Alibaba’s ambition in the cloud arena is well-known – with progress certainly being made if reports are to be believed – and to illustrate, the company outlined a variety of clients and technology opportunities at its Computing Conference in Hangzhou.

Simon Hu, president of Alibaba Cloud, took to the stage to offer a progress update about the company’s cloud push and vision.

More than one million paying customers are on Alibaba Cloud – a fact revealed during the company’s most recent financial report in August, with CEO Daniel Zhang saying at the time the milestone was ‘merely a starting point’. Hu added some meat to this bone; one third of China’s top 500 companies are on board, while 80% of customers were designated as ‘innovation companies’. “They are observing the changes brought by the Internet and brought by cloud computing,” said Hu.

The list of companies utilising Alibaba’s cloud – not just in China but pan-Asia – was particularly of interest. Philips China has moved entirely to the cloud, owning no servers or data centres of their own, and has seen IT costs drop by 15%, said Hu. Bank of Nanjing has moved from IBM and Oracle, while Moutai, a Chinese liquor distributor, is using Alibaba’s cloud technology and is particularly interested in blockchain going forward. Other companies – Air Asia, State Administration Taxation and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) – kept on coming.

The plan, alongside the company's partners (below), was to move from one million customers to 10 million.

Products were unveiled; some new, some not entirely new. In the former was the X-Dragon cloud server, which was described as a ‘mixed cloud service’, combining a physical server’s stability with the scalability of a virtual machine. “This can connect the demand with the lowest possible price and offer the best performance,” said Hu.

Another on this theme was DataV, a 3D city visualisation aimed squarely at the Internet of Things (IoT). Using Hangzhou as the example, Hu said more than 100,000 3D buildings can be managed through the visualisation. The latter category included MaxCompute – launched officially last month – as a proprietary big data processing platform which features greater machine learning capability alongside scalability and security protection.

Alongside the one million paying customer milestone, Alibaba has received recent praise from analysts. Gartner put the company in third place, behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, in public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) last month, while Fung Global Retail & Technology (FGRT), an analyst firm covering the Computing Conference, put it this way.

“We are convinced that Alibaba is at the forefront of the development of various cutting-edge technologies, such as AI and voice recognition,” the company wrote. “We are optimistic about its various initiatives in promoting innovation and empowering entrepreneurs in China.

“With its vision, we believe Alibaba will continue to play an important role in driving industries such as eCommerce, healthcare, urban planning and manufacturing in China, and the world.”

A letter to shareholders from Zhang, published yesterday, said the past year was where investors “gained appreciation for the clarity of Alibaba’s vision, mission and strategic blueprint.” Aligned to this was the cloud arm, which Zhang added was ‘still in hyper-growth mode’. “Together with a large and diverse community of developers and service providers, a new ecosystem has formed around our cloud business,” he wrote.

Photo source: www.alibabagroup.com

More than two thirds of respondents in a survey from Oracle said they see infrastructure as a service (IaaS) as ‘fundamental’ to progressive cloud strategies – up 8% in the past quarter.

The study, the second in a series, polled 1,610 IT professionals across nine countries and three continents and found a combination of new services coming to market and the growing maturity of existing cloud deployments led to the increase.

An overwhelming 94% of respondents say they had adopted IaaS – again up 8% from the previous quarter – while two in three (66%) argue businesses not investing in IaaS will find themselves struggling to keep up with those who are.

When it came to benefits, enhanced security was cited by more than half (52%) of those polled. Apart from that it was the usual routine; improved productivity (cited by 56% of respondents), greater system speed (50%) and reduced operating costs (48%) were all seen as key.

If one problem persists, it is around the dreaded skills gap. More than a quarter (28%) of companies say IT skills shortages have been one of their biggest issues in rolling out IaaS – up from 21% in the previous quarter.

Yet the takeaway is simple: adopt IaaS or you will soon fall significantly behind. “Investments in cloud infrastructure are clearly paying off for businesses and we are seeing that very strongly in the UK,” said Jason Rees, senior director of Oracle Cloud Foundation Technologies in a statement.

“The UK is a diverse and inspiring business market, comprising of businesses from innovative startups to large traditional multinationals. What they have in common is cloud computing is helping them get where they need to go faster, whether they are chasing scale, or undergoing a reinvention for the digital economy,” Rees added.

“Their ambitions are being powered by the agility cloud infrastructure offers.”

As regular readers of this publication will be aware, Oracle has made significant recent announcements as it pushes its cloudy ethos. Earlier this month chairman and CTO Larry Ellison officially unveiled the company’s autonomous database, putting a few barbs Amazon’s way in the process. “This is the most important thing we have done in a long, long time,” said Ellison. “For years and years artificial intelligence did not live up to its promise, but there is a new type of AI… the first branch of artificial intelligence that really, really works.”

You can find out more about the Oracle research here.

The keenest rivalry in cloud computing may have just taken a slightly different turn: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are collaborating on an open artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem.

The project, called Gluon, is a programming API which “allows developers of all skill levels to prototype, build, train and deploy sophisticated machine learning models for the cloud, devices at the edge and mobile apps,” in the words of a joint press release.

“The potential of machine learning can only be realised if it is accessible to all developers. Today’s reality is that building and training machine learning models requires a great deal of heavy lifting and specialised expertise,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Amazon’s AI arm in a statement.

“We created the Gluon interface so building neural networks and training models can be as easy as building an app,” Sivasubramanian added. “We look forward to our collaboration with Microsoft on continuing to evolve the Gluon interface for developers interested in making machine learning easier to use.”

“As a society we face enormous challenges which AI has the potential to solve,” wrote Eric Boyd, Microsoft CVP AI data and infrastructure in a blog post. “However, developing with AI, especially deep learning models, isn’t easy – it can be a fairly daunting and specialised practice for most data professionals.

“We believe bringing AI advances to all developers, on any platform, using any language, with an open AI ecosystem, will help ensure AI is more accessible and valuable to all,” Boyd added.

Naturally, both companies have significant stakes in AI. Amazon has made several recent efforts in attracting developers, most recently around Alexa skills and migrating chatbots.

In terms of eyebrow-raising partnerships, this is certainly up there. It is perhaps not quite as bizarre as when Salesforce and Oracle teamed up in 2013 – something of a cessation in hostilities, with the former continually gauged as a barometer for the latter’s recent financial results – but in this instance, Microsoft and AWS realise that working together is better for the common good – their customers.

General Electric (GE) has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider, according to an Amazon announcement.

In a short note, Amazon said GE ‘continues to migrate thousands of core applications to AWS’, and that many of its cloud apps on businesses such as aviation, healthcare and transportation, run on Amazon’s cloud. GE began an enterprise-wide migration in 2014 and has migrated more than 2,000 applications in that time.

GE’s focus on digital is crystal clear. As Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, pointed out in a speech last year, it is the only company still standing from the original 12 listed on the original Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896. Writing on LinkedIn last month, GE CEO and chairman John Flannery said the decision to go ‘all-in’ on digital was an easy one.

“We have fully embraced the digital industrial transformation, and we believe in its potential to change the world,” he wrote. “For our customers, digital is bringing new levels of innovation and productivity – and they are seeing real, tangible outcomes. Now, we are taking these outcomes and transferring what we have learned directly to our customers.”

GE’s commitment to cloud has similarly shone through. Alongside AWS, the behemoth had previously inked deals with Microsoft in 2015, moving 300,000 employees over to Office 365, and Box in 2014 for content sharing and collaboration.

“Adopting a cloud-first strategy with AWS is helping our IT teams get out of the business of building and running data centres and refocus our resources on innovation as we undergo one of the largest and most important transformations in GE’s history,” said Chris Drumgoole, General Electric chief technology officer and corporate vice president in a statement.

“We chose AWS as the preferred cloud provider for GE because AWS’s industry leading cloud services have allowed us to push the boundaries, think big, and deliver better outcomes for GE,” Drumgoole added.

It had been previously set up by Larry Ellison – and it did not disappoint when it finally arrived.

Yes, the keynote at OpenWorld promised a lot of heat aimed at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and duly delivered. But there was also the small matter of what is claimed as the world’s first fully autonomous database cloud, powered by Oracle Database 18c.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. Two weeks ago, Oracle’s chairman and CTO took to the stage to outline new pricing and licensing models – more of which later. Yet the autonomous database was the recurring theme, as well as focusing on what Amazon couldn’t do. “Our approach to the cloud business is to lower your costs and lower your risks by fully automating all sorts of platform services completely, with completely autonomous software that runs itself, eliminates the cost of human error, and eliminates the opportunity for human error,” said Ellison at the time.

This time, it was more of the same. “This is the most important thing we have done in a long, long time,” he told attendees. “If you eliminate human labour, you eliminate human error.” Discussing the importance of machine learning, Ellison added: “For years and years artificial intelligence did not live up to its promise, but there is a new type of AI…the first branch of artificial intelligence that really, really works.

“I don’t use the words ‘revolutionary new technology’ every year [at OpenWorld]… but this one is.”

18c aims to be self-driving, self-scaling and self-repairing, and offers a guaranteed 99.995% SLA. Here, again Ellison could not resist. “I’ve seen people claim four nines, five nines,” he said. “Read the fine print carefully. They specifically exclude unplanned downtime due to maintenance, unplanned downtime due to software bugs, unplanned downtime due to configuration change, or planned downtime for that matter due to security patches. They basically exclude all reasons you have downtime and then say we’re never down.

“This is everything – planned, unplanned downtime – you are down for less than 30 minutes a year with the autonomous database,” Ellison added.

This was emphasised by a series of benchmark demonstrations featuring various scenarios, such as Oracle’s database on Oracle’s cloud versus Amazon’s cloud. “I’m just going to run 6a and 6b because the Amazon side of the demo takes too long,” said Ellison. On the first, Oracle took 34 seconds and Amazon 255, and the bill came out at $0.04 compared with $0.23 respectively. With all this came the promise – again re-emphasised from previous gatherings – of a bill which was more than half of Amazon’s.

Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels, writing in a blog post, highlighted the 10th anniversary since the company’s Dynamo whitepaper was unveiled, which aimed to change the database market to produce a horizonally scalable, distributed database that would scale out for reads and writes. Naturally, the desire for change came about because the company was struggling on an Oracle database.

The company did not comment on the claims in Oracle’s presentation when CloudTech enquired, however Business Insider reported that an AWS representative described it as “no facts, wild claims, and lots of bluster.”

One can read only so much into benchmark tests, but Ellison’s mantra remained. “If you want high availability, if you want lower labour costs, higher performance, all that stuff, you’ve got to be willing to pay four cents, not 23,” he concluded.

“Some people like paying 23 [cents] – I just don’t know any.”

Picture credit: Oracle

Productivity, customer satisfaction and business success are the three key benefits to cloud communications, according to a new study.

Research from analyst firm IDC, which surveyed 805 mid-sized businesses and enterprises around their communications strategy, found companies who use both unified and contextual cloud communications saw a 47% improvement in speed to market for products and services, 42% improvement in customer satisfaction and loyalty, and a 34% reduction in costs.

As is often the case with research such as this, respondents were put into four buckets depending on their journey. Communications ‘powerbrokers’ are at the top of the tree and sophisticated users. This means they use text and voice messaging to automate delivery of notifications and are much more likely to say their communications are effective as a result. 96% said their frequency and timeless of comms was effective, with 100% saying it for the quality of their customer-facing interactions.

Communications ‘respecters’ have started moving to the cloud and are planning more, while ‘skeptics’ are unsure of its benefits and, at the bottom rung, communications ‘unaware’ have little knowledge about the process. For those in the ‘unaware’ category, only 15% automate text and voice messaging, while even fewer (12%) say their customer-facing communication is effective.

Is this a result of a younger, digitally native workforce aiming to drive through changes? IDC says possibly, but adds a caveat.

“Digital natives may completely disrupt an industry, but companies need to look at this as an opportunity to conduct business and engage customers in new ways,” said Mark Winther, group VP of telecom custom solutions at IDC. “Our data clearly shows that cloud communications enable businesses to quickly adapt and transform and, as a result, not only survive but actually thrive in their respective industries.”

The study was sponsored by Vonage, a cloud communications software provider. You can find an executive summary of the research here.

The latest iteration of Kubernetes has launched, with the open source company promising 1.8 will be laser focused on security and sustainability.

The launch – the third of its type this year – offers a variety of new initiatives, from greater support for role based access control (RBAC), to transport layer security (TLS), to promotion for a series of workload APIs.

“Kubernetes 1.8 represents a snapshot of many exciting enhancements and refinements underway,” a company post explained. “In addition to functional improvements, we’re increasing project-wide focus on maturing process, formalising architecture, and strengthening Kubernetes’ governance model.

“The evolution of mature processes clearly signals that sustainability is a driving concern, and helps to ensure that Kubernetes is a viable and thriving project far into the future.”

The note came from four executives; Aparna Sinha, Kubernetes group product manager, Ihor Dvoretskyi, developer advocated for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Caleb Miles, technical program manager for CoreOS, and Jaice Singer DuMars, Microsoft Kubernetes ambassador.

It’s safe to say that Kubernetes’ profile has been raised by the latter’s additions to CNCF, the San-Francisco based organisation focused on sustaining containers and microservices architectures. Microsoft signed up in July saying it was ‘another natural step’ on its open source journey, while Oracle signed up in September.

Writing for this publication back in January, Rob Greenwood, technical director at Steamhaus, said now was the time for organisations to take the plunge with Kubernetes.

“The layer of abstraction that Kubernetes provides means we now only need to talk to one technology to gain a higher level of control over everything at a lower level,” he wrote. “It also means we can take a cloud infrastructure built in one cloud environment, such as AWS, and move it into another environment, including Azure or Google Cloud.

“This really is the next generation of cloud, with lots of big name organisations already jumping on the bandwagon and embracing Kubernetes,” he added. “However, this move will not be as simple for everyone. Many companies will need to undergo a major cultural shift before this is possible.”

You can read the full blog post announcing 1.8 here.

Read more: Why Kubernetes promises much for those willing to embrace a cultural shift

Virtus Data Centres, a UK-based data centre colocation provider, has announced the launch of two new facilities to create London’s largest data centre campus.

The two buildings, known as VIRTUS LONDON5 AND LONDON6, will total 34,475 metres squared, and will aim to deliver 40 megawatts of IT load with the secured power capacity to increase to 110 MVA.

The move will ‘further strengthen’ Virtus’ claim as the largest hybrid colocation provider in the London metro area, according to the company, with the site being located 16 miles from central London, and 7 miles from Slough on the primary fibre routes.

“As we move with our customers into an increasingly digital future, we help them deliver high performing applications and content,” said Neil Cresswell, CEO of Virtus Data Centres in a statement. “We provide fast, seamless connectivity to networks and public cloud, along with the capacity for vast data storage and compute processing power – all for lower costs.

“This investment in LONDON5 and LONDON6 means we can grow with our customers and help them achieve their ambitions,” Cresswell added.

Even if the site ends up being London’s biggest, it pales in comparison to what is planned as being the largest in the world, in Norway. Last month, Kolos announced the launch of a proposed site, in the Norwegian town of Ballangen, inside the Arctic Circle, that could cover 6.46 million square feet and stretch across four storeys.

The largest data centre in operation today is in Langfang, China, at 6.3 million square feet, while a site in Tahoe Reno, Nevada, is set to be 7.2 million square feet when it becomes fully operational.

Demand for DevOps professionals continues apace, according to the latest analysis from Robert Half, with nine out of 10 CIOs in the UK seeing DevOps as a core competency for developers and infrastructure professionals in the next five years.

The study, which is based on more than 100 interviews with CIOs from companies across the UK, found that for 90% of respondents DevOps would be effective if security was built into continuous service and application delivery. 94% agreed that DevOps would need to incorporate greater security measures.

When it came to more specific routes to success, 37% of those polled said establishing IT security checks was a primary consideration when thinking about skills needed for effective DevOps implementation. 34% opted for incorporating data regulation requirements.

Respondents, when faced by the challenges of DevOps implementations, found them much of a muchness. 32% said needing strong management structures was key, as well as enhancing communications within the IT team, while 31% opted for getting the right skills within IT.

As other research has shown, if you have the right skills in this domain then you can be set up nicely. Earlier this month, a report from Puppet revealed that 66% of DevOps engineers and 69% of software engineers in the US took home pay packets of more than $100,000 per year.

“In this new age of digitalisation, DevOps is creating new opportunities for technology professionals to support the business and opening up new career paths,” said Neil Owen, director at Robert Half Technology UK. “There is a growing need for IT and technology professionals to become more business and commercially savvy.

“As the DevOps movement increases the collaboration between technology functions and the business, this is a key way for technology professionals to improve their opportunities for career progression.”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to hold all the aces in public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) ahead of Microsoft – but Alibaba is ahead of Google to take third place in the market.

That is according to the analysts at Gartner, who argue the global IaaS public cloud market grew 31% in 2016 to total $22.1 billion (£16.5bn). AWS comprises 44% of that market share, at $9.78bn, with Microsoft in second on $1.58bn, Alibaba third on $675m, Google on $500m and Rackspace at $484m.

Alibaba, not surprisingly, was the fastest growing vendor year on year at 126.5% growth, with Google (100%) and Microsoft (61.1%) next. As other research firms have noted, the competition in the market continues to grow more quickly than AWS, although the latter is hardly standing still. Gartner puts AWS’ growth at 45.9% between 2015 and 2016.

Sid Nag, research director at Gartner, argues IaaS will show the fastest growth over the next five years, ahead of platform and software as a service. “The worldwide public cloud service market growth continues, driven by digital business initiatives, data centre consolidations and application migrations to the cloud,” said Nag. “Technology strategic planners must build both relevant offerings and partner-based ecosystems to seize the opportunity.”

Compare and contrast with Synergy Research. Earlier this month the company said the public cloud market had grown 35% between the second quarters of 2015 and 2017, with the private cloud – or cloud-enabled – market growing 16%. In comparison, spending on traditional, non-cloud data centre hardware and software had dropped 18%.

When it came to cloud infrastructure services, Synergy’s research has similarities with Gartner. This time last year – Q216 – their analysis was that Amazon held more than 30% of the market but growing at 53%, with Microsoft second growing at 100%, IBM third, Google fourth – growing at 162% – and Alibaba in the chasing pack.