Monthly Archives: September 2017

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Tech New Recap, Tech News

Tech News Recap for the Week of 08/28/17

If you had a busy week and need to catch up, here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 08/28/2017!

VMworld 2017 just wrapped up and there are TONs of big announcements and releases. VMware launches AppDefense. What you need to know about VMware Cloud on AWS. The cloud security market is growing, and fast. How SD-WAN enables digital transformation and more top 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

Featured

IT Operations

[Interested in SD-WAN? Download, What to Look For When Considering an SD-WAN Solution.]

Microsoft

  • Microsoft Monday: No more forced Windows upgrades, original Xbox One discontinued, Valve partnership
  • Integrate Azure Stack into your data center

Fortinet

VMware

Nvidia

EMC

Cloud

Security

[Interested in SD-WAN? Download, What to Look For When Considering an SD-WAN Solution.]

By Jake Cryan, Digital Marketing Specialist

News

Is Training Necessary for Cloud Migration?

What’s the first thought that comes to your mind when you think of cloud migration? Cost? Infrastructure? How about training?

Well, one of the most overlooked aspects of cloud migration is training. In fact, it’s more relevant to small businesses than large enterprises because they’re the ones that operate with limited resources.

According to Maria Roat, an administrator at the U.S Small Business Administration, finding knowledgeable trainers to train workers is one of the biggest challenge faced by small businesses that want to move to the cloud. Since cloud is a relatively new technology, not many people are familiar with how it works and other aspects. In turn, this means, they need trainers.

Due to the same reason, not many people are well-versed with cloud, so they’re unable to train others. This makes it a vicious circle that’s impacting hundreds of businesses, and is sometimes, even acting as a hindrance to a smooth cloud migration.

A research shows that this lack of training is making it difficult for small companies to make the most of the benefits offered by cloud, as they don’t have the confidence for cloud migration.

To help small businesses get around this problems, the SBA is offering to train people in cloud. Ranging from training in-house and getting them familiar to certificates, the SBA has started providing free training in many cities. They even have a combination of formal and informal training programs to help employees learn through formal channels as well as from their peers. All these efforts are being taken to make cloud training more pervasive and accessible to anyone who might benefit from it.

However, the SBA’s budget is not large enough to cover every city and every individual who is interested in learning about cloud. This is why it has been encouraging universities to offer cloud as a course.

Taking cue from these efforts from SBA, some universities like the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) has started offering programs in cloud. This university has started a new Master’s program in cloud architecture and management, and so far, the response has been fairly good, according to university sources.

This program requires six six-credit courses and can be completed within two years when students do part-time. The cost is also fairly nominal, as it is priced at $16,500 for Maryland residents and a little less than $18,000 for employees of the federal government including their spouses and dependents, provided they go through the College Alliance Program.

Let’s hope more universities will soon join the bandwagon and provide more cloud courses at affordable rates, so the economy as a whole can benefit from this knowledge.

The post Is Training Necessary for Cloud Migration? appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Uncategorized

Box announces revenues up 28% year on year as company zones in on AI

Box has announced revenues up 28% year over year beating analyst expectations, with the company “well-positioned” to hit its $1 billion revenue target.

Total second quarter revenues for the cloud storage provider were at $122.9 million (£95.1m), with revenue for the six months ended July 31 at $240.1m. Billings for Q218 were at $139.5m, up 31% from this time last year.

Despite this, shares went down in the immediate aftermath of earnings being revealed, albeit having recovered somewhat at the time of publication. The company’s results showed it moved to cash flow negative $14.7m for the most recent quarter.

The company’s highlights this quarter include growing to more than 76,000 businesses as paying customers, including the Metropolitan Police and United Talent Agency, the launch of Box Drive, looking towards firms retiring legacy network file share infrastructure, as well as an expanded partnership with Microsoft focused on machine learning.

Speaking to analysts following the announcement, Box CEO Aaron Levie focused on the latter as a strategic trend for the company moving forward, citing the company’s integration with Google Cloud Vision for advanced image recognition capabilities as key to the move.

“We believe AI is the most important technology trend since the cloud, and has the potential to completely change the way that we work,” said Levie, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha. “To leverage the strength of AI in machine learning, technology providers need three key assets…you need a lot of data…you need the ability to be able to use and learn from that data…and you need frequent activity to be able to train your systems at scale.

“At Box, we are fortunate to have all three, with one of the largest corporate repositories of content in the world,” he added. “This materially separates Box from traditional on-premises content management and storage providers. In this context, our new integration with Google Vision is just the beginning.”

Box was last month also named as a leader in Gartner’s recent Magic Quadrant for content collaboration platforms, previously enterprise file sync and share (EFSS).

Uncategorized

Cloud Workloads, Simplified | @CloudExpo #API #Cloud #Automation

Since its inception, cloud computing has come a long way, yet people still possess misgivings and misunderstandings about what it can do, particularly when it comes to workloads.
The history of cloud computing, if only conceptually, stretches back further than you may imagine. The cloud genesis, so to speak, dates right back to the 1960s when J.C.R. Lickider dreamed of an ‘intergalactic computer network’. Lickider imagined a time when everyone on the planet would be interconnected and able to access both programs and data from anywhere at any time. He may never have specifically called this grand plan ‘the cloud’, but its similarities to what we now utilize daily are striking.

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