With 10 simultaneous tracks, keynotes, general sessions and targeted breakout classes, Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo are two of the most important technology events of the year. Since its launch over eight years ago, Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo have presented a rock star faculty as well as showcased hundreds of sponsors and exhibitors!
In this blog post, I provide 7 tips on how, as part of our world-class faculty, you can deliver one of the most popular sessions at our events. But before reading these essential tips, please take a moment and watch this brief video from Sandy Carter.
Secrets of @CloudExpo Sponsors | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #DevOps #BigData
The best way to leverage your Cloud Expo presence as a sponsor and exhibitor is to plan your news announcements around our events. The press covering Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo will have access to these releases and will amplify your news announcements. More than two dozen Cloud companies either set deals at our shows or have announced their mergers and acquisitions at Cloud Expo. Product announcements during our show provide your company with the most reach through our targeted audiences.
Fusion’s Cloud Solutions Support Hospital System’s Security Initiatives | @CloudExpo @FusionConnectSM #Cloud
Fusion has announced that a major East Coast hospital system has signed a three year, $1.5 million agreement with Fusion to upgrade the healthcare institution’s communications infrastructure, facilitating its migration to the cloud while protecting its significant technology investments. A key reason for the hospital system’s selection was Fusion’s ability to customize its secure, cloud-ready solution with call control technology that prevents fraudulent calls from reaching patients within the institution, supporting compliance requirements to shield patient information.
Microsoft donates $1 billion of cloud services to non-profit groups
Microsoft has announced that it will give non profits groups $1 billion worth of cloud services in a in a three year charitable scheme designed to ‘advance the public good’ and solve some of the world’s toughest problems.
The majority of the provisions will be free or discounted cloud services, namely Azure computing power and data storage and Office 365 corporate programmes and other products. The voluntary groups, charities and non-profit organisations will have a global spread, according to Microsoft President Brad Smith, writing on the company blog.
Other beneficiaries will include universities that qualify for free Azure services. There is also a plan to invest in organisations that supply Internet connectivity to the developing world. The goal of the new program is to make 20 investments in 15 countries, Smith said.
Initially Microsoft aims to serve 70,000 non profit organisations over a three year period beginning immediately. The target is to increase Azure’s use at research universities and achieve a 50% extension on an existing programme that already reaches 600 academic institutions.
Microsoft’s new philanthropic arm and its business development unit are to collaborate on ‘white space’, investing time and money in order to make use of unused television airwaves, aggregating the frequencies to create the networks for Internet connectivity.
In an example of how the new scheme could work, Microsoft has funded Kenyan organisation outfit Mawingu (the Swahili word for cloud) which provides Internet connectivity to schools and small businesses in areas without electricity supplies. Microsoft CEO Nadella visited Mawingu in July to as part of the publicity for the release of Windows 10.
The news comes a month after Microsoft rebranded its charity work as Microsoft Philanthropies and CEO Satya Nadella is currently at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The timing of the announcement could raise the profile the company’s cloud service businesses. Academia, a key segment branding software and tools among students and educators, is dominated by Microsoft rivals Apple and Alphabet, according to Bloomberg.
“The most fundamental way we advance our mission is through technology that reaches people through the market,” said Smith, “part of the history of the company was to make sure our technology was reaching everybody.”
An Overview of Dell vWorkspace
An Overview of Dell vWorkspace Unified business procedures are a key offering of the cloud revolution, and virtualization plays a key role in unifying business procedures across an organization. The entrance of Dell into the virtualization space speaks volumes about this trend. The recent acquisition of virtualization solutions company Quest by Dell has brought the […]
The post An Overview of Dell vWorkspace appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Microsoft announces $1bn cloud pledge for “public good”
(c)iStock.com/tumpikuja
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has revealed a three part philanthropic initiative whereby the tech giant will donate $1 billion (£704m) of cloud computing resources towards non-profit organisations and education over the next three years.
The Redmond firm argues the cloud is a vital resource for “unlocking the secrets held by data”, in terms of communications and problem solving, better delivery of services, and helping organisations work in a more productive and efficient manner.
The initiative comes from the recently formed Microsoft Philanthropies unit, and will include access to Microsoft Azure, the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), and CRM Online for non-profits and non-governmental organisations, as well as further access to Office 365.
“Cloud computing has emerged as a vital resource for addressing the world’s problems,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chief legal officer in a company blog post. “It is vital that the cloud serve the public good in the broadest sense. While the marketplace is reaching a rapidly growing number of customers around the world, it is not yet benefiting everyone.
“If we’re going to realise Microsoft’s mission of empowering every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more, we need to reach those that the market is not yet reaching,” he added.
Microsoft is certainly not the first company to be promoting a philanthropic cause – Facebook’s continued quest to get the entire planet online being a case in point – but the more cynical in the industry have previously asked quite how altruistic such goals are; “business dressed as charity”, as The Verge put it back in 2013. In 2014, Rackspace offered investment for a data science boot camp, admitting that while the key was to get the knowledge out to market, it would be no bad thing if the graduates were recruited by the managed cloud vendor.
Among the projects Microsoft has already contributed to are a biodiversity research program in Brazil, a research laboratory at the University of Texas, and leveraging cloud-based health records management in Botswana.
You can find out more here.
Enterprise storage migration: Reliability key – but UK lagging behind
(c)iStock.com/Henrik5000
The latest research from Western Digital Corporation has revealed that reliability continues to be more important than cost for enterprises looking to move their data to the cloud.
The survey, which polled 700 senior technology decision makers across three continents including in the energy, finance and healthcare industries, saw cloud budgets remain the leading growth area in IT, with more than four in five (84%) either planning, are completing or have completed cloud migrations.
Yet as far as the UK is concerned, there is less cloud hype than suspected; two in five CIOs (39%) say they have less than 10% of their company’s data in the cloud.
80% of overall respondents say their storage demands are growing, while three quarters (74%) say they need to keep up with performance demands of applications. More than half (55%) say they are not storing enough data to keep the business healthy long term; strategies for correcting this include data analytics (81% of respondents) and secure offline, or cold, storage and archiving (74%).
One of the more interesting parts of the research related to the Internet of Things (IoT). China, France, and the US agree that the Internet of Things is driving a need for change in data centres, while the energy, finance, telecom, and manufacturing sectors are most likely to receive the greatest impact from it.
83% of respondents overall argue the IoT, big data, and mobility drives change in data centres. “The findings of our survey underscore the increasing value of data, where dependable access through reliable storage systems and devices is more critical than ever before,” said Dave Tang, Western Digital SVP.
Open Hybrid Clouds | @CloudExpo #Cloud #BigData #IoT #ML #Microservices
The cloud has evolved quickly. Businesses have weighed the perks of private, public, and even hybrid clouds. If those options weren’t enough, here comes the open hybrid cloud.
An open hybrid cloud leverages the benefits of accessing data and processes across private and public implementations, while facilitating open source development. It is a model that has expanded within the military. In the search for costs savings, the Department of Defense has experimented with many new cloud models.
Meet the Sensors By @PSilvas | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #Wearables
I often write about the Internet of Things, or the soon-to-be-cliché IoT. You know, the smart-fridges, smart-cars, smart-thermostats, healthcare devices, wearables and any of those connected devices that have a sensor, gathers data and reports back to some entity. You are able to control these devices (and see the data) with mobile apps or even your own voice and gestures. They are all the rage and sitting at the top of the Gartner Hype Cycle.
But it’s all the various sensors inside those devices that are doing the actual measuring, calculating, tracking and reporting. Each has its own specialty providing specific functionality. I’ve always wondered about what’s inside some of the wearables so let’s take a look at a few.
Service-Oriented Applications | @DevOpsSummit @AppNeta #DevOps #Microservices
With microservices, SOA and distributed architectures becoming more popular, it is becoming increasingly harder to keep track of where time is spent in a distributed application when trying to diagnose performance problems. Distributed tracing systems attempt to address this problem by following application requests across service boundaries, persisting metadata along the way that provide context for fine-grained performance monitoring.