips Hub, smart microwaves, smart ovens, security cameras, and much more. With hundreds of different, unsecured IoT devices connecting to your networks, it is vital for your company to know what they are. Using an agentless technology can help you discover, separate and assess devices on your network. Check out this great in-depth article on Network World.
Interested in learning more about how to protect your company?
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By Jake Cryan, Digital Marketing Specialist
The analysts at Cloud Spectator have been assessing the best cloud vendors in Europe for price and performance, with French hosting provider OVH replacing 1&1 at the top of the rankings.
Regular readers of this publication will be aware of Cloud Spectator’s shtick. The company analyses vCPU, memory, and block storage performance, and puts it alongside pricing to give an overall verdict. As a rule, the hypervendors – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google, and IBM – often struggle.
In this analysis, with OVH given the benchmark default total of 100 out of 100, IBM SoftLayer finished dead last on 18, with AWS (23) and Azure (29) faring little better. Google, with a score of 61, was the best performing of the major vendors, although in fourth place overall, behind Rackspace.
Testing on the cloud providers – which also numbered DigitalOcean, CenturyLink and Dimension Data – took place in February and March, with more than one million data points collected. While 1&1, previously the leader in such tests, demonstrated the best combination of performance and high stability, OVH took the overall crown due to ‘strong VM performance and the most inexpensive packaged pricing found in the study for the majority of VM sizes’.
Previous research in February, which focused on the US infrastructure as a service space, warned enterprises were at risk of ‘significant’ overspend on cloud services. As with the European perspective, Google performed better than AWS, Azure and SoftLayer, but scoring only 48 with 1&1 as the leader.
“When making cloud purchase decisions, performance is a critical yet often overlooked component of the cloud, but can have a substantial impact on annual operating costs,” said Kenny Li, CEO of Cloud Spectator. “We have found no correlation between price and performance across the 10 providers included in this report.
“It is apparent that with the public cloud, you don’t always get what you pay for.”
You can read the full report here (registration required).
Snap is a popular social media network that’s caught on in a big way, especially among teenagers. It’s estimated that more young people prefer to use Snap when compared to other social media platforms.
That’s not the only distinction. It’s also one of the few social media companies that doesn’t spend tens of millions of dollars to store all content on its own servers. To get around this capital-intensive option, Snap is tapping into the infrastructure of companies that specialize in cloud. In other words, it uses the cloud for storing all its data and to gain the many advantages that come from it.
In fact, Snap’s biggest expenditure is the cost it pays to cloud companies for hosting its content.
Over the last year, Snap entered into an agreement with both Alphabet Inc and Amazon Web Services, though this platform was originally built on Google Cloud platform. The agreements signed with both these companies offers good discounts to Snap, as it has committed to spend almost $2 billion on Google cloud and an extra $1 billion with Amazon.
If you look at both these agreements, you’ll see that it’s contract with Google is fairly straightforward. It will spend $400 million per year for the next five years, amounting to a total of $2 billion. Out of these five years, Snap can defer only 15% of that $400 million for the next year. But with Amazon, it’s a little more complex. The spending will start with $50 million this year and will slowly increase to $350 million by 2021.
With this deal in place, how is Snap faring?
In 2017, Snap will spend $390 million on cloud and this includes the 15% deferred allowance from Google. Snap already spent $99 million in the first quarter for hosting. This is almost $14 million less than what it spent in the fourth-quarter of the previous year.
If you’re wondering why this fall, it all amounts down to user engagement. During the first quarter, Snap increased its daily users by eight million and each user is believed to have spent an average of 30 minutes every day. Essentially, when more users spend more time on Snap, the hosting costs go down and this is exactly how Snap was able to bring down its costs by $14 million. These numbers are only expected to improve and this means, lesser cost for more users.
In addition, Snap plans to move some of it’s tasks from Google Cloud to Amazon, in a bid to save some money. It’s agreement with Amazon is more robust and flexible than that of Google, and this explains the reason for this shift.
All this means Snap is doing really well, both on its commitments as well as in its business operations. But the big question is if this pattern is sustainable. If user growth slows or user engagement falls, then Snap is in trouble as it has committed to almost $3 billion.
In all, Snap’s deals are working great now, but let’s hope it doesn’t back later to bite it.
The post How is Snap Faring on its Cloud Agreements? appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
More than nine in 10 UK CIOs and IT decision makers polled by Trustmarque say they plan to migrate their on-premise apps to infrastructure, platform, and software as a service clouds within five years.
The study, which took the opinions of 200 CIOs and senior IT decision makers from enterprises with more than 1,000 employees, also found that public sector CIOs were more likely to move quickly compared to their private sector counterparts.
Not surprisingly, cost saving was the biggest benefit according to the respondents, cited by 61%, alongside scalability (60%), and improving their business ability to deliver projects and new requirements (51%).
Almost half (49%) said that retiring existing infrastructure was the primary driver of cloud migration, with more than half of CIOs saying the complexity of their existing infrastructure is slowing down their plans.
“CIOs and IT decision makers do clearly appreciate the benefits for their businesses from effective migration. However, many are wary of the potential pitfalls and challenges,” said James Butler, CTO of Trustmarque.
“Cloud-based models of IT delivery have a wide range of benefits that cannot be fully unlocked without transforming the architectural and IT organisation, which is never trivial,” he added. “Simple lift and shift projects are not enough to do that and may struggle to achieve a good return on investment.
“It’s vital customers put in place both the underpinning foundations for the new controls and operating models that are common across clouds, along with a holistic strategy that covers new innovation as well as the pre-existing IT estate.
“With those in place they can safely build and deliver the application roadmaps to move to the cloud.”
Trustmarque has frequently gathered CIO opinion on cloud adoption. In January, a report found that more than half (55%) of UK CIOs saw out of date capex models as the reason for slowing down their adoption of cloud services.
SYS-CON Events announced today that T-Mobile will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. As America’s Un-carrier, T-Mobile US, Inc., is redefining the way consumers and businesses buy wireless services through leading product and service innovation. The Company’s advanced nationwide 4G LTE network delivers outstanding wireless experiences to 67.4 million customers who are unwilling to compromise on quality and value.
SYS-CON Events announced today that DivvyCloud will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
DivvyCloud software enables organizations to achieve their cloud computing goals by simplifying and automating security, compliance and cost optimization of public and private cloud infrastructure. Using DivvyCloud, customers can leverage programmatic Bots to identify and remediate common cloud problems in real time. DivvyCloud was founded by seasoned technologists who understand first-hand what is necessary to succeed in today’s fast-changing, multi-cloud world.
Everywhere we turn in our industry we can find strong opinions about the direction, type and nature of cloud’s impact on computing and business. Another word that is used in every context in our industry is “hybrid.”
In his session at 20th Cloud Expo, Alvaro Gonzalez, Director of Technical, Partner and Field Marketing at Peak 10, will use a combination of a few conceptual props and some research recently commissioned by Peak 10 to offer a real-world consideration of how the various categories of cloud can be relevant to your business.
20th Cloud Expo, taking place June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world. Cloud computing is now being embraced by a majority of enterprises of all sizes. Yesterday’s debate about public vs. private has transformed into the reality of hybrid cloud: a recent survey shows that 74% of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy.
Newgen Software Inc., a leading global provider of banking software solutions today announced its participation at Texas Bankers Association’s 133rd Annual Convention at Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, San Antonio, Texas from May 10-12, 2017. Newgen will be present at booth #524 in the exhibit area to engage with bankers and showcase its smart banking solutions that can transform their customer experience and improve compliance adherence. Newgen’s unified configurable solutions seamlessly integrate with core banking systems and other applications for processing all loan types including commercial and retail loans, commercial and institutional loans (C&I), commercial real estate loans (CRE) and small business administration (SBA) loan. The solutions also cater to online account opening and trade finance requirements.