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News

Oracle Starts a New Accelerator Program in Israel

As the cloud market expands and more players join the bandwagon, it becomes imperative for the larger players to come up with new programs that’ll benefit them, others, and the cloud industry as a whole. Earlier, AWS announced its plan to start a training program in the UK to fill the skills gap, and today, it is Oracle’s turn to announce a new program in Israel to promote cloud innovation.

Known as the Startup Accelerator Program, this program will be run and managed by Oracle’s research and development team. Under this program, Oracle will provide six months of mentoring in technical and business areas, provide support for advanced technology needs, and give access to Oracle’s customers and partners. With such a solid backing, startup companies have a greater chance than ever before to succeed. This help can be significant considering that more than 90 percent of startups fail due to a combination of factors such as wrong product, no market need, not enough cash, poor marketing, unstable business model, disharmony among founders, legal challenges, cost issues, and more.

Though Oracle’s program does not guarantee success, it greatly improves the chances for the startup to be successful as it helps to alleviate many of the above factors. However, it will restrict this program to only five startups for every six months, as it wants to focus in helping these companies overcome their initial challenges. Obviously, if it takes on more companies, then its resources will get diluted, thereby benefiting none. This is why it’s a sensible idea to restrict it to just a handful of companies.

This is the second startup program by Oracle, with the first one launched in Bengaluru, India.  Many startups such as ExpertRec, Niyo Solutions, Tydy, and Vear have benefited from this program, and enthused by its success, Oracle has decided to extend it to Israel as well.

Under the terms of the agreement, startup companies will be given suggestions and training sessions by leading CIOs and CEOs of Oracle and its partner organizations. The startups selected for this program can choose to work out of Oracle’s office or in a space of their own. However, they may have to travel to Oracle’s office for certain mandatory meetings. These startups don’t have to necessarily use Oracle’s cloud platform, though they will be given free credits for it. In addition, training will take place only on Oracle cloud. Oracle takes no equity in the program, as their goal is to encourage entrepreneurship.

If you’re wondering what’s in it for Oracle – a lot. Firstly, it can benefit greatly with innovation. Since the cloud market is becoming a crowded space, anything that’ll stand out for customers will give an edge to the providers. When Oracle has access to startups, it can not only help them to succeed, but also have the choice to acquire them if needed. Secondly, such a move can augur well for the cloud industry as a whole, and when demand increases, Oracle may eventually benefit from increased demand.

Due to these reasons, this program creates a win-win situation for everyone involved.

The post Oracle Starts a New Accelerator Program in Israel appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Amazon AWS

How Close are we to a Green Cloud?

Climate change is one of the hottest topics of discussion today, with many people for and against this idea. Though this debate rages on, the fact is we continue to use non-renewable sources of energy like coal to power our homes, businesses, and data centers. This is not sustainable for many reasons, the primary of which are these sources of fuel will dry out one day, and its extraction process has a definite impact on the surrounding environment. To avoid the hassles that come with this form of energy, many companies are striving to switch to renewable sources of energy like the sun and wind. Cloud companies are not to be left behind in this quest to move to green energy.

Amazon Web Services, the leading provider of cloud services, has opined that one day it’ll shift completely to renewable sources of energy, but it has not been too specific on the time line. This could be partly why it’s lagging behind in adopting green energy when compared to that of its competitors. A report by Greenpeace shows that only 17 percent of energy used by AWS is clean energy, while 30 percent of its energy consumption comes from coal and another 24 percent comes from natural gas. Out of the remaining, 26 percent comes from nuclear and the remaining three comes from other sources. These numbers are surprising considering that AWS has been a vociferous supporter of green energy, and it is also expected to take the lead in this regard because it’s the most dominant player in the cloud market today.

In contrast, Apple uses renewable energy for more than 83 percent of its operations. The remaining comes from coal (five percent), natural gas (four percent), nuclear (five percent), and others (three percent). Surprisingly, other major cloud players also fare better than AWS when it comes to green energy usage. For Google, 56 percent of its energy consumption comes from clean sources, 15 percent from coal, 14 percent from natural gas, 10 percent from nuclear, and five percent from other sources respectively. Likewise, 32 percent of Microsoft’s data centers are powered by clean energy that include renewable as well as large hydroelectric projects, 31 percent from coal, 23 percent from natural gas, 10 percent from nuclear, and four percent from other sources respectively.

Given these numbers, are we close to a green cloud? Not really, simply because AWS is the largest provider, and this company uses less than one-fifth of clean energy for its data centers. Hopefully, there’ll be a greater impetus from AWS in this area, especially after the many public announcements it has made to move to clean energy. The heartening news however is that other companies are moving farther along, and this is good for the industry as a whole.

In short, it may take a few more years, say around five years, for the cloud industry to transition to a green cloud model. Until then, we’ll have to live with the fact that our digital footprint is having an impact on the environment in a negative way.

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Amazon AWS

A New Digital Training Program from AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the undisputed leader in the cloud market today, and it is further expanding its reach by starting a new program for skills development. On Thursday, January 12th, AWS announced a program called re:Start, through which it aims to provide skills training for about 1,000 people in the UK. At the end of this training program, it plans to provide employment for these people within AWS or in partner companies and organizations.

This is an important move by AWS, and could signal the beginning of a new approach towards technology in general, and cloud in particular. Currently, the cloud industry is facing a big gap in skills. In other words, not many people are trained in cloud technology, and this is causing a big problem for companies like AWS. Due to this shortage in skills, their talent pool is greatly reduced. This also affects their expansion plans, as the growth is not supported by great minds that are well-versed in technology. As a result, some companies are forced to scale back their operations, and maybe even reconsider their growth strategy.

In addition, cost of labor is also high. The economics of job market dictates that when demand is greater than supply, companies will have to pay more to retain the knowledgeable workforce. Over time, these costs can really add up. Besides paying high salaries, companies have to depend on some critical resources for their continued operations. This dependence works against established management principles, and obviously can put projects at risk, especially when the critical resources are not available.

To overcome these multi-pronged challenges, AWS decided to start its own training division through which it plans to train employees, and later employ them for its own needs. As a first step, it has offered this training program in the UK. It’s interesting that AWS started this program in the UK, considering the fallout of Brexit and the widely reported skill gaps that have been reported in the UK. Last year, many MPs warned that the UK needs almost 750,000 people with advanced technical skills to meet the growing demands with this economy, and the existing government initiatives are not enough to fill this gap.

In a way, AWS has set an example for other companies to follow suit. Without waiting for any government action or program, it has started its own division for training. The obvious advantage with such a program is that AWS can train people based on the specific skills it needs. Hence, it has the flexibility to choose one technology over another, depending on its immediate and future need.

Such a move also augurs well for the economy as it reduces unemployment rate and increases the productivity and contribution of workers. This program aims to attract young adults, military veterans, reservists, spouses and other deserving candidates. As of now, AWS has entrusted the task of finding the right candidates to a HR outsourcing company called QA Consulting in partnership with the Ministry of Defense (MoD) and The Prince’s Trust.

The post A New Digital Training Program from AWS appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Amazon AWS

A New Digital Training Program from AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the undisputed leader in the cloud market today, and it is further expanding its reach by starting a new program for skills development. On Thursday, January 12th, AWS announced a program called re:Start, through which it aims to provide skills training for about 1,000 people in the UK. At the end of this training program, it plans to provide employment for these people within AWS or in partner companies and organizations.

This is an important move by AWS, and could signal the beginning of a new approach towards technology in general, and cloud in particular. Currently, the cloud industry is facing a big gap in skills. In other words, not many people are trained in cloud technology, and this is causing a big problem for companies like AWS. Due to this shortage in skills, their talent pool is greatly reduced. This also affects their expansion plans, as the growth is not supported by great minds that are well-versed in technology. As a result, some companies are forced to scale back their operations, and maybe even reconsider their growth strategy.

In addition, cost of labor is also high. The economics of job market dictates that when demand is greater than supply, companies will have to pay more to retain the knowledgeable workforce. Over time, these costs can really add up. Besides paying high salaries, companies have to depend on some critical resources for their continued operations. This dependence works against established management principles, and obviously can put projects at risk, especially when the critical resources are not available.

To overcome these multi-pronged challenges, AWS decided to start its own training division through which it plans to train employees, and later employ them for its own needs. As a first step, it has offered this training program in the UK. It’s interesting that AWS started this program in the UK, considering the fallout of Brexit and the widely reported skill gaps that have been reported in the UK. Last year, many MPs warned that the UK needs almost 750,000 people with advanced technical skills to meet the growing demands with this economy, and the existing government initiatives are not enough to fill this gap.

In a way, AWS has set an example for other companies to follow suit. Without waiting for any government action or program, it has started its own division for training. The obvious advantage with such a program is that AWS can train people based on the specific skills it needs. Hence, it has the flexibility to choose one technology over another, depending on its immediate and future need.

Such a move also augurs well for the economy as it reduces unemployment rate and increases the productivity and contribution of workers. This program aims to attract young adults, military veterans, reservists, spouses and other deserving candidates. As of now, AWS has entrusted the task of finding the right candidates to a HR outsourcing company called QA Consulting in partnership with the Ministry of Defense (MoD) and The Prince’s Trust.

The post A New Digital Training Program from AWS appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Google

Google Releases New Cloud Encryption Key Management Service

Almost every major cloud provider is coming up with innovative products and add-ons that’ll add value to their customers. In this line, Google has released a new cloud encryption key management service to make it easy for organizations to create and use encryption keys to protect their data.  This service is currently available in the beta version in 50 countries including the US, Canada, Australia and Denmark.

This service, in many ways, is a necessity considering the number of hacking incidents that have taken place over the last year, including the widely spoken rigging of the US election. It can add an extra layer of protection for confidential data stored on the cloud. A salient feature of this KMS system is that you can not only manage keys for encrypting user credentials, but also take API tokens associated with applications and store them outside Google Cloud.

At the same time, managing encryption keys is also easy with this service. Enterprises can create, use, recycle, and destroy millions of AES-256 standard symmetric keys in any cloud-hosted solution or environment, with a set of simple user-interface driven clicks. These keys can also be automated to rotate at certain intervals, so the password keeps changing all the time, and only authorized users can access the application.

In addition, Google KMS integrates well with existing services from Google such as the Cloud Identity Access Management system and the Cloud Audit Logging services, to help customers have greater control over their encryption keys. Also, this service falls between the default encryption options that’s considered to be fairly lenient and the customer supplier encryption keys (CSEK) that are the most stringent. So, its stringent enough to be easy to use and at the same time, to protect your data strongly.  Such a feature can be particularly useful for companies that operate in regulated sectors such as healthcare and finance, as they can meet the regulatory requirements laid down by different statutory bodies.

These unique features are sure to bring in greater adoption through this year. The pricing is also fairly reasonable, and depends on the level of usage. Currently, Google  plans to charge $0.06 for every active key per month, and the rate for using the key is $0.03 for every 10,000 operations. This means, an organization that stores and uses 500 encryption keys over 100,000 operations can expect to pay around $30 a month. While this is not cheap, it’s fair considering that encryption by itself is an expensive process.

In short, Google’s KMS is sure to address gaps that exist in cloud security by giving it an additional layer of protection. It’s no surprise that Google is the first company to release such a product, as it’s always been a strong advocate of end-to-end encryption of data on the Internet. For enterprise customers, this service is expected to address many fears and concerns regarding hacking, which unfortunately, have been more prevalent than we’d like. This service will hopefully put an end to some of the security loopholes on the Internet.

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News

Citrix Focuses on Cloud

Citrix hosted its annual summit at Anaheim in California from 9th to 11th of January, 2017, and in this summit, it revealed a roadmap for the company. It offered a glimpse into what customers and investors can expect from the company in 2017, and the steps it is taking to increase its market share in the global cloud market.

One of the defining aspects is a plan to reinvigorate relationship with Microsoft. This is an interesting plan considering that its President and CEO, Krill Tatrinov has deep experience with Microsoft, and was in fact, the former Executive Vice-President of Microsoft’s Business Solutions Division. Before that, he was in charge of many key technological divisions in Microsoft. Since he took helm in 2006, Citrix has taken many steps to move closer to Microsoft, and in this summit, this strategy was made clear.

During a keynote address, PJ Hough, Senior Vice President products, announced that Citrix and Microsoft customers can deploy Windows 10 desktop on the Microsoft Azure platform directly, with the additional choice to deploy apps as well on Azure.  With such an integration in place, both Microsoft and Citrix are reaching out to mutual customers to help them transition to the cloud more easily. They are specifically planning to focus on those customers who have concerns regarding cloud. A report titled Global Business Technographics Infrastructure Survey released by Forrester shows that 38 percent of enterprises that were surveyed have not adopted any kind of cloud infrastructure, while another 23 percent have adopted just one cloud. This report clearly shows that cloud is not as ubiquitous as it may seem, and there’s always more room for penetration.

That is exactly what both the companies may do together under the invigorated relationship. Customers who already own XenApp or XenDesktop licenses can choose to move to Citrix Cloud-as-a-service. To help them with this transition, Citrix will be offering a substantial set of tools and expert knowledge using both Citrix’s and Microsoft’s offerings. This way, existing customers can get the advantages of cloud without having to pay extra, as the cost of their license will be adjusted towards this transition.

Besides its partnership with Microsoft, Citrix also announced a new pilot program for existing Citrix Service Providers (CPS), who wish to move their deployments to Citrix Cloud. Though this service is free as of now, Citrix plans to introduce a monthly licensing model in the future. With such a product, providers can have a Desktop-as-a-service option for hosting different Citrix technologies.

Also, Citrix is planning to introduce a new set of tools called Smart Check and Smart Scale to help customers deploy and configure apps and mobile workspaces on Citrix Cloud. These two offerings will join the existing Smart Tools family, and are believed to ease the process of cloud transition.

In all, Citrix is making a big push to reach out to those enterprises that have not moved to the cloud yet. To this end, it has renewed its partnership with Microsoft and has come up with a slew of tools to make the process easier for enterprises.

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News

AWS Buys Harvest.ai

2017 looks like it’s going to be a year of acquisition as the larger players are looking to consolidate their position by buying companies that add value to their current offerings. In this line, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has bought a cybersecurity company Harvest.ai to boost cloud security for the end-users. Though no official announcement has been made by either companies in this regard, TechCrunch and other major sources have reported this acquisition.

It is believed that AWS paid $19 million for this company, and this may be much more than what the investors hoped to earn by way of revenue. It’s interesting to note that the company has raised only $2.3 million by way of capital since it was founded, and employs only 12 people in all. All these employees are expected to move to Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle after the terms are settled.

This deal was believed to be in the offing for some time, as the co-founders, Anna Zelenak and Alex Watson had already moved to Seattle in 2016. Another co-founder, Jenny Brinkley, now lists Amazon as her employer on a political contributions page. These changes, along with inputs from anonymous sources within the company led TechCrunch to announce that Harvest.ai was acquired by AWS.

Harvest.ai is a San Diego based startup company co-founded by two former employees from the NSA in 2014, though it officially started its services only in March 2015. This company’s original name was 405Labs, but was later changed to harvest.ai, and the reason for the same is not known. This company specializes in using machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze the behavior of a user on the company’s network. Such a surveillance reduces the potential of cyber attacks, and increases the chances of stopping planned attacks before valuable data is lost.

It’s patent-pending product called MACIE Analytics uses artificial intelligence to get an in-depth understanding of who is logged in and what is being accessed in real-time, along with other pertinent information needed to identify a cyber attack such as what items are being moved and which areas are being accessed. With all this information collated together, it’s easy to stop phishing attacks as well as the more difficult insider attacks.

MACIE also comes with other cool features that make integration with existing systems a breeze. It works well with both cloud and on-premise systems, and creates extensive information on the activities of each user’s session. Such detailed information can go a long way in not just discovering attacks, but also for a detailed study about the company’s security system and its possible flaws.

Harvest.ai had been a customer of AWS, as it was featured in the “Startup Spotlight” of the latter. In many ways, this acquisition was a natural one for both the companies, more so for AWS, considering the sophisticated attacks that have been taking place over the last few months. Such a cloud-based tool could go a long way in protecting its customers’ data.

AWS could possibly use the services of this company as a part of its security-as-a-service division, and to supplement its existing security authentication and monitoring tools.

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News

A Cloud Year for Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) Region?

Cloud is taking the world by storm. Currently, North America accounts for the highest revenue and top service providers call this region home, but the Asia-Pacific region is the fastest growing one.  Europe and Africa are catching up in their own respective ways, and the Australia New Zealand (ANZ) region is not to be left behind.

In fact, it maybe a cloud year for companies in the ANZ region, going by a survey conducted by Computer Weekly/TechTarget. Their report titled IT Priorities Research  shows that a significant number of CIOs who were interviewed as a part of the survey opined that they have already moved to the cloud or are planning to do so by 2017. Much of these cloud initiatives are expected in the areas of data center, storage, and backup, though other aspects such as cloud computing, IoT, and M2M are also expected to drive cloud adoption in the ANZ region.

To be precise, the report states that 41 percent of IT decision-makers are looking to be involved in some form of cloud storage initiative, while 36 percent will choose a cloud backup feature during this year. Besides these two areas, cloud is also going to play a big role in ANZ data centers as 39 percent of respondents plan to work around pure or hybrid cloud models within their data centers.

In addition, 54 percent of respondents believe that cloud computing will be a significant part of IT budget this year. This is an interesting revelation because in another survey, 38 percent of IT decision-makers in Australia and New Zealand expect their IT budgets to be flat or lower in 2017 when compared to the previous year. Putting these two together, we can say that even if budgets are going to remain stagnant, the fact that it much of it will be allocated for cloud, means that every IT decision-maker hopes to make the most of every dollar spent.

This report is sure to bring much cheer to cloud service providers of all sizes, as everyone can have a share in the pie, though the larger providers will have a significantly higher share than the smaller ones. Already, companies like Alibaba and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are setting up operations in Australia, or they are expanding their presence to cover more cities in this region. An example of such a move is the setting up of a large data center in Sydney by Alibaba, making it one of the largest ones outside of mainland China.  Other providers like Microsoft, IBM, and Google are likely to catch up too, and it won’t be long before we see their presence in this region.

In all, this news exudes much optimism, as companies can make their operations more efficient and bring in higher revenues and profits. The cloud providers who setup shop here will employ more people, who in turn, will fuel more demand for goods and services. Eventually, these development are sure to augur well for the economies of both these countries as well.

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Computing

Cloud is Growing at 25% a Year

Cloud is everywhere; we see, hear, and use it just about every day. It’s not just individuals, but also businesses that use cloud for almost every part of their operations. Given this scenario, it’s no surprise that the cloud market is growing at a rapid pace. But what might surprise you is the rate at which the cloud market is growing.

According to a report released by Synergy Research Group, 2016 was a bumper year for the cloud industry, as it dominated much of the IT industry. The cloud revenue for the four quarters was a whopping $148 million, signaling a 25 percent growth when compared to the same time a year before. This growth was also reflected in the revenues reported by many of the giants in cloud industry such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, IBM, and Google, that reported higher revenues from their cloud business.

A closer look into the report shows that out of the many cloud segments, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) saw the highest growth  of 53 percent. This sector is dominated by Microsoft and AWS, with the former having a market share of around 11 percent while the latter is leading the pack with a market share of about 31 percent. It is estimated that AWS has the highest revenue in the segment, with numbers upwards of $13 billion, while Microsoft saw the highest growth at 124 percent. In fact, AWS was the first company to introduce cloud computing almost ten years back, so it’s only natural that it is the leading provider with a worldwide presence. Microsoft, with its strong presence in the tech industry, is fast catching up with competing products like Azure and Office 365. Other companies like Google have a market share of only around six percent, and are getting their act together to chase these two leaders.

The second highest growth among cloud sectors was seen in hosted private cloud, that grew at a rate of 35 percent. This segment is dominated by IBM and Rackspace, while the third place goes to enterprise SaaS that grew at a rate of 34 percent. Enterprise SaaS is again dominated by Microsoft, and Salesforce.

Besides giving the sector-wise breakdown, this report also show the total spending on cloud hardware and software exceeded $65 billion. Out of this, more than half of the money was spent on private cloud, though it showed that public cloud spending is also growing rapidly. Much of this revenue has come from enterprises that are looking to move their operations to the cloud, and the service providers have invested heavily in infrastructure to meet this growing demand from enterprises of all sizes. This investment is paying off in the form of higher revenues, with the report stating that more than $30 billion was generated from IaaS, PaaS, and hosted infrastructure, and another $40 billion from enterprise SaaS. Other ancillary sectors such as social networking, email, and e-commerce also added to the revenue pie.

In all, this report shows the astounding growth of cloud over the last year, and exuded much optimism for this year too.

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News

Nvidia comes up with a new cloud gaming system

As the cloud market matures, more companies are looking for innovative ways to use its features. There have been instances of companies that use cloud to provide a better indoor environment, and those that use it to solve many of the social problems we face today. The next in this line of innovative cloud products is Nvidia’s GeForce Now platform.

Announced during the company’s CES keynote, this product overcomes a drawback that is being faced by gamers all over the world, which is lack of support from PCs for a fantastic gaming experience. Most PCs today don’t have the capability to play modern games because they don’t support modern graphic cards. As a result, gamers world-over face frustration when they try to play their favorite game on their PC. To overcome this problem, Nvidia’s GeForce Now will allow players to access a cloud-based gaming system, so gamers can simply log into the system and play their games.

Nvidia has used GeForce Now brand in the past too, in case you’re wondering that it sounds familiar. In the past, this brand allowed players to stream games from their own PC, but unfortunately, this product did not go well with customers due to many reasons. Primarily, this product required a Nvidia product such as Shield Portal or Android TV, and this proved to be a disappointment for many customers. Learning from its mistakes, Nvidia has overhauled its GeForce Now brand to make it more attractive and sustainable to its end customers.

The advantages with this new product is obvious. Firstly, gamers can continue to enjoy their gaming sessions without any interruptions, and secondly, they don’t have to worry about upgrading their system or buying a new graphics card. This service is also reasonably priced, as it costs a mere $25 for 20 hours a play – peanuts when compared to the whopping cost of a graphic card and the inconveniences and disruptions that come with it. With this product, gamers are sure to be a happy bunch as they can save money, and at the same time, continue their gaming sessions. However, users will have to download a small client to access this cloud product. The good news is this download and installation takes only a few seconds, and is fairly self-explanatory.

This move augurs well for the gaming industry too, as it can reach out to more customers. Currently, many users are not playing some games because they don’t have the necessary hardware infrastructure. Now, if the same infrastructure is available on the cloud, more people would be willing to play online. In this sense, this move by Nvidia is sure to strengthen the gaming industry as a whole.

At this point, Nvidia plans to make GeForce Now available by March 2017.  We will probably have to wait until March to know the speed and gaming experience this product offers, because as of now, it’s not clear whether Nvidia is going to host it in its own data center or will it take the services of a cloud provider such as AWS.

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