Category Archives: Services

News, Services, Storage

China Shuts Down Cloud Storage Services for Pornographic Content

“Internet companies only provide the technology to build cyberspaces for online storage, but in the end, these spaces belong to China’s online territory and, hence, fall within the government’s jurisdiction,” Qin An, a cyber security expert at the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy. China has defined Cloud Storage as a territory of the Chinese government and therefore has the jurisdiction to regulate the content stored within Clouds, allowing for immense censorship.

Pornographic content is widespread on cloud services, with users uploading videos and then selling them. The government believes it should take necessary action to halt this “immoral” behavior.

President Xi Jinping has ignited a moral campaign that aims to tackle corruption within the country’s sprawling administration as well as crackdown on inappropriate online content. After the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications launched a campaign in March “to address the emerging practice of sharing and hosting pornography via cloud storage services.” Many companies cloud storage services have been shut down. The list includes interne giants Sina, Tencent and Kingsoft as well as DBank and Alibaba.

Alibaba announced in March a complete closure of the service but dates have not yet been specified. Sina soon followed on April 25 with their announcement to close cloud services. DBank has become the sixth company to close or reduce operations after this crackdown. DBank will close all services and delete all data on July 1st, 2016. . Sina and Xunlei, which operate Vdisk andKuaiPan storage services respectively, announced closure of free accounts on June 30.

Homemade videos may still be created and uploaded to personal accounts as long as the content is treated as private information.

Throughout the massive crackdown, few companies, such as search engine Baidu and Internet company Qihoo360, have no plans to suspend any operations.

This is not the first of mass censorship in China, as Google Drive, Dropbox, Apple iTunes, Walt Disney’s DisneyLife services, and many online streaming shows have been blolcked in China. The Chinese government has expanded the word pornography to include any material it finds to be objectionable, such as political criticism. What will be censored next?

 

Comments:

Xie Yongjiang, deputy director of the Institute of Internet Governance and Law at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications: “The government has the right to supervise and intercept illegal information spread online, while companies are also obliged to prevent such information from being uploaded online in the first place by using filtration technology.”

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IBM Partners with Reliance Communications

Emerging cloud giant IBM has recently announced its new partnership with Reliance Communications. This partnership serves to expand IBM’s current list of cloud services; IBM aims to provide “highly secure and scalable infrastructure as a service (IaaS)” on the IBM cloud. Reliance Communications will have the ability to provide its client base, consisting of upwards of 39,000 large enterprises, with the robustness that IBM’s cloud platform is able to offer. This infrastructure platform will securely run the business applications of these enterprises.

Reliance Communications has also launched new cloud service offerings that are designed to provide “end-to-end integrated e-commerce services” for India’s small and medium businesses; all of these services will be run on the IBM cloud.

Indian enterprises are increasingly leveraging cloud services and thus require more secure and refined levels of support in order to develop their growing e-commerce business. Research conducted by IBM indicates that many communication service providers have recognized the trend of increased interest in cloud services for their organizations. Reliance Communications joins a long list of communication service providers that IBM has partnered with, including Telstra, AT&T, and Verizon.

About Reliance Communications:

Reliance Communications is an Indian based Telecommunications company with company headquarters in  Navi Mumbai. Founded in 2002, Reliance Communications is India’s foremost and truly integrated telecommunications service providers. The company has a customer base of over 118 million. Reliance Communications owns and operates the world’s largest next generation IP enabled connectivity infrastructure. The company aims to become a world class communication service provider.

Comments:

 

Braham Singh: SVP of Global Product Management, Reliance Communications and Global Cloud Xchange: “Through our partnership with IBM, customers will instantly benefit from the added flexibility and global reach to be more competitive, especially as we look at new opportunities from the ‘Digital India’ program.”

Vivek Malhotra, Cloud Leader, IBM India / South Asia: “We are delighted to partner with Reliance Communications and support their efforts to offer our Cloud services in the Indian market. With a broad cloud portfolio, deep expertise and data privacy, the IBM Cloud offers businesses the ability to optimize its resources and investments to drive growth. With this collaboration, we will be able to address the requirements of organizations who have limited access to enterprise-grade cloud solutions”

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Oracle Hybrid Cloud

Oracle has recently unveiled a new hybrid cloud service that allows customers within highly regulated industries transition to Oracle’s cloud at its own pace. Oracle has effectively placed its public cloud behind the enterprise firewall.

Called Oracle Cloud at Customer, this new service allows customers to enjoy the benefits of Oracle Cloud Services within their own data centers. This service involves a server that runs in the customer’s data centers but is managed by Oracle. This hybrid cloud runs on-premise.

Customers also have the freedom to choose which services they would like to utilize, including disaster recovery, infrastructure services, and data management. This new software is compatible with Oracle Cloud, allowing for workload portability.

Highly regulated may now meet legal requirements pertaining to sovereignty, security, and privacy with this hybrid cloud.

Microsoft, cloud giant, has the most well developed enterprise business compared to other cloud giants such as Amazon and has also developed software similar to that of Oracle in the form of Azure Stack. Azure Stack allows customers to run Azure public cloud in their own data centers, as Oracle Cloud at Customer does.

Oracle has also recently expanded its cloud services to expand across all layers of the stack (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS). These services now include data management, enterprise integration, customer service, supply chain management, and data integration.

 

Comments:

Thomas Kurian, president, “The exact same software that runs our cloud is now available on customers’ data center floors so Oracle infrastructure as a service and Oracle platform as a service is now available in your data center – same software, same APIs – and because it is the same software and because it is the same APIs, it gives you the ability to get seamless workload portability.”

Amit Zavery, senior vice president for the Oracle Cloud Platform, “We bring in a cloud machine, which is basically a replica of our public cloud services, and install it at the customer site. Customers can get the infrastructure, the database, all the public cloud services, but behind the firewall

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Bosch’s IoT

An annual two-day conference for company customers, partners and employees, Bosch ConnectedWorld addressed the company’s plans for the Internet of Things. Bosch, a German global engineering and electronics firm, has launched a series of cloud services for the Internet of Things. These services are intended to improve existing software and connectivity. At the conference, programs pertaining to big data technology were also addressed.

CEO Volkmar Denner has commented, “The Bosch IoT Cloud is the final piece of the puzzle that completes our software expertise.” The company will begin offering these new services in 2017, while the company itself will begin using them this year. 2017 is set to become a milestone year for the company.

The foundation of the Bosch IoT Cloud will be the Bosch’s IoT Suite that has the ability to identify Web-enabled objects and coordinate data exchanges, in addition to the services that it offers. Bosch already offers a myriad of cloud services, including remote access services.

Bosch’s “Industrie 4.0” unites German standards and the Industrial Internet Consotrium (IIC). The program hopes to provide a common language for industrial applications in places such manufacturing and building management.

The company claims that because its cloud infrastructure is located in Germany, it is safer than companies located in the United States, due to increasing security concerns surrounding the National Security Agency (NSA). New concerns arose from the battle between Apple and the FBI. The FBI demanded that Apple develop software that allowed the FBI entry into the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, but Apple claimed that it could not do so without compromising security of all phones. So, not only must American based companies protect against attacks from hackers, but demands from the government as well.

As Bosch is eager to enter the ever growing race for influence over the Internet of Things, Frank Gillett, a principal analyst with Forrester Research Inc., notes that it may not be about who wins the race, but “how much share each gets.”  We will see how large Bosch’s share is in 2017.

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Telstra and Cisco Unveil New Products

Telstra and Cisco have recently announced three new software-designed networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) products that aim to improve both cloud security and global data center interconnection. These products come in addition to Telstra’s two additional functions for its SDN PEN platform, announced in January.

Cloud Gateway Protection: This product was the first of the three made available in beta. It is a virtual security application that aims to secure cloud services and  internet access, as well as Next IP networks against cyber-attacks.

Internet Virtual Private Network (VPN): This product will provide both a secure and encrypted office network over public internet. This can be used by businesses across several sites. The launch is expected to occur later in March.

Data Center Interconnect: This product will extend Telstra’s SDN PEN1 global data center interconnection. Australian data centers will be added. Customers may configure links between domestic and foreign data centers.

These products aim to revolutionize the cloud. The three new products will be connected by Telstra’s self service portal. The two companies have a long standing partnership and this combined effort utilizes both companies’ assets.

The additional features Telstra added in January allow customers to call upon network functions and make digital partnerships.

PEN Exchange: This function allows customers to connect their network services with other customers’.

Improvements to PEN Marketplace: This function improved the marketplace; businesses may order NFV equipment from various vendors.

In addition to the strong partnership between Telstra and Cisco, Telstra has also formed a strong connection with HP and other businesses, allowing Telstra to further its BFV strategies and other programs.

Telstra-2

Comments

Philip Jones, Telstra executive director of Global Products and Solutions: “By allowing us to overcome the constraints of traditional network infrastructure, the software-driven customer experiences dramatically increases our agility by enabling us to quickly create new solutions, and puts the control of those solutions into the hands of our customers.”

Kelly Ahuja, Cisco senior vice president of Service Provider Business, Products, and Solutions: “By combining Cisco’s agile and flexible software platform with Telstra’s customer-focused and customer-friendly range of products, we send a powerful message to the industry and a provide a clear example of how to develop and design the network services of tomorrow.”

David Robertson, Telstra Operations director of Transport and Routing Engineering for Networks, said at the time: “Partnering with multiple vendors helps us to deliver impactful virtualization and orchestration capabilities within a flexible architectural framework. As service providers look to build seamless application delivery networks, vendors that have qualified their technologies with the industry’s standardization groups are seen as more attractive to customers.”

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Microsoft Improves Cloud Security

Microsoft has recently announced its huge developments in the cloud security sector that will allegedly improve the security of online companies. Microsoft plans to unveil more at the RSA Conference, taking place from February 29th to March 4th in San Francisco. These new developments include Customer Lockbox, Microsoft Cloud App Security, Azure Active Directory Identity Protection, and Microsoft Operations Management Suite.

Customer Lockbox: Lockbox helps Microsoft engineers achieve more transparency when they require access to Office 365 accounts to aid in troubleshooting. Lockbox aims to make the customer approval process more efficient. Lockbox is already available to those using Exchange Online.

Microsoft Cloud App Security: This application provides both security and control over data stored in app clouds, including SalesForce and Office 365. This application comes after the addition of security broker Adallom to the cloud giant. Office 365 was also upgraded in conjunction with Microsoft Cloud App Security: users will be made aware of suspicious activity. Uses will also have the choice of approving third party services.

Azure Active Directory Identity Protection: Microsoft has yet to unveil much about thus application, but it is expected that it will provide threat detection. It will utilize Microsoft’s data to investigate threats such as authentications from unfamiliar locations.

Azure

Microsoft Operations Management Suite: Some improvements were made to the Microsoft Operations Management Suite; users will receive information pertaining to malware detections, network activity, and system updates.

 

Comments:

Bret Arsenault, Microsoft’s chief information security officer: “Keeping our network safe, while protecting our data and our customers’ data, is paramount. As Chief Information Security Officer at Microsoft, I am constantly looking for ways to improve our security posture, through new technologies that accelerate our ability to protect, detect and respond to cyber incidents… After years of examining crash dumps that our customers opted to send to Microsoft from more than a billion PCs worldwide, Microsoft has developed the capability to analyze this data to effectively detect compromised systems because crashes are often the result of failed exploitation attempts and brittle malware.”

 

Sarah Fender, principal program manager of Microsoft Azure Cybersecurity: “After years of examining crash dumps that customers sent to Microsoft from more than 1 billion PCs worldwide, we are able to analyze these events to detect when a crash is the result of a failed exploitation attempt or brittle malware. Azure Security Center automatically collects crash events from Azure virtual machines, analyzes the data, and alerts you when a VM is likely compromised…Starting next week, in addition to configuring a Security Policy at the subscription level, you can also configure a Security Policy for a Resource Group—enabling you to tailor the policy based on the security needs of a specific workload. Azure Security Center continually monitors your resources according to the policy you set, and alerts you if a configuration drifts or appropriate controls are not in place.”

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Nimble Collective Funding

Nimble Collective has recently closed a round of funding that raked in $8.5 million. This funding was led by venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. $1 million of this funding comes from individual investors.

With this funding, New Enterprise Associates Partner Greg Papadopoulos joins the board at Nimble Collective. Three executives were from the animated film industry were also named. These executives are Mark Walsh (former director at Pixar), Eric Darnell (previously with DreamWorks), and Peter Ramsey (previously with DreamWorks). The leaders of this startup have a plethora of experience with the animation industry.

The startup aims to develop a platform that could help an estimated 10 million professional and amateur animation artists. The platform will allow artists to create and collaborate and gives them the ability to distribute their work.

nimble c

The platform will require licenses for existing animation software, but provides artists with a secure cloud environment to work. It will establish a community that allows artists to communicate with ease.

While pricing for this service has not been announced, the startup wants to lower the cost of animation to give as many people possible access to this service.

A beta launch is expected in the second half of 2016.

Comments:

Nimble CCO Rex Grignon, former head of character animation on DreamWorks’ Madagascar, commented, “Nimble is delivering studio caliber tools and collaboration capabilities–all in the cloud–that free-up animators to do what they do best — create. Our goal is to enable a new generation of creatives to create, collaborate and prosper by building their own unique, modern content to reach huge audiences

Howse said: “The animation content market generates $90 billion annually, yet millions of talented animators simply do not have access to the expensive studio-quality technology tools and big budgets currently required to bring high-quality creative projects to fruition. Nimble will change that by democratizing the market with the world’s first collaborative, cloud-based platform for generating content that animators can distribute and profit from in exciting new ways.”

 

 

About the Startup:

Based in Palo Alto, the startup was founded in November of 2014. The company was cofounded By Rex Grignon, Scott LaFleur, Michael Howse, and Jason Schleifer. Grignon is Nimble’s president and chief executive officer. He was previously he founding head of character animation at DreamWorks animation. Michael Howse is an entrepreneur who worked at 3dfx and was the CEO  of startup Bigfoot Networks.

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Microsoft’s Underwater Data Center

Microsoft has recently developed a data center in an extremely unusual place- the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Microsoft has recently unveiled Project Natick, an initiative to bring cloud computing infrastructure to cities that are closer to bodies of water such as the ocean. It is estimate that half of the world’s population lives within 200km of the ocean, so placement of data centers underwater can strategically improve efficiency and response.

In 2015, Microsoft built a capsule filled with pressurized nitrogen that featured a single rack of servers and heat exchangers clamped to the hull in order to regulate the temperature inside. The capsule was submerged 30 feet underwater off of the California coast for 100 days. Such capsules could have their computing hardware replaced every five years; the lifespan of these capsules in 20 years. Microsoft aims to make these under water data centers self-sufficient by utilizing renewable energy to power them. Microsoft is exploring wave and tidal energy.

 

Microsoft explained that “Project Natick reflects Microsoft’s ongoing quest for cloud data center solutions that offer rapid provisioning, lower costs, high responsiveness, and are more environmentally sustainable…”The vision of operating containerized data centers offshore near major population centers anticipates a highly interactive future requiring data resources located close to users. Deepwater deployment offers ready access to cooling, renewable power sources, and a controlled environment.”

Microsoft stated: “We see this as an opportunity to field long-lived, resilient datacenters that operate ‘lights out’ — nobody on site — with very high reliability for the entire life of the deployment, possibly as long as 10 years.”

 

Additional comments:

Microsoft spokesperson Athima Chansanchai has commented, “That’s one of the big advantages of the underwater data center scheme—reducing latency by closing the distance to populations and thereby speeding data transmission. Half the world’s population, Cutler says, lives within 120 miles of the sea, which makes it an appealing option…Cooling is an important aspect of data centers, which normally run up substantial costs operating chiller plants and the like to keep the computers inside from overheating. The cold environment of the deep seas automatically makes data centers less costly and more energy-efficient.”

News, Services

Oracle Expands Cloud Services to Hotel Industry

Oracle has further developed the quality of services offered to hotels and casinos with Oracle Hospitality cloud services. These new services aim to simplify IT infrastructure while simultaneously allowing increased efficiency in operation. Ray Carlin, vice president of product strategy at Oracle Hospitality, commented, “To win in the highly competitive hotel industry, hotels need to deliver personalized guest experiences, increase operational efficiency, and effectively manage distribution. “Oracle’s cloud-based solutions bring significant advantages in all these key areas, while at the same time streamlining on premise IT management and offering enhanced application and data security built in.”

Oracle OPERA cloud services allows for an extensive guest profiling capability, allowing hotels and casinos to personalize a customer’s experience with ease. Positive guest experience increases chance for return in the future. OPERA cloud also runs on MICROS tablets and other smartphones, allowing guest services to be accessed from a multitude of areas in or near the hotel. The service enables hotels to maximize occupancy while effectively managing room rates. OPERA simplifies information technology infrastructure which allows upgrades to be made with ease. With all of these services, Oracle included a high level of cloud security matched with high performance.

Carlin stated, “Mobility has become a key competitive differentiator in the hotel industry. With the ability to access information instantly via mobile devices, guests now expect a very personalized mobile-enabled hospitality experience. Oracle OPERA Cloud enables operators to quickly and cost-effectively make that vision a reality.”

Oracle’s OPERA allows hotels and casinos to enhance a guest’s experience and provide important services.

 

Oracle continues to display its strength in the public cloud computing industry. Oracle Cloud currently supports 62 million users and upwards of 23 billion transactions per day. With 19 data centers across the globe, Oracle is giving the cloud giants like Microsoft a run for their money.

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AliCloud and NVIDIA to Invest $1 Billion

AliCloud, the public cloud computing sector of Alibaba, has recently joined with NVIDIA to invest a billion dollars in cloud computing research and development. AliCloud claims that it will hire up to 1,000 data developers over the course of the next three years in order to compete with cloud giant Amazon Web Services and develop its big data analytics program. The investments will assist AliCloud’s data analysis implementations. AliCloud has recently commented in a statement: “These products and services cover all aspects of the so-called data development chain, including processing, analysis, computing engine, machine learning and data application.” This investment is made in the hopes that the demand for storage and processing from organizations and agencies will increase in the following years.

The big data platform will allow complex information to be analyzed with increased efficiency. s. Simon Hu, AliCloud’s president claimed that “The Big Data Platform fulfills our vision of sharing our vast data troves that will create immense value to our users. AliCloud’s rate of growth is one of the fastest among global peers.”

NVIDIA will help Alibaba transform its AliCloud sector, allowing the cloud to provide learning capabilities for businesses. It is also rumored that NVIDIA will help AliCloud with it quantum cloud computing research. Because this quantum computing is just beginning to emerge, Alibaba may be planning to become one of the first providers of this advanced form of computing. Alibaba has already co-founded a quantum computing lab with the Chinese Academy of Sciences; so, Alibaba may become the first provider of quantum computing as a service and establish its dominance in the cloud computing industry.

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