Forrester has announced Microsoft Azure and AWS offer customers the best PaaS experiences in its latest Wave Report.

The company pitted the world’s 11 leading PaaS vendors, including Alibaba, Amazon Web Services (AWS), CenturyLink, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Pivotal Software, Red Hat, Salesforce and SAP against each other across a range of different factors, with Microsoft and AWS’ platforms offering the best user experience across the board.

Microsoft was the overall winner, with the analyst firm praising its range of services such as database tools (referring to the Azure Cosmos DB) and integrations, with lots of support for developers via preconfigured resources that help businesses get up and running quickly.

“Overall operational tools and features are strong; Microsoft also operates a leading data-center network and offers Azure Stack for on-premises deployment,” the firm noted. “Microsoft offers a range of AI services on Azure, but only Azure ML is distinctive.”

However, there are some drawbacks to Microsoft’s platform, such as natural language processing, limitations of its function as a service (FaaS) and releasing features without the proper documentation. In these areas, AWS ranked better, putting its suite of PaaS services in second place. 

AWS also generates three times as much revenue as Microsoft’s cloud platform and offers much more to the developer community, with more preconfigured services and service bundles putting it hot on Microsoft’s tail. 

Google came in at third place, helping developers build apps quickly with its “zero-configuration infrastructure” and backing of open-source platforms such as Kubernetes and TensorFlow. it also offers a range of fully managed services, which puts it only slightly behind Microsoft and AWS.

Oracle, IBM and Salesforce were all noted as strong performers, while SAP, Alibaba, Red Hat and Pivotal were ranked as contenders. CenturyLink came in at the bottom of the leaderboard as a challenger.

Gartner predicts the top 10 cloud providers will account for 70% of IaaS revenues in the next three years, with the likes of AWS, Microsoft, Google and Rackspace dominating the leaderboard more than ever.

These top 10 firms took 50% of the market in 2017, according to Gartner’s Forecast Analysis: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 4Q17 Update, and Gartner suggested that the smaller players stand little chance against the big boys, with the larger firms in danger of getting “unchecked influence” over users as a result.

“The increasing dominance of the hyperscale IaaS providers creates both enormous opportunities and challenges for end users and other market participants,” said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner.

“While it enables efficiencies and cost benefits, organizations need to be cautious about IaaS providers potentially gaining unchecked influence over customers and the market,” Nag explained.

He added that organisations will demand more from IaaS providers, particularly around the ease with which they can switch between multiple clouds, rather than focusing on one supplier. They will look to form alliances with the vendors that allow for multicloud agreements, rather than those that penalise users that have more than one supplier.

As more businesses realise the benefits of the cloud, they are becoming more demanding across the board, Nag added. This has already become apparent in the SaaS market, which is expected to grow revenues by 22% this year to $73.6 billion – the largest cloud segment, where firms want tools that specifically align to ther business objectives, rather than being a one-size-fits-all offering.

“In many areas, SaaS has become the preferred delivery model,” said Nag. “Now SaaS users are increasingly demanding more purpose-built offerings engineered to deliver specific business outcomes.”

Elsewhere IaaS is expected to grow by a third to hit $40.8 billion in revenue in 2018, and PaaS to reach $15 billion.

In the PaaS sector, database platform as a service (dbPaaS) is the fastest growing sector, with hyperscale cloud providers snapping up the opportunity to diversify their services.

“Although these large vendors have different strengths, and customers generally feel comfortable that they will be able to meet their current and future needs, other dbPaaS offerings may be good choices for organizations looking to avoid lock-in,” Nag added.

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HPE has announced the acquisition of cloud consulting and migration firm RedPixie, which it will absorb into its existing advisory and professional services business, which falls within the HPE Pointnext services division.

The purchase means HPE will be able to offer its customers a greater range of cloud consulting, application development and migration services for its hybrid, private, managed, and public cloud customer, helping them transition to the cloud.

“At HPE Pointnext, we always begin by understanding our customers’ digital transformation ambitions and organizing ourselves around their desired outcomes,” Ana Pinczuk, HPE Pointnext’s global leader said in a blog post.

“With this acquisition, we will continue to expand our comprehensive hybrid IT portfolio and will be even better positioned to help our customers build new digital experiences and drive better business outcomes now and into the future.”

HPE has already bought Cloud Technology Partners to service the customers using AWS, while this newest acquisition will ensure it has the Microsoft Azure base covered, with Microsoft’s cloud RedPixie’s main business. Although it’s yet to announce a third acquisition to cover the Google slice, it seems pretty likely the company is on the lookout for someone to service those customers.

“Some workloads are best suited to the public cloud, some should live in a private cloud environment and others need to stay in traditional on-premises infrastructure,” Pinczuk said. “Finding the right mix will enable businesses to analyze data quickly, efficiently manage workloads and ultimately accelerate business outcomes by driving new business models, creating new customer and employee experiences, and improving operational performance.”

HPE scrapped its own public cloud service a few years ago, so it makes sense to ensure it can keep those using alternative clouds happy. Neither company has revealed what will happen to RedPixie’s employees or its customers, although it’s likely the latter will also be absorbed into HPE’s business.

Dell’s Pivotal offshoot has launched its IPO, with an anticipated share value of up to $592 million (£420 million) if its 37 million Class A shares sell for the estimated $14 (£10) to $16 (£11) per share. It will also free up 5.6 million more shares for its underwriters to buy if it takes their fancy.

The company will trade under the ticker symbol “PVTL” with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup leading the sales. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse, RBC Capital Markets, UBS Investment Bank and Wells Fargo Securities are also involved as book-running managers.

Pivotal filed for IPO back in March and although its major motivation behind going public is to raise some desperately needed funds to stop it being sold, Dell will keep its controlling share through its other subsidiary companies such as VMware.

If Pivotal doesn’t raise the capital needed to bring it back from the edge, Dell may be forced to sell it, as the giant hopes to claw back some money from its rather large splurge on EMC two years ago. Pivotal posted a net loss of $163.5 million (£116 million) last financial year, which although is an improvement on its previous year’s losses of $232.9 million (£165 million), it’s still not as buoyant as Dell would like.

Another option for Dell is to de-merge with VMware, although the company denied that was an option back in February.

Dell and Silver Lake Partners bought the software firm back in 2013 for a cool $25 billion (£18 billion), although alongside its purchase of EMC, it left the company in $38 billion (£27 billion) up to February this year.

Google has announced it’s achieved its goal of running all of its clouds on renewable energy – a mission it set out to complete just over a year ago.

In fact, the company has generated more green energy than it needs to power its data centres and offices from renewable sources including solar and wind power.

“Over the course of 2017, across the globe, for every kilowatt hour of electricity we consumed, we purchased a kilowatt hour of renewable energy from a wind or solar farm that was built specifically for Google,” Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president of Technical Infrastructure said in a blog post. “This makes us the first public Cloud, and company of our size, to have achieved this feat.”

Hölzle went on to explain the company is taking its responsibilities even further, entering into contracts to buy a further three gigawatts of power from renewable sources.

Not only does its investment in green energy sources mean it’s making a conscious effort to reduce its carbon footprint significantly, it’s also financing the green energy economy, with current contracts contributing more than $3 billion in new capital investment around the world.

However, there’s still some way to go until Google is 100% run on renewable energy sources.

Although Hölzle explained the company adds a kilowatt hour of energy to the grid for every hour it spends, that may not be used to directly power its own data centres or offices, because the projects it supports may be in different geographical areas to its facilities, or the power generated at a different time.

“What’s important to us is that we are adding new clean energy sources to the electrical system, and that we’re buying that renewable energy in the same amount as what we’re consuming, globally and on an annual basis,” he said.

The company explained it will continue to invest in new energy sources as demand for its products grow. It will also stay on the lookout for new opportunities to help markets where it’s not currently operating renewable energy sources.

“This program has always been a first step for us, but it is an important milestone in our race to a carbon-free future,” Hölzle finished. “We do want to get to a point where renewables and other carbon-free energy sources actually power our operations every hour of every day. It will take a combination of technology, policy and new deal structures to get there, but we’re excited for the challenge. We can’t wait to get back to work.”

Image: Google’s Eemshaven data centre, The Netherlands, courtesy of Google

Nexenta is extending its open source-driven software-defined storage (OpenSDS) portfolio with NextentaCloud, a range of cloud-connected storage for businesses wanting to store their data off-premises.

The first product launching in the portfolio will be Nexenta’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) implementation, available from AWS Marketplace. NexentaCloud for AWS allows businesses to take advantage of AWS’s public cloud service to store their applications securely in the cloud.

It supports snapshots, cloning, thin provisioning and data compression, with preconfigured AWS instances, helping businesses make use of powerful business continuity and self-service test/development environments, without the laborious set-up process.

“By further extending our enterprise OpenSDS technology to the cloud, NexentaCloud for AWS lets organisations, especially those who have historically utilised on-premises NAS and SAN server platforms, continue their journey to a hybrid cloud environment,” said Tarkan Maner, chairman and CEO at Nexenta.

“NexentaCloud is the next step in our vision to disrupt the status quo. It enables customers to expand their data storage assets from on-premises to the cloud, and deliver improved manageability, reliability, and scalability with predictive intelligence.”

With NexentaCloud’s analytics, businesses can keep on top of their data centre and cloud environments, the company claimed, making intelligent decisions based on usage.

Nexenta raised $20 million of funding at the tail-end of last year to boost its cloud offerings, and it seems as though this latest product is the first innovation that injection of cash has helped produce. The next products expected to materialise as part of this cloud drive are NexentaStor CloudNAS and NexentaFusion CloudManagement.

Oracle is taking AWS head-on, with its newly launched Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud, which uses machine learning to provide self-managed security for the cloud.

The smart service can secure itself against threats and implement patches autonomously to ensure data stays as secure as it possibly can be.

Not only does the technology mean databases can be ultra-secure, but it also significantly cuts down the time it takes to set up the data warehouse. Admins don’t have to manually manage workloads, even when they change, nor do they need to lift a finger when storage volumes are adjusted.

Migration to the cloud is made simple too, with full compatibility between on-premise and cloud databases.

“This technology changes everything,” said Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder. “The Oracle Autonomous Database is based on technology as revolutionary as the Internet. It patches, tunes, and updates itself. Amazon’s databases cost more and do less.”

Oracle’s Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud spins up a secure data warehouse in seconds, automatically setting up backup, encryption and high availability without humans intervening.

The tech is built upon Oracle Database 18c, the company’s latest database infrastructure it introduced back in October, alongside its automated cybersecurity platform.

The company said in the announcement that it’s so confident in its Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud, it reckons its product offers the same workload as AWS, but at half the cost – a bold claim indeed.

This is the first Autonomous Database Cloud service Oracle plans to launch in its series. Coming up in the next few months will be Autonomous Database for Transaction Processing, Oracle Autonomous NoSQL Database and Autonomous Graph Database for analysing network traffic.

Last year, just after Oracle first announced it was working on self-healing databases, Ellison said if Equifax had been using his company’s self-patching database, it would not have been hacked. 143 million customer details were exposed when hackers broke into the credit firm’s database, because the company hadn’t rolled out a patch issued by the Apache Foundation.

Salesforce has announced Salesforce Integration Cloud, taking advantage of its recent acquisition of MuleSoft to surface relevant customer data and turn it into valuable insights to better target them through relevant content.

The company explained it would use MuleSoft’s technology to power its integration cloud, although Salesforce made it clear Mulesoft’s standalone Anypoint Platform would continue to develop in its own right.

Salesforce’s Integration Cloud allows marketers to build a comprehensive profile of the customer from all sources of data, all accessible from one place, making it much easier to manage interactions and touchpoints without having to bounce from app to app, platform to platform.

This means administrators can find the best ways to target customers with relevant information across sales, service, marketing and commerce. 

An integral part of Salesforce Integration Cloud is Lightning Flow, which allows developers other parts of the business to build workflows based around customer data. It’s a visual way of building processes, which makes it easier for everyone in the organisation to understand, resulting in increased productivity and less waiting time for customers.

The company will also give developers the chance to integrate Einstein into their apps, embedding Einstein Analytics and live updates, alongside third-party Quip live apps.

“Companies of every size and industry need to transform how they operate in the digital era—and that transformation starts and ends with the customer,” said Bret Taylor, president and chief product officer of Salesforce said.

“The Salesforce Platform empowers our entire Trailblazer community, regardless of skill levels, to harness the latest advancements in technology and deliver the connected customer experiences that will take their companies and careers to new heights.”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has officially announced that all of its products and services are fully GDPR-compliant, meaning any businesses looking to beef up their policies for the incoming law change are covered if they use the platform.

The company said it drafted in “security and compliance experts” to audit its inner workings as a data processor, who approved it as fully compliant. 

AWS explained the aspects that ensure it’s compliant with GDPR include the encryption of personal data, assurance that any data processed on its platform offers ongoing confidentiality, integrity, availability, and resilience and that data can be restored quickly should a physical or technical incident occur. It also said it regularly tests, assesses and evaluates its operation to ensure it complies with security.

“This announcement confirms we have completed the entirety of our GDPR service readiness audit, validating that all generally available services and features adhere to the high privacy bar and data protection standards required of data processors by the GDPR,” said VP of AWS security assurance, Chad Woolf in a blog post.

“We completed this work two months ahead of the May 25, 2018 enforcement deadline in order to give customers and APN partners an environment in which they can confidently build their own GDPR-compliant products, services, and solutions.”

Wolf said AWS is also prepped to train staff around compliance issues via a range of workshops and summits, led by its Professional Services team. The workshops are tailored to each business’s particular needs and these will be supported by presentations during the company’s European, San Francisco and Tokyo summits.

AWS will also make its compliance, data protection and security teams available to businesses via their AWS Account Manager, so if they need any further clarification AWS’s staff will be on hand to help.

Wolf also pointed to four existing services, Amazon Guard Duty, Amazon Macie, Amazon Inspector and Amazon Config Rules, that could help customers ensure their own GDPR compliance as well.

“AWS’s GDPR service readiness is only part of the story; we are continuing to work alongside our customers and the AWS Partner Network (APN) to help on their journey toward GDPR compliance,” he concluded.

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The Government Digital Service (GDS) and Crown Commercial Service have announced applications for the G-Cloud 10 framework (G10) will open in April 2018, with the expected framework agreement to start on 2 July.

The deadline for asking clarification questions will by 9 May, applications will close on 23 May and businesses will be notified whether their applications were successful from 18 June. A list of the answer to clarification questions will be published on the Digital Marketplace by 5pm on Wednesday 16 May, meaning businesses will still have a week to get their applications in after they’ve had all their questions answered.

The government originally said G-Cloud 9 would remain in place until May 2019, but the government turned around this decision at the beginning of this month, instead deciding to launch the latest framework in June. This release date has now been pushed back a month, but businesses are welcoming the move.

The government explained all G-Cloud 9 applications will be removed when G-Cloud 10 is launched, although businesses supplying their applications via G-Cloud 9 will need to re-supply their G-Cloud 9 submission, but will need to add their services again.

By bringing the application date forward by almost a year, it means new businesses will be able to put their apps and services up for use by government departments, while those already using it to flog their wares can continue listing their products.

“I’m pleased to confirm that we will re-let the G-Cloud framework, which provides opportunities to many small businesses in the digital sector,” Oliver Dowden, minister for implementation said at the beginning of the month.

“This will provide innovative online solutions to government, supporting the delivery of efficient, effective public services. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, so it’s crucial that we listen to them when shaping policy, as we have done today.”

Usually, new G-Cloud iterations are launched every six months, making this the longest period between framework releases.