All posts by Lavanya

News

Adobe’s Results Prove that Cloud is the Way Forward

Adobe Systems Inc has reported another incredible quarter that beat analyst’s expectations on both profits and revenue.

Adobe has announced that revenue from its digital media business is $1.21 billion, which is almost four billion more than what analysts were expecting. Overall, it’s revenue saw a 27 percent jump as it touched $1.77 billion during this quarter. Analysts were predicting a revenue of only $1.73 billion. Also, profit per share was $1.02 per share as against the expectation of 95 cents per share.

Adobe also raised its forecast to a growth of 23 percent as against the expectation of 22 percent.

Creative Cloud is the flagship product of Adobe and it’s also the one that’s seen one of the highest demands over the last few quarters.

According to company reports, there are over nine million members in its online community, thanks to the super popular Photoshop and Flash. In fact, it is believed that there two products helped Creative Cloud as a whole to cross the $1 billion mark during the last quarter. Since then, there has been no looking back. In this quarter, Creative Cloud and the Digitial Media Annualized Recurring Revenue accounted for $4.56 billion, as against the analysts expectations of $4.54 billion.

Undoubtedly, the share price of Adobe went up by four percent to reach a record level of $146 per share.

Much of this success can be attributed to the switch that Adobe made in 2012. Led by its CEO, Shantanu Narayen, this company switched to a cloud-based model to move many of its traditional products to the cloud. Though the CEO and the management were met with stiff resistance from investors, this strategy has paid well, as is evident from the strong results that Adobe has been churning quarter after quarter.

The company has even been making some acquisitions to strengthen its portfolio and to move deeper into cloud-based services. Late last year, it acquired a company called TubeMogul for $500 million. This is a brand advertising company that adds to Adobe’s creative products, thereby providing a richer experience and greater value for its customers.

Besides acquisitions, it has also been striking lucrative partnerships to promote its products and to continue to expand its customer base. An example of this strategy is the partnership it struck with Microsoft to sell more of its business marketing products.

All these different tactics have paid off well for the company and it sure has a happy bunch of investors today. This is evident from the meteoric rise of its shares over the last few years. A quick look shows that Adobe’s share price has risen about 350 percent over the last five years and touched new levels after the results were announced on Tuesday evening.

With such a positive outlook and a clear strategic direction, Adobe exudes a lot of confidence about its future. Investors, analysts, employees and all other stakeholders like to see such exuberance, and this is partly why we can say that the performance of the company as well as its share prices are going to go through the roof in the coming months.

The post Adobe’s Results Prove that Cloud is the Way Forward appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

News

Adobe’s Results Prove that Cloud is the Way Forward

Adobe Systems Inc has reported another incredible quarter that beat analyst’s expectations on both profits and revenue.

Adobe has announced that revenue from its digital media business is $1.21 billion, which is almost four billion more than what analysts were expecting. Overall, it’s revenue saw a 27 percent jump as it touched $1.77 billion during this quarter. Analysts were predicting a revenue of only $1.73 billion. Also, profit per share was $1.02 per share as against the expectation of 95 cents per share.

Adobe also raised its forecast to a growth of 23 percent as against the expectation of 22 percent.

Creative Cloud is the flagship product of Adobe and it’s also the one that’s seen one of the highest demands over the last few quarters.

According to company reports, there are over nine million members in its online community, thanks to the super popular Photoshop and Flash. In fact, it is believed that there two products helped Creative Cloud as a whole to cross the $1 billion mark during the last quarter. Since then, there has been no looking back. In this quarter, Creative Cloud and the Digitial Media Annualized Recurring Revenue accounted for $4.56 billion, as against the analysts expectations of $4.54 billion.

Undoubtedly, the share price of Adobe went up by four percent to reach a record level of $146 per share.

Much of this success can be attributed to the switch that Adobe made in 2012. Led by its CEO, Shantanu Narayen, this company switched to a cloud-based model to move many of its traditional products to the cloud. Though the CEO and the management were met with stiff resistance from investors, this strategy has paid well, as is evident from the strong results that Adobe has been churning quarter after quarter.

The company has even been making some acquisitions to strengthen its portfolio and to move deeper into cloud-based services. Late last year, it acquired a company called TubeMogul for $500 million. This is a brand advertising company that adds to Adobe’s creative products, thereby providing a richer experience and greater value for its customers.

Besides acquisitions, it has also been striking lucrative partnerships to promote its products and to continue to expand its customer base. An example of this strategy is the partnership it struck with Microsoft to sell more of its business marketing products.

All these different tactics have paid off well for the company and it sure has a happy bunch of investors today. This is evident from the meteoric rise of its shares over the last few years. A quick look shows that Adobe’s share price has risen about 350 percent over the last five years and touched new levels after the results were announced on Tuesday evening.

With such a positive outlook and a clear strategic direction, Adobe exudes a lot of confidence about its future. Investors, analysts, employees and all other stakeholders like to see such exuberance, and this is partly why we can say that the performance of the company as well as its share prices are going to go through the roof in the coming months.

The post Adobe’s Results Prove that Cloud is the Way Forward appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Technology

What do we learn from IBM’s Cloud transformation?

We have always seen IBM as a old warhorse because it’s been around for a really long time and has a solid foothold in the tech industry. But, that doesn’t mean it can’t make a foray into the newer aspects of tech industry.

In fact, IBM’s transformation into the cloud market has been remarkable. At the core of this transformation has been a bold and decisive management that has never shied away from taking the necessary steps needed to slowly and steadily gain a firm market share in the cloud industry.

Besides the management, its research team in cognitive development, specifically Watson, has been a great catalyst for this transformation. In many ways, it helped IBM get more interest towards its products and services, and this made it a little easy for IBM to plough its way through the cloud market.

One of the most important and often ignored aspect that brought about this big change for IBM is the overhaul of its existing culture. Since IBM has been around for many decades, it’s business model was based on huge and profitable standalone business units such as mainframes and consulting services. Such standalone divisions were more concerned about account control, profits and numbers in general than on delivering services.

In other words, these units did not revolve around customers, rather they revolved around profits and accounts. Such an approach worked at a time when technology was a novelty, but when it became a mainstream industry and an integral part of everyday living, this approach faltered.

To overcome this problem, IBM had to completely change the structure of its company and the way its divisions worked. It had to change siloed divisions to an integrated amalgamation of different businesses, so each could benefit from the other. This meant that all divisions had to work together at one time or another to create a rich experience for the user. In turn, this brought the focus back on to the customer.

This transformation was probably the best thing that happened to IBM over its operations because it’s outlook and performance improved by leaps. Also, it is in a better position to compete with the likes of newer companies like AWS and Google. In addition, it was able to create a multitude of relationships, partnerships and more to establish itself as a strong player in the cloud industry.

Though these changes are heartening, IBM still has a long way to go, as it has to strike a fine balance between its legacy business and cloud. It also needs to strengthen the skills of its employees and empower them to take on the challenges that come with the fast-changing tech world.

And of course, the competition. AWS, Microsoft and Google are expanding at a rapid pace backed by vast investments in their infrastructure. If IBM wants to compete, then it has to act big and really fast.  Personally, I think IBM will pull it off considering the strides it has made in the last few years, not to mention its rich experience and expertise.

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News

Shadow Raises $57 Million

It’s raining money for startups and the latest startup to get funding is a French company called Shadow. Also called Blade, this company has raised a series A funding of $57.1 million. It had already raised more than $14.6 million from some prominent angel investors like Nick Suppipat and Michael Benobou among others.

It is attracting so many investors because of its unique idea. It treats your computer as being a part of a data center, so it treats your phones and laptops as a thin client. This is a different way to make your computers more powerful and portable than before.

The good part about this idea is that this company is not reinventing the wheel, rather it is building on the latest developments in the world of technology and are even leveraging it to give you a powerful service. As of now, this service is mostly geared towards cloud gaming, though it can be extended to other services as well in the future.

Currently, this startup company is running thousands of virtual machines on a 800-grade Xeon processor that comes with a dedicated Nvidia GTX 1070 for each instance of virtual machine. This means, as a user, you a private and powerful machine for gaming, but everything is in the cloud.

Imagine the benefits that come with it. First off, it helps you to save a ton of money. You no longer have to spend loads of money in buying a powerful computer and the necessary hardware that come with it. Rather, you can simply pay a monthly subscription to this service and avail the same infrastructure.

Secondly, it gives you the flexibility to opt for more powerful computers as they become available. For example, let’s say, you bought a computer with an advanced chipset for gaming. A few months down the line, the same company introduces a more advanced and powerful chipset that could potentially change the entire gaming experience. To enjoy this power, you’ll have to buy another chipset again or be contended with what you have.

But with Shadow and cloud gaming as a whole, the infrastructure is something you don’t have to worry about. It’s up to the company to upgrade its system and maybe charge you a little bit more to use the same service. Still, you get to leverage technology as they become available, without ever worrying about the costs involved.

Thirdly, all the infrastructure is managed for you, so you can sit back and enjoy the game. No more worrying about security updates and patches. Gaming doesn’t really get easier than this, and this is why Shadow is attracting so many investors.

As of now, this service is available only in France, but we can expect it to become available in other countries too, as the company has decided to accept a lot more customers. The demand for this service is going up, as users are spending an average of 2.5 hours each day over the last 30 days.

To offer a better service, this company is working on its encryption and other features too.

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Amazon AWS

AWS Announces the Winners of “City on a Cloud”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the winners of its “City on a Cloud” innovation challenge. There were many categories and prizes announced for the winners.

This “City on a Cloud” is an annual challenge open for governments at all levels to see how best they use AWS’ services to improve the lives of people. many categories, including innovation, small cities, big cities, ideas, and more are awarded.

This year, Louisville won the most prominent award, which is the “Dream Big” category. It was given this award for its implementation of machine learning and IoT systems to build an efficient traffic flow management that can adapt the local infrastructure to mitigate the problems that come with traffic congestion.

Another city that made it to the top award is Seattle. Known for its efficient planning and liberal use of technology, this city was awarded for its Open Data 2017. Under this plan, the city has identified five priority areas, the information for which will be available in real-time in the city’s portal. It’s new web design has increased awareness and it is estimated that the new site has 25 percent more users than the old one.

This portal displays relevant data sets to the public, who can use it for their own analysis, and maybe even come up with systems that’ll improve the overall quality of life in the city.

Boston has also started a similar initiative and calls it “Analyze Boston.”

One of the significant developments that was explained during the “City on a Cloud” awards function is that 12 cities have joined together to use technology to combat climate change. Given President Trump’s stance on this issue and his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, this is an important move that’s essential to fight the real problems of environmental degradation.

These cities are posting information from US EPA on their site, before the website is taken down completely. In fact, Chicago has emerged as the leader in this area with its “City of Chicago Climate Change is Real” portal. In this site, Chicago talks about the real dangers of climate change, tons of data on this and the possible steps that each citizen can take to protect their world. It gives clear actionable steps that can be implemented individually and collectively.

The other cities in this effort are Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, Louisville, Milwaukee, Houston, Philadelphia, Boston, Portland, Fayetteville in Arkansas and Evanston in Illinois.

City of Virginia Beach is another recipient of this award for its efforts to protect coastal flooding that occurs from storm surges and tides. A unique aspect of StormSense, a IoT-based app developed for predicting and managing flooding, is that it can be replicated across all coastal cities.

It is heartening to see these developments, especially the efforts taken by different cities to tap into the power of technology to improve the overall quality of life for its residents. Let’s hope that there more such “City in a Cloud” awards that enthuse more local governments to work for the welfare of their residents.

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Computing

Will Nokia Bounce Back with its Cloud Routers?

Nokia, the embattled cell phone manufacturer, has come up with a new set of routers that it claims will lay the foundation for future technologies such as 5G and the Internet of Things.

In an announcement made by the company, it said that Nokia has made ground-breaking innovations that’ll give more opportunities for service providers to build powerful networks. These are powered by the new FP4 silicon, which is the world’s first multi terabit chipset. It is touted that this chipset is six times more powerful than existing network processors, and this could propel faster speeds for networks.

Two products built on these chipsets are 7750 Service Router and 7950 Extensible Routing System. The first one is expected to transmit 144 terabits per second while the latter can transfer 576 terabits in a second, provided they are in a single system.

Nokia said that these new routing platforms make modern networks more adaptable, faster and safer than before, and at the same time, delivers improved network security and intelligence. These platforms can signal the arrival of the next generation of technologies that include deep learning, machine learning, AI, IoT and more.

A common aspect of all these emerging technologies is the need for handling large amounts of data and “teaching” machines to learn from this data. This obviously requires bigger and faster networks and this is exactly where Nokia is placing its bets.

This brings up the big question of why Nokia chose these routers instead of other lines of business?

For starters, this is one area that Nokia that considerable experience and the other is that it forecasts IP traffic to go to 330 exabytes a month by 2022.

This is why with this new platform, Nokia wants to get back into the business and resurrect its brand name and operations. Though Nokia was one of the leading manufacturers of cell phones, it fell out of favor from customers after the emergence of companies like Samsung that were able to get more powerful smartphones to the market within a short time.

So, is this the right product for Nokia? Will it help the company to become an important player in the technology sector in the future?

Apparently not, according to analysts at Wells Fargo who believe that Nokia needs to do a lot more to get back into the networking business. These analysts contend that service providers are not ready to embrace this high-speed chipsets and platforms yet, so it may take time for Nokia to see the implementation of its new products.

Also, these analysts are skeptical about the ability of service providers to put these platforms to the best use. This means, though Nokia’s new platform can transfer a minimum of 144 terabits per second, will the surrounding infrastructure allow it is a big question.

In the meantime, it makes sense for Nokia to focus on more near-term products that can get some money flowing into its coffers while keeping these platforms as its long-term strategy.

The post Will Nokia Bounce Back with its Cloud Routers? appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Technology

Virtual Reality Skipped Again

As a customer, you’d expect virtual reality in console games simply because virtual reality is becoming a mature technology and it adds a big dash of fun to any game.

Unfortunately, all the three top console makers, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, don’t think so. At least not yet.

The annual gaming conference E3 saw presentations and announcements by these three companies and none of them had any virtual reality games for their audience. In fact, many people flocked to the Microsoft press conference in the hope that there will be some form of virtual reality based console, but there was not even a mention of any of it.

Well, if you had been following Microsoft’s announcement closely, this lack of virtual reality mention shouldn’t come as a surprise for you. Over the last few weeks Microsoft has been hinting that it will not dive into “mixed reality”. This is an umbrella term that Microsoft uses to describe both virtual and augmented reality experience.

If you’re wondering why, the answer is the economics. Last October, Sony released Playstation VR, a virtual reality headset that gives users of Playstation 4 a whole new user experience. This product is definitely not top of the line, but sits in the middle between the high-end products like HTV Vive and lower end products like Google Daydream.

However, a look at the sales numbers of Playstation VR shows that it didn’t sell as much as Sony would have expected. So far, the company has sold 55 million pieces, which roughly translates to about 1.8 percent of the overall target market.

These numbers go to show that not all customers want virtual reality in their games. On the contrary, it has attracted only a small percent of its target market, so it makes no economic sense for a company to invest heavily in virtual reality when the audience is not ready to use them.

This bring us to the next question – why are the audience not ready for a virtual reality console yet?

First off, its’ expensive. Companies spend a ton of money in research and implementation and this is passed to the customers in some way. For example, the Playstation VR headset costs a whopping $400, and this is almost the same price of a brand new PS4 Pro.

The other reason, at least, one given by Microsoft is that it is not that practical to use. It argues that a quality VR experience requires a hard-line connection between the home base and headset and this could be inconvenient, to say the least.

So, this is typically a chicken and egg dilemma that could take a few years to become more mature. Maybe that’s probably when it would make sense to introduce VR as a viable option for entertainment. Until then, all VR enthusiasts would have to wait. Or if you’re in a hurry, you can always buy the uber-expensive products available today that aim to give you the experience you want.

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Technology

Alibaba Expands Further into APAC

Alibaba, a Chinese multinational cloud company, has been looking to expand beyond the Chinese shores. Also called Aliyun, this is the largest cloud provider in China.

Recently, the company announced that it is opening two datacenters, one in India and the other in Indonesia, in a clear strategy to expand its footprint in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. Already, the company has been operating in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, UAE and Australia within APAC and Germany and the US in the Western world. Besides these data centers, there’s one in Malaysia that is expected to open sometime in 2017.  It plans to open two more datacenters by 2018, as it believes these facilities are essential to meet the growing demands from its customers.

The company’s strategy has been to meet the needs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across the entire region. This sector operates with limited budgets, so it’s not easy for them to spend much money for cloud. Also, their operations tend to be smaller, which means, they need lesser computing resources when compared to larger players. To meet this unique requirements, many cloud companies are crafting their own strategies and products, and Alibaba is no different.

In fact, Alibaba has more experience in this sector than many other cloud companies because a good number of its clients in China are SMEs. So, Alibaba thoroughly understands the workings, expectations and the restrictions of this sector and has adopted its products to effectively meet them. It now wants to put this experience to good use by offering services to SMEs of other countries as well.

Another advantage that Alibaba has is that it understands the cultural context and pulse of the Asian market better than companies like Microsoft and Amazon. Much of this is again because it has its roots in China, which is culturally very different from the Western countries where AWS, Google and Microsoft had their roots.

This strategy has worked well so far for the company. During the 2017 fiscal year, Alibaba’s customers grew to 874,000 and this represents an increase of almost 70 percent over the previous year.

That said, Alibaba has a long way to go if it truly wants to catch up with companies like Microsoft and AWS. In fact, Alibaba sees AWS as its competitor, though both the companies are nowhere in the same league when it comes to revenue and operations.

For one, Alibaba doesn’t use an open cloud platform like AWS and this is a big disadvantage for many clients, especially those that want to use their own tools or explore more options. As of now, they can pick from Alibaba’s proprietary tools only and this is not always a convenient choice.

Even in it terms of infrastructure, Alibaba can never handle  the same amount of workloads as that of AWS, Microsoft or Google Cloud. So, these are some of the area that it needs to address, especially if it wants to fulfill its ambitions of becoming a truly international company.

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Amazon AWS

Consegna Advances Through AWS

The cloud market in New Zealand is booming and this has led to the entry of many players catering to varying niches within this segment. One such company is an Auckland-based start up called Consegna.

Founded in 2016, this company has made rapid strides within one year of its start. It is currently backed by AWS and is supported by a global team of cloud specialists.

It’s one of the few certified AWS consulting partners in New Zealand’s cloud space and is an Authorized Public Sector Partner. It offers a range of advisory services in the cloud market, data center migration, managed services and more for all businesses located within its country.

Specifically, it helps small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to migrate their data and applications to AWS, so that everyone can leverage the power of the most popular cloud services platform in the world. Besides SMEs, it also offers support and consultation to large corporations, government organizations and just about anyone else who want to move to the cloud. This company’s specialists take care of the entire journey, from early consultations to the actual migration, so every client makes an informed decisions throughout its cloud journey.

Consegna provides not just consulting service, but can also take care of the tooling required to prepare your organization to move to the cloud. Architecture, design, building, implementation are other things they work on.

Now that we have an idea of what Consegna is and what it does, let’s see how it can impact the New Zealand cloud market.

First off, New Zealand is one of the more stable economies in the Asia Pacific region with a mature market and a thriving economy. Given this environment, it’s no surprise that it has a growing cloud market too. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2018, the cloud market in New Zealand would be worth around NZ$14.7 billion, thereby making it one of the fastest growing markets in the world. It’s annual rate is likely to be around 14.7 percent year-on-year.

This strong growth is backed by a solid support from the government. It’s policies and regulations making it easy for the corporate world to use Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), so that every company can leverage the many advantages like scalability and cost effectiveness that come with it.

New Zealand’s data centers are expected to grow by 18 percent and is expected to reach NZ$272 million by 2020. Many large IT organizations like IBM are already increasing their presence in this market, and they are aptly joined by smaller companies like Consegna.

An analysis of these growth numbers show that cloud management, security and consulting are likely to be the top growing segments, and Consgena has a firm footing in them. Also, the fact that it is backed by AWS and has accessed to a global team of cloud specialists means it’s in a right position to create a deep impact in New Zealand’s cloud market.

Overall, exciting times are ahead for Consegna and the cloud market as a whole.

The post Consegna Advances Through AWS appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Microsoft

Microsoft is Poised to Meet the Growing Demands from India

India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world today. With more than a billion people, this country presents excellent opportunities for any company that is looking to expand and meet the demands of this burgeoning market. And cloud is not any different.

India represents almost a billion opportunities for the cloud market. This market is valued at about $1 billion currently and is growing at a rate of about 30 percent per year. There are many reasons for this astounding growth.

Firstly, India has a relatively young population that is making the most of technology. They are truly living through a digital revolution and this means, there’s abundance opportunity for the tech industry as a whole, and cloud industry in specific because cloud is the current and future of technology.

Secondly, IT leaders in India are looking to build an agile infrastructure, which again is going to be cloud-based. Thirdly, the government is taking extensive measures to make it easy for its people to interact with different departments, and they are also increasingly relying on cloud to implement this transition.

Fourth and probably the biggest reason is the presence of millions of businesses in the small and medium enterprise (SME) category that can benefit hugely from this move to the cloud. It is estimated that there are more than 30 million SMEs spread across the country and a vast majority are yet to embrace the cloud.

With such factors in place, cloud companies are expanding their presence in India to make the most of these opportunities. Among all the major players, Microsoft is well-poised to tap into this endless opportunity. According to Rajeev Sodhi, the country head of Microsoft India, the company spends more than $12 billion in research each year to create customized solutions and to help every business to leverage the power of cloud.

Keeping in tune with the local culture, Microsoft has adopted a people-centric approach to increase their clientele and this has worked well for the company so far.

To get a pulse of what Indians think of technology, Microsoft commissioned a study called “Asia Digital Transformation Study.” The results bring out some important trends. The survey clearly showed that Indians believe that artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things is essential for a digital transformation. Both these technologies have cloud as its underlying infrastructure.

To top it, 88 percent of surveyed individuals think that cloud computing and the widespread use of mobile devices will make it easier and more affordable to access data and information.

Microsoft has started making a few tweaks to its products based on the response received through this survey. In April, it announced new Azure tools and resources to help Indian companies adopt a hybrid environment for data storage and computing.

It even allows organizations to use Azure hybrid option directly from their Azure management portal itself, thereby simplifying a ton of tasks and process.

With such measures, Microsoft is looking to establish itself as a leader in this booming cloud market.

 

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