In his session at 19th Cloud Expo, Claude Remillard, Principal Program Manager in Developer Division at Microsoft, contrasted how his team used config as code and immutable patterns for continuous delivery of microservices and apps to the cloud. He showed how the immutable patterns helps developers do away with most of the complexity of config as code-enabling scenarios such as rollback, zero downtime upgrades with far greater simplicity. He also demoed building immutable pipelines in the cloud using both containers and VMs.
[session] #MachineLearning – It’s All About the Data | @CloudExpo #BigData
Data is the fuel that drives the machine learning algorithmic engines and ultimately provides the business value.
In his session at 20th Cloud Expo, Ed Featherston, director/senior enterprise architect at Collaborative Consulting, will discuss the key considerations around quality, volume, timeliness, and pedigree that must be dealt with in order to properly fuel that engine.
Hostway to Provide Computing Infrastructure for Core dna Platform | @CloudExpo #API #Cloud
Hostway has announced an agreement with Core dna to provide the computing infrastructure for Core dna’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that is used to build marketing, e-commerce, intranets and community portal solutions.
In addition, Hostway makes available for the first time the option to deploy Core dna on a dedicated private cloud for enterprise customers requiring high levels of security for compliance with regulations. Available now, these are custom configurations that are priced individually.
Migrating from Desktop to Cloud-Based Software | @CloudExpo #API #Cloud #Security
Seeing how a chorus of business leaders and tech innovators has sung praises to the cloud for quite some time, you’re probably aware of the fact that the cloud adaptation is simply flourishing. According to research from cloud solutions provider RightScale, roughly 93% of business today are using cloud technology in some form or another. If you’re not that familiar with the technology, you might be wondering – why is cloud just so popular? Furthermore, you’re probably also thinking – are cloud services right for your organization?
Google Unveils Machine Learning APIs
In a latest move to take on competitors in the cloud market, Google has unveiled a set of machine learning tools, APIs, and services. This announcement also signifies a big push into machine learning and artificial intelligence market for the search-engine giant.
A slew of announcements were made in this regard. Here’s a look at each:
Google Cloud Jobs API
This API will make it easier for companies to find candidates for open positions in their company, as it uses machine learning to better match the skills of candidates to the existing open jobs. This API is available only in the US and Canada as of now, though it plans to expand it to other countries soon.
As soon as the announcement was made, two leading job sites – Careerbuilder.com and Dice.com, adopted this API and built a prototype within just 48 hours. Currently, this API is available in limited alpha on both these sites.
Cloud Vision API
The next announcement pertains to Google’s popular cloud API – the Cloud Vision API. The company has decided to reduce the price of this service by almost 80 percent because of the significant savings that come from switching its operations to custom TPU chips, that have the capability to amplify machine learning performance. As a result of these capabilities, performance and efficiency are greatly increased, thereby making this API a compelling product for customers.
In addition, Google has enhanced its image recognition capabilities, and has also brought in capabilities to identify landmarks, logos, and other entities.
Cloud Translation API
Google is planning to release the premium version of another popular API called the Cloud Translation API. This API is based on Google Neural Machine Translation System, that uses machine learning to improve speech recognition. This API has the capability to reduce translation errors anywhere between 55 to 85 percent – a significant jump when compared to existing services. It is mainly used in the travel industry where getting the best and closest translation can make a substantial difference.
Currently, this API supports eight languages, namely, English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Turkish, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. Soon, the company is expected to add more languages to this API.
Cloud Natural Language API
Google has decided to make its Cloud Natural Language API available for the general public. Also based on machine learning, this API allows a user to reveal the structure, emotions and meaning of any text. In a sample demonstration, Google showed how news stories from the New York Times can be analyzed for sentiments. The same idea can be extended to digital marketing campaigns, where marketers can use the sentiment analysis capability of this API to monitor online product reviews and customer service. The latest version also comes with advanced features such as a more granular sentiment analysis and better syntax analysis.
Cloud Machine Learning Group
Lastly, Google is creating a Cloud Machine Learning Group headed by Fei-Fei Li, former director of Stanford’s AI Lab, and Jia Li, former research head of SnapChat. This group is expected to conduct many more experiments in AI and machine learning.
With these announcements, Google is cementing its place in the competitive cloud market.
The post Google Unveils Machine Learning APIs appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
How SimpliVity Gave Me Back My Weekend
At GreenPages, we have a well outfitted lab environment that is used for customer facing demos and as a sandbox for our technical team to learn/experiment/test various solutions in the market. We’ve been in the process of refreshing the lab for a couple of months but have kept a skeleton environment up and running for simple administrative remote access. As part of the refresh, we had been cleaning up old VMs, systems, storage, etc. to reduce our footprint, and as part of the cleanup we moved several management VMs from an aging HP blade environment over to a small 2+1 SimpliVity OmniStack environment. I really didn’t think much about it at the time as I just needed a place to put these VMs that had no tie to older systems, which were being decommissioned. Also, the OmniStack made sense because it had plenty of capacity and performance self-contained, thus freeing up any reliance on other external storage and older compute environments.
I just recently came back from a West coast trip. While I was there, I needed to re-configure something so that a colleague could do some other configuration work. I brought up my RDP client to login to the jump box terminal server we use to administer the lab, and I got an error that said my profile wouldn’t load. So, I VPN in to check out the VM, logged in as the local administrator, and quickly discovered the box had been pwned with ransomware and a good majority of the data files (my profile included) were encrypted. After saying a few choice words to myself I investigated and determined an old lab account with a less than secure password had been used to access the system. I got the account disabled and started thinking to myself how long it’s going to take me to either attempt to ‘clean’ the box and get the files decrypted (assuming I could even find a tool to do it) or to just trash and rebuild the box. I figured that was going to take up most of my weekend but then the thought crossed my mind that we had moved all of the management VMs over to the SimpliVity boxes.
For those who may not be aware, SimpliVity’s core value proposition is all around data protection via integrated backup, replication, and DR capabilities. I knew we had not configured any specific protection policies for those management VMs, we had simply dumped them into newly created resource pool, but I figured it was worth a look. I logged into the vSphere client and took a look at the SimpliVity plugin for that terminal server VM and, low and behold, it had been backed up and replicated on a regular basis from the moment it was put into the environment. From there, I simply went back a couple of days in the snap-in, right click, restore VM. Within about half a second, the VM had been restored, and I powered it up and within another five minutes, I was logging into it via my RDP session from the West coast. Bottom line, SimpliVity took a four to six hour process and transformed it into something that takes less than six minutes. Therefore, I suggest you check it out. Thank you SimpliVity, for being kind enough to donate some gear to our lab and for giving me some family time back this weekend!
By Chris Ward, CTO, GreenPages Technology Solutions
If you would like to discuss how SimpliVity could fit into your IT strategy, reach out to us here.
Service providers need to join forces to address enterprise IT complexities
(c)iStock.com/Massimo Merlini
A new report from Tata Communications offers a warning for service providers; their solutions do not always meet the expectations of enterprises.
The research, which was conducted by IDC among enterprises and service providers across 32 countries, saw enterprises rank security, cited by 52% of respondents, cloud (43%) and mobility (32%) as their primary technology priorities.
But there may be a gap between what enterprises want and what service providers can give. Enterprises see service providers’ main roles as increasing their network capacity or reach, cited by almost three quarters (73%) of those polled. Delivering hybrid networking services was cited by 66%, while meeting cloud needs was key to almost half (48%) of respondents.
Enterprises evidently still see their providers primarily as network suppliers, but the research sounds a note of caution over how service providers need to up their capabilities in cloud as well as think further about partnerships. “Through the right partnerships, service providers are able to open up new revenue streams in growth areas such as cloud and unified communication and collaboration, without having to invest in developing their own solutions from scratch,” said James Parker, president of global sales at Tata.
“Our research indicates that many service providers haven’t kept up with the rapid pace of digital disruption in enterprises, which is jeopardising their ability to win business in this segment,” said James Eibisch, research director at IDC. “In order for service providers to be able to meet enterprises’ changing IT needs, they should explore partnering with other like-minded players, complementing their own solutions portfolio.
“The right cloud ecosystem, for example, makes it quicker and more cost-effective for service providers to grow their revenues from the cloud,” Eibisch added.
How small businesses can succeed with their big data projects
(c)iStock.com/Matej Moderc
It’s no secret that businesses are excited about the possibilities they can gain from big data; large corporations have been tapping big data analytics for years as a way to increase revenue and improve efficiency.
Small businesses, on the other hand, may feel a bit left out of the trend. Big data, after all, sounds like a complex strategy using the latest technology to discover important insights. In other words, it’s something that feels like is out of reach. But that would be a mistake. Small businesses now have access to big data solutions thanks to decreasing costs and greater understanding of its uses.
The big questions small businesses have is how best they can use it. With so many possibilities ripe for the taking, what strategy can they pursue to ensure their big data projects are successful? While no strategy is fool proof, there are a number of guidelines small businesses can adopt to increase their chances for success.
Adopting a big data strategy will certainly be a change of pace for a small business. Big data has the potential to completely change how a company operates and what they focus on. Due to this factor, it’s important that small businesses trying out big data for the first time don’t aim too big. Keep expectations manageable. Big data can be collected from a vast array of sources, but if a small business narrows its focus, it will be able to pinpoint specific ways in which it can use big data.
One good place to start is through augmenting the knowledge and data that a small business already has. There’s no need to install Internet of Things sensors to collect data for a company to analyse. Any small business should already have lots of data to examine, from sales data to social media interactions. Mining that information for helpful insights is a good first step before growing a big data strategy.
Specificity is something that applies to all big data projects. Small businesses need to be able to clearly define their goals while also specifying the results they want to achieve. Without clear direction, companies will spend a lot of time collecting and analysing data with no real purpose. Organisations must declare the business cases they’re going after with their big data projects. With this in mind, they’ll be able to proceed with confidence.
Even with these guidelines, small businesses may still struggle implementing big data solutions. In many cases, they’ll have little knowledge of the tools available at their disposal, let alone how to use them in the right way. The answer may be found in the cloud. Just as with many other services, big data analytics is something offered by many cloud service providers. Some of the options are free, while others can be purchased through modest monthly fees, but they all can grant small businesses certain capabilities they’ve never had before.
With big data available through the cloud, small businesses don’t have to worry about investing large sums of money into new software and hardware. Cloud services with a modular data centre can also help smaller companies digitise their existing data, essentially putting them in a form where they can finally be analysed for big data insights.
It all comes down to finding and adopting the right tools. There are a lot of tools available out there, so small businesses need to find one that is user friendly and features a short learning curve. Chances are a small business doesn’t have much in the way of big data experts, so picking an easy-to-use analytics dashboard goes a long way toward promoting a successful big data project. The right tool will help small businesses unify their sources, aiding them in getting the most out of the data already in their hands.
With something as complex as big data, no single solution will provide the pathway to immediate success, but big data projects can be more effective with the above tips in mind. Every small business will have different goals and objectives, but the one unifying aspect is that big data can help them all. Small businesses don’t have to feel like big data is out of reach. If anything, there has been no better time to give it a shot than right now.
Read more: Survey warns about security of small businesses using free cloud storage
[video] A New Era of Containers | @CloudExpo #DevOps #Docker #Kubernetes
In his keynote at 19th Cloud Expo, Sheng Liang, co-founder and CEO of Rancher Labs, discussed the technological advances and new business opportunities created by the rapid adoption of containers. With the success of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and various open source technologies used to build private clouds, cloud computing has become an essential component of IT strategy. However, users continue to face challenges in implementing clouds, as older technologies evolve and newer ones like Docker containers gain prominence. He explored these challenges and how to address them, while considering how containers will influence the direction of cloud computing.
Sponsorship Opportunities at @CloudExpo NY | #ML #Cloud #BigData #DigitalTransformation
20th Cloud Expo, taking place June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world.
Cloud computing is now being embraced by a majority of enterprises of all sizes. Yesterday’s debate about public vs. private has transformed into the reality of hybrid cloud: a recent survey shows that 74% of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy.