Category Archives: Cloud Services

Cloud Services, Cloud Technology, Collaboration, Microsoft

Government Agencies Adopting The Cloud At A Faster Rate Than Before

In a new report from Forbes Insights, partnering with Microsoft, strong evidence is pointed towards government agencies reaching a tipping point when it comes to adopting the cloud. Many government groups are heading towards a cloud-first orientation rather than just dabbling with the technology. The amount and type of cloud installation in this setting is expected to grow exponentially.

 

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Moving data over to the cloud has many benefits, including lower costs and higher efficiency and security, and though there was a cloud-first policy implemented back in 2010, agencies and groups have been very slow to adopt it. Cloud services account for a mere 2% of all IT spending in federal agencies.

 

Agencies have been moving slowly, testing the waters to make sure that the benefits the cloud claims to present are actually happening. Now that they have seen positive results, attempts are being made to employ the cloud in other, more in-depth implementations, such as mission-critical applications.

 

Agencies and groups on the state, county and even city level have also begun to implement cloud technology to better their services. For example, the City of Miami implemented a cloud-backed mobile and Internet application that allows for better scheduling.

 

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Cloud Services, Cloud Technology, Collaboration

CERN and Rackspace Team Up Again

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and managed cloud provider Rackspace have been working together since 2013 when Rackspace created an OpenStack-based hybrid cloud set-up for CERN. Now, the two organizations are working together again to create a multi-cloud, collaborative work environment for CERN’s global research teams.

 

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So far, the reference architecture and operation models have been created in order to better manage the cloud environments. Identity authentication tools have also been made to cover multiple OpenStack clouds. This model allows the data obtained at CERN to be shared with all of their overseas research teams.

 

The amount of data collected when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is running is on the petabyte scale, and all of it flows and is stored through OpenStack. The easier this data can be shared among CERN’s researchers and with less technology the better.

 

To make sure this system flows properly and efficiently, Rackspace has a full time research fellow on location at CERN to provide assistance with design and implementation issues that come up among its OpenStack cloud environments. The open-source software is also used to manage the data center resources that power the LHC, which reportedly produces more than 30PB of data per year.

 

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Using open-source software instead of proprietary software keeps costs low while keeping flexibility high. This is a plus for research labs all over the world, especially those who are under-funded.

 

The next phase of this partnership is creating standard templates to speed up the creation of OpenStack clouds so that CERN researchers have access to the data sooner.

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Cloud Services

Rackspace Moving To Managed Cloud Services

Rackspace has been one of the most successful companies that have moved from a traditional web-hosting model to being a cloud vendor. However, despite this they have not reached their expected level of success. Rackspace’s growth has increased, but has not been what it should be based on the amount of money in the cloud industry.

 

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Previously, they have been considered number two (next to Amazon) for cloud services, but other larger companies have swooped in and taken this title away.

 

Last year, Rackspace took itself out of the cloud service provider race to focus on being a managed cloud vendor. This move was based on the need for help when transitioning to using a cloud service, and Rackspace wanted to provide that help.

 

Their CEO Taylor Rhodes has hinted that supporting many companies’ clouds are in their future. They already work with Office 365 and Microsoft SharePoint. This move is similar to the one Dell made when they stopped offering their own cloud and focused on servicing other clouds. There is a significant amount of money to be made by supporting other cloud services.

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Cloud Services, Google

Google Bigtable

Google’s new online data storage service has the potential to enable large companies to implement big data analysis as a cloud service. Google Cloud Bigtable is based on technology that has been used within Google for many years. It now powers many of Google’s core services like Search, Gmail and analytics.

 

This service could be used to store sensor data from an Internet of things monitoring system. Finance, Telecommunications, digital advertising, energy, biomedical and other data-intensive companies are examples of who could benefit from the use of this program.

 

Bigtable is a NoSQL hosted data store. Users can read and write data the API for Apache HBase, an opensource application of the Bigtable architecture for storing data across multiple servers. Due to this, customers can use the service with existing Hadoop software. Hadoop is an open source data processing platform used for large data sets. Bigtable can also work with other Google cloud services.

 

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Google claims that Bigtable is faster than other NoSQL stores. They manage the service completely, such as data replication for backup and encrypting it for security. Another interesting feature is that as you add more data, Google automatically provides the additional storage capacity.

 

The pricing structure is based on many factors, such as network usage, amount of nodes deployed and amount of storage used. Taking into account all of these things, Bigtable is total cost of ownership is less than half of its direct competitors.

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Amazon AWS, Cloud Services, Cloud Technology, Google, Microsoft

Amazon at the top of the Cloud Market

On Thursday, Amazon released their financial performance numbers, and they proved that Amazon is at the top of the cloud market compared to their competitors. Though they are known as an online marketplace, most of their stock market returns and revenue has come from renting processing power to start ups and enterprises.

 

Amazon was the leader in popularizing the cloud-computing field, and for a while they were the only ones to offer such services. This allowed for them to gain an advantage when others began to offer cloud-computing services. Others saw this field as an opportunity to tap into hundreds of billions of dollars. Microsoft has been especially committed to advancing in the field.

 

Though Amazon is the leader by a long shot, its resources are much lower than its competitors who have billions of dollars stashed away. Cloud computing demands heavy investments to set up data centers around the world as well as research and development if the field is to continue to grow and advance.

 

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In their first quarter reports, Amazon Web Services reported earnings of $1.57 billion and their operating income was $265 million. These statistics are strange coming from a company who often reports losses. This drove Amazon shares up by more than 6% in after-hours trading, and stock is at an all time high.

 

Microsoft, who ranks in at number 2 for cloud computing, reported that its annual revenue from its commercial cloud business would be $6.3 billion based on recent performance. Amazon predicted a similar figure of $5.16 billion. However, included in Microsoft’s number is revenue from different online applications. Azure, the Microsoft equivalent of Amazon’s cloud services, was estimated to be one-tenth of AWS.

 

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AWS got its start about a decade ago as a way to provide computing power to different divisions of Amazon. It has such a positive impact that it then was being offered to start-ups struggling to scale. After this, Amazon focused on expanding market share like it usually does, and it worked.

 

AWS was expected to rival the other businesses within Amazon. The cloud business has been growing by roughly 40% per year, which is twice the rate of the company overall.

 

Recently though, Google’s cloud service has been competing with AWS on pricing, which has been hurting profitability. Amazon has tried cutting prices many times at the expense of revenue growth. Their solution has been to provide other services such as database software and analytics. Amazon has also increased the number of resellers.

 

The big battle is going to be getting to the large companies that have the largest cloud computing needs.  Many companies just floated through the first years of the cloud, they were not ones to adopt the latest technology. They had compliance and contracting processes to follow. Now, cloud computing is commonplace at these companies.

 

Microsoft’s cloud business has doubled in the last year. This is great considering how they have been suffering from low PC sales. Analysts believe that Microsoft has the edge in obtaining larger companies for clients. This is because they might be able to convince them to use their cloud services in addiction to the Microsoft products they already use. For start-ups though, cloud computing and AWS are synonymous.

 

The cloud computing market is going to continue to grow, and no single company can cover all aspects of it. It will be exciting to see where things go from here.

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Amazon AWS, Cloud Services, Cloud Storage, Microsoft

Amazon and Microsoft Bring Public Cloud Storage to a New Level

Microsoft announced last week that Azure Premium Storage would soon become widely available. The week before this announcement, Amazon launched their Elastic File System, a new public storage cloud, at the AWS Summit. Both of these have helped the adoption of using the cloud.

 

Public storage is usually available in one of three types. Object storage is exposed via standard REST APIs to store and retrieve data. Block storage files are attached to a VM and then become available as local disks. Lastly, archival storage is an alternative to tape-based backing systems. This type of storage is used to store data that is not accessed very often. These three storage types address specific situations, but the network file share equal on the public cloud is missing from the equation.

 

Amazon’s Elastic File System (EFS) provides multiple E2 instances with low-latency, shared access to file systems. EFS provides flexible capacity that adjusts as files are added or removed and is accessible from both Microsoft Windows and Linus operating systems. Because it is available as a multi-user, shared service, it is being backed up with SSD-based storage. The data is copied over multiple zones for redundancy and availability. EFS integrates with Amazon’s security model based on Identity and Access Management (IAM) and VPC security groups. Managers can use standard file and directory permissions to control who can access the systems.

 

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Before this service, customers had to set up dedicated file servers, and this extra step resulted in higher operating and maintenance costs. With EFS, customers get a managed file sharing service backed by SLA, and they only pay for what they use each month. Amazon is charging $0.30 per GB per month, which is 10 times more expensive than Amazon S3 which costs $0.03 per GB per month (excluding access charges and bandwidth). However, while the data stored in S3 can be accessed from any application, the data stored on EFS is available only to those applications running in Amazon EC2. EFS is also primarily meant for administration and management.

 

Amazon is not the first to offer a shared file system like this. Microsoft’s Azure announced a file service last year. Customers look for performance matching when they decide to shift their workloads to the cloud. In recent years, public cloud providers tried to address this by moving to Solid State Drives (SSDs). This type of storage is expensive, but customers still prefer to run their workload sets on them. Microsoft’s Azure Premium Storage claims to offer the best public cloud storage for this type of work. The Premium Storage is aimed for Azure VM workloads that require constant IO performance and low latency. It needs to be attached to Azure DS Series VMs in the form of a Page Blob or Data Disk. Multiple disks can be attached to a VM in order to get up to 32 TB of storage per VM. With the right configuration, VMs can reach what is considered the best performance on the public cloud: 50,000 IOPS.

 

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The new storage can be used by both Windows and Linux VMs. The fee structure is as follows: 128GB for $17.92, 512GB for $66.56 and 1TB for $122.88.

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Cloud Services, Cloud Storage, Cloud Technology

SoftNAS Helps Solve Enterprise Storage Problems

SoftNAS, a leading software company that provides storage software to protect critical data across all types of clouds, announced today that their new solution for on-site, hybrid and public cloud storage management, called the SoftNAS Cloud File Gateway, is available. It aims to manage the high expenses behind baking up data and time required to archive and retrieve older data. SoftNAS Cloud File Gateway allows on-site and hybrid cloud storage systems to exist as a unified, shared file system to maximize savings and flexibility. The software is ideal for enterprises due to its local caching and S3 object storage connectivity.

 

Research done by Markets and Research show that the cloud storage market should grow by about 54% in the next four years. The amount of data being collected and stored is also expected to double every 18 months. SoftNAS is trying to transform how IT is delivered, making data available wherever customers need it in a timely manner without adding too much cost and infrastructure. Their new software allows companies to do just that.

 

SoftNAS Cloud File Gateway overcomes the singular gateway problem facing many companies by combining three things. First is access to on-site and private storage. Second is access to public cloud storage. Lastly is a unified shared system with NAS features via NSF and CIFS/SMB. These allow customers that want a traditional file system as well as the ability to use S3 compatible storage to reasonably implement their wishes.

 

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Businesses struggle with backups that cause restrictions due to time, space and hardware. Any NFS or CIFS compatible backup tool can be used to store high-speed backups using the Cloud File Gateway onto local storage, S3 compatible object storage and iSCSI SANs. Along with the newly released SoftNAS Cloud version 3.3, backups can happen up to 10 times faster and archival use can be up to 5 times faster.

 

The SoftNAS software is the perfect compliment to VMware Virtual SAN with the requisite NAS features, unified storage and CIFS/SMB with Active Directory integration. It extends the VMware to include highly durable storage up to 26 petabytes of secure off-site storage. SoftNAS extends the virtual SAN storage, Offers a full NAS filer feature set and Access to patent pending Hybrid HA tunneling provides non-stop Cloud HA across datacenters with block replication, automatic failover and seamless HA storage between a premise-based VMware data center and vCloud Air.

 

They also provide a complete software-defined storage solution for private, hybrid and public clouds that is easy to download, install and run on existing VMware vSphere host with a feature set that includes encrypted and highly durable storage, SSD caching, accessible via standard protocols, no special hardware required, transforms VMware into a comprehensive storage solution and multi-user capable for service providers.

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Cloud computing, cloud security, Cloud Services

Army Increases Its Cloud Computing Usage

The US Army has begun to use IBM’s hybrid cloud technology to process their transactions, the amount of which surpasses the amount of transactions performed on the New York Stock Exchange. This occurred last year when the Army switched its Logistics Support Activity system to a hybrid cloud.

 

The hybrid cloud system is used by more than 65,000 personnel to obtain, manage and maintain inventories of products needed by the troops out on the field. Utilizing a cloud to perform these functions allow the Army to better utilize the data it collects, which in turn will provide better insight and service to members. IBM claims that since the switch, the Army has seen savings of up to 50%.

 

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With the success of the use of a hybrid cloud, the Army has now set eyes on introducing new analytical services, such as data mining, that can be rolled out to all parts of the organization. Anne Altman, general manager for US federal at IBM, has said that hybrid cloud implementation has enabled the Army to keep its existing investments in on-premise technology while also benefiting from a hybrid cloud, such as security, scalability and being able to connect to existing infrastructure.

 

The Army has always been a progressive adopter of promising information technologies, and other agencies and organizations are following in their footsteps. For example, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) signed a $600 million cloud contract with Amazon Web Services, which IBM lost out on. After this loss, IBM went on to gain momentum in the federal space and signed other cabinet agencies and pushing forward with a cloud data center targeting defense department workloads. This center is housed in the Navy-owned Allegany Ballistics Laboratory in West Virginia.

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Cloud Services, Cloud Technology, Collaboration

HP Cannot Compete As Public Cloud Service Provider

One year ago HP thought it would be competing with Amazon, Google and Microsoft to become the leader in cloud services. HP has re-branded and re-launched their cloud services many times, the most recent being their Helion service. However, the customer base is practically non-existent.

 

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Last year they acquired Eucalyptus, an open-source vendor that was marketed as being Amazon Web Service compatible. This deal made no sense, and just added to HP’s gloomy cloud history. Though they are ceding the public cloud, they are still selling servers. Their largest customers are cloud companies or cloud behemoths. For other companies, HP hopes to build smaller cloud systems in ways that they can also utilize Amazon, Microsoft and other services.

 

For example a company could use HP computers to create content and Microsoft to handle email or heavy workloads on information. Salesforce.com is cloud platform used to share information.

 

HP was the leader in selling computer services to business, so it looked like selling computing in a new way would be easy for them. However, due to the scale of public clouds, with more than a million servers on each one, being difficult to learn it is very hard for newcomers to enter the market.

 

Enabling companies to create their own software applications is an important aspect of corporate technology, and is an area where HP seriously lacks. HP has put their engineers and sales people together to become better acquainted with each others services in order to promote the sharing of assets and collaboration.

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Cloud Services, Cloud Technology, Computer Electronics

Sony To Purchase OnLive Cloud Gaming

OnLive is a cloud gaming company that was once estimated to be worth $1.8 billion but has been burdened by massive amounts of debt. Sony Computer Entertainment has begun to buy different assets of the company for $4.8 million, including U.S. and international patents for cloud gaming services. OnLive will officially close its doors at the end of this month.

 

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OnLive says that its gaming services will continue to be offered until the end of the month, but new subscriptions and renewals will not be processed, and anyone who was charged for these after March 28 with be refunded their money. This purchase comes at a time when Sony is recovering from its own gaming losses, and signifies a push to advance their own gaming technology.

 

The strategic purchase of OnLive gives Sony’s gamer’s great opportunities as well as giving Sony’s cloud portfolio a boost. OnLive was a leader in the field of online, cloud-based gaming, and had investors like Warner Bros, AT&T, and HTC. Despite all of this, other companies have jumped onboard to offer games that stick better than OnLive’s and have been successful. OnLive was started bac in 2007 as one of the most ambitious gaming startups Silicon Valley had ever seen, but they did not receive as large of a customer base as they had hoped and quickly lost steam.

 

Sony now holds a lot of cloud gamin intellectual property, and has used some of it to launch their own gaming platforms. In 2012, they bought the Gaikai streaming service for $380 million to help launch their PlayStation Now cloud game service.

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