If you’re an expert in cloud computing, Seattle is probably your best choice of location. Though historically Seattle has been a prosperous city with a fair share of tech jobs, the last few years has elevated its status to that of a cloud hub. If you’re still wondering why, it’s home to the two biggest companies in cloud computing – Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. With these two giants calling Seattle home, it’s no brainer to understand the kind of opportunities that’s available for cloud techies in this city.

This boom in Seattle has augured well for not just this city, but for the entire state of Washington as well. Statistics show that from 2013 to 2016, labor force in Washington grew by 7.2 percent. The number of people employed in cloud-related jobs grew by 26 percent during the same period, and accounts for the employment of more than 80,000 people.

It’s not just the tech sector, but other areas have also benefited largely from this cloud boom. People who move in here need houses to live, and this has helped the construction industry in a big way. In many ways, this boom was a blessing for the real-estate industry that was under pressure during and after the Great Recession of 2008. This scenario also explains why Seattle’s home prices did not drop as much, when compared to other major cities in the US.

Besides construction and real-estate, other industries such as retail and consumer goods have also gained much from the cloud boom, albeit indirectly. When more people move into a city, they fuel more demand for goods and services. In general, the tech industry is known for its above average salaries, so those employed in it have gone beyond the staples, thereby invigorating a falling luxury goods market. In other words, a wide spectrum of retail industry in Seattle has benefited by the cloud boom.

With all these sectors showing remarkable progress, the government is not to be left behind. More money by way of taxes has gone into the government’s coffers, and this has led to a substantial increase in social and welfare programs. The public school system of Washington is considered one of the best in the country, and rightly so, because of its larger availability of funds when compared to other states.

In all, cloud industry has contributed in a big way to the growth of Seattle, and the state of Washington as a whole. This region is only expected to get better in the future, as both AWS and Microsoft are expected to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years. To add to this cheer, Google is also looking to expand its presence in Seattle. Already, Google has offices in the Puget Sound area as well as in nearby Kirkland, and it plans to construct a new campus just a few blocks from Amazon’s headquarters. Another player, Facebook, is already rapidly expanding in Seattle, and hundreds of startup companies have come up in Seattle to service these larger players.

So, if you’re looking for a change in 2017, you know where to head!

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Alibaba’s growing aspirations to be the one-stop tech shop for all consumer and business products in Asia, became one inch closer to reality with its entry into the Japanese market. On Thursday, the company announced a couple of partnerships that are likely to give a big boost to its two growing business arms – content delivery and cloud storage.

One of the partnership is with the Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corporation. Already, SoftBank is one of Alibaba’s largest investors, and with this agreement, it has entered into a joint venture to run a local cloud center hosted by SB Cloud Corporation. With this partnership, Alibaba has officially entered the Japanese market, and it will offer cloud computing services to local clients. The other agreement is with Oriental DreamWorks, through which it plans to bring animated movies to its Chinese customers on its online streaming platforms – Tudou.com and Youku.com.

This entry into Japan is significant in many ways. Alibaba has been strategizing to have a global footprint with a stronghold in Asia. Already, it’s cloud product called Aliyun, has a presence in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates, and with this data center, the total number of global data centers has increased to 14. Outside of Asia, it has a big presence in the US, and a growing one in Australia.

Currently, Alibaba is one of the largest conglomerates in the world, and owns the following companies:

• Aliyun – Cloud computing platform
• Tmall – Largest platform for businesses and retailers for B2B and B2C transactions in China.
• Taobao – Largest online shopping platform in China
• AliExpress – A global retail market platform
• 1688 – Leading wholesale marketplace in China
• Alimama – Largest online marketing platform in China
• Youku.com and Tudou.com – China’s largest online video streaming platforms
• Cainiao – Platform for logistics and operation management.
• Alitalk – Instant messenger for merchants and businesses

With such an impressive portfolio of companies, it’s no surprise that Alibaba is looking beyond the Chinese shores. If you look closely, Alibaba and Amazon have a lot in common. Both companies started out as e-commerce retailers and branched into public cloud computing line of business. Also, these two companies are leaders in their respective geographical areas, though Amazon is much larger and has a wider global footprint when compared to Alibaba. This partly explains why Alibaba is trying to mirror Amazon, and even compete with it on the global market.

It is significant to note that Amazon opened its new cloud data center in London last week to meet the growing demands of its British clients, and also to prepare for the possible consequences of Brexit. Likewise, Alibaba also entered the Australian market a few weeks ago to cater to the growing needs of its Australian customers. In this sense, both the companies have been aggressively pursuing different markets, and it’ll be interesting to see how the competition plays out in the Asian market, especially considering that Gartner predicts the Asia Pacific and Japan cloud market to be worth $11.5 billion by 2018.

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The number of cloud-based products and platforms available today is simply mind-boggling. Yet, there is space for more companies to join the bandwagon of providing cloud services to individual and corporate customers because the demand for cloud is so high. As more individuals and companies turn to cloud for storage and computation, this market is expected to see explosive growth over the next few years.

To tap into this power of cloud and to take a share in the burgeoning cloud market, many companies are looking to monetize their cloud service. In other words, companies that are both directly and indirectly involved in the cloud market, want to get revenue from their cloud products. According to a survey conducted by North Bridge, a growth equity and venture capital firm, and Wikibon, a research analyst firm, a whopping 79.9% of companies involved in the cloud market get some form of revenue through the cloud. Further, 42% of the 1,351 companies surveyed get at least 50% revenue from cloud.

These numbers are significant as they reflect the growing might of cloud, and its pervasiveness among both individual and corporate customers. Also, it shows that more companies are looking for ways to leverage cloud-based services to boost their income streams, rather than being passive players. For example, let’s say, company A has been taking the services of a cloud provider to achieve operational efficiency and to cut back on its costs. Seeing the potential of cloud, it wants to integrate this cloud service into its own product, so the benefits are passed on to the end customers. This reports shows that two out of every five companies that are using cloud services are thinking along these lines. They have either successfully launched such products or are in the process of doing so.

The report, however, does not mention how much monetization is happening, but it can be surmised that much of the revenue is coming from cloud-based e-commerce applications. A similar report published in July 2016 shows that cloud spending is growing by leaps and bounds. It is expected to increase from $75 billion in 2015 to $522 billion by 2026, resulting in an average annual compound growth rate of 19%. This represents a multi-fold increase in revenue, that is likely to come from a wider adoption of cloud across varied sectors including government, healthcare, insurance, and retail. Also, this adoption is expected to spread across the entire world within a decade, so the benefits are shared by customers, regardless of their physical location.

The report further states that cloud will account for nearly 50 percent of all spending related to hardware, software, and outsourcing services, by 2026. The biggest cloud providers are the ones who are likely to gain the most from this wider adoption of cloud, and this is already showing in the increasing revenue of companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, Baidu, and IBM.  However, the others involved in this market are also expected to gain much from this trend. In all, it’s bounty time for anyone involved with the cloud.

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Oracle is the perfect poster boy for the growing might of cloud computing. This tech stalwart is steadily moving its operations to the cloud, and is slowly moving away from selling its traditional on-premise licensed software.  This transition is expected to reflect in its earnings too. In fact, many analysts are looking forward to the quarterly results that will be announced on December 15.

The street consensus is an earnings of $9.14 billion in revenue, that would lead to an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.60. They also expect Oracle to announce a positive outlook for the next quarter, and expect it to generate around $9.24 billion in revenue, amounting to an earnings per share of $0.64.

While it’s not a surprise to see tech companies growing and expanding their offerings, what’s special about Oracle is it’s move to the cloud. In many ways, this also reflects the growing might of the cloud industry at large.

NetSuite

A defining moment in Oracle’s cloud transition path came on November 7th of this year when it acquired a cloud based provider called NetSuite for a sum of $9.3 billion. NetSuite is a provider of customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning software, and with this acquisition, Oracle took a big step forward into the world of cloud services. It’s worthy to note that Oracle’s co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison owned almost 40 percent in NetSuite.

Textura

Before NetSuite, Oracle acquired other companies in the cloud space as well. In May of 2016, it purchased Textura for a sum of $663 million. Textura is a cloud-based construction management company that handled around $3.4 billion in payments at the time of its acquisition. This company provided services to more than 6,000 companies in the construction sector by helping them manage projects within specified time and budget constraints, and also, by reducing risk for developers.

Opower

Oracle acquired Opower on May 2nd, 2016 for a sum of $532 million. Opower is a prominent player in the utilities market, with its offering of customer engagement and energy efficiency cloud services for utility providers. This company has more than 100 clients, including some prominent names such as PG&E, Exelon, and National Grid. The big data platform of Opower is believed to store and analyze more than 600 billion meter readings from around 60 million end customers. The analysis from this data helps its clients to proactively meet regulations, and offer a digital experience for its end customers.

With these acquisitions, oracle expanded its reach across different sectors. In addition, many of Oracle’s services are moved to the cloud, so it was able to make a larger foray into cloud-based services. Some reports even show that the company is vying to become the first cloud provider to hit the $10 billion revenue mark in the Saas/ PaaS segment.

This ambition could become a reality soon, as the tech giant has overcome the initial bottlenecks that come with the acquisition of new companies. In this sense, the worst of cloud transition is behind Oracle now, and it can look forward to an exciting future in the cloud world!

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NASA is constantly looking for ideas and technologies that will help in its quest for extraterrestrial life, and cloud can be one technology that has the capability to aid this search.

In fact, NASA understands the potential of cloud, and this is why its chief technology and innovation officer, Tom Soderstrom, visited the re:Invent conference hosted by Amazon Web Services. Already the two organizations have started working together on a number of projects, and their partnership is likely to extend to more projects in the future too.

Here’s a look at how cloud technologies play a crucial role in some of NASA’s projects.

Surface Water ocean Topography (SWOT)

The mission of this program is to make the first global survey of Earth’s water from space, to get a better understanding of oceans and Earth’s terrestrial water levels. This project involves both US and French oceanographers, and could provide much-needed answers to meet the water needs of an ever-growing population. This project generates about 100 TB of data a day, or about 100GB a second. It’s impossible for data centers to handle such large amounts of information, so NASA is taking the help of cloud providers to store and analyze this data.

NASA-ISRO SAR Mission (INSAR)

Like SWOT, this program also plans to record the impact of climate change, and even predict the occurrence of natural hazards with greater precision. INSAR is a joint program between NASA and India’s Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). This project is already operational, and is expected to send large streams of data within the next few years. These data will also be stored and analyzed through cloud, as it’s too much for any single data center to handle.

Asteroid Redirect Mission

This is NASA’s first robotic mission to visit a large asteroid located near the Earth, collect a multi-ton boulder from its surface, and redirect it into an orbit closer to the moon. This massive project is expected to be completed  in 2020s, and is expected to provide data for a human mission to Mars in 2030s.

This project hasn’t started yet because NASA is looking for the perfect asteroid that is close to Earth, and one whose orbit can be redirected towards the moon. To identify this asteroid, NASA has to sift through tons of data and make complex calculations, and this is where cloud computing can help.

Europa lander

Europa is one of the moons on Jupiter that is completely covered with ice. NASA wants to explore the possibility of water below its frozen surface, and also even look for the presence of life here. The first step towards that goal is to select the right landing spot for a lander, so it can sample the surface and even possibly bring back some ice. Again, identifying this landing spot requires enormous calculations considering that Europa is the sixth-largest moon in our solar system.

In short, cloud can provide the storage and computing power that NASA needs to press ahead with its different programs.

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Alibaba is making rapid strides in the global cloud market, with the opening of a new data center in the Australian city of Sydney. This is one of the four international destinations that Alibaba plans to open data centers over the next one year. The other three locations are not yet revealed by the company, though they are expected to be in Dubai, Germany, and Japan. These data centers are a part of the $1 billion investment that the company has allotted to expand its global footprint in the cloud market. The services that are likely to be offered in this data center include storage, analytics services, cloud security, and middleware for enterprises.

Besides announcing Sydney as one of the locations, Alibaba also said that it plans to expand the size of its team in Sydney and Australia to meet the growing demand for its business in Australia, and also to service this new data center. The company even hinted that it will open more such centers in Sydney and other parts of Australia, based on the success of this one. Alibaba’s strategy of team expansion and the choice of Sydney as one of the locations is a no-brainer, considering that China is Australia’s largest trading partner. Currently, China accounts for more than one-third of goods and services exported from Australia, and these numbers are expected to grow over the next five years, thanks to the historic China-Australia free trade Agreement that was signed in December 2015.

Alibaba has made a strategic move by choosing Sydney, as small and mid-size companies in Australia are always looking for ways to expand to the Chinese market. Also, it can provide a wide range of cloud products and services – more than any other Australian provider, partly because of its size and infrastructure.

Recently, the company opened a new office in Melbourne to help Australian cloud customers to increase their presence in China, and this data center is expected to compliment this service. As of now, Australian businesses can make the most of Alibaba’s cloud storage, data processing, middleware, and its payment portal Alipay to reach out to Chinese clients. This data enter will also give Australian businesses a chance to expand globally to other countries too, as they can now depend on a reliable and scalable infrastructure.

Established in 2009, Alibaba’s cloud business has made rapid strides in the cloud market. With more than 2.3 million subscribers, an annual turnover of more than $1 billion, and an annual growth rate of more than 130 percent, Alibaba surely is one of the fastest growing cloud companies in the world. Currently, Alibaba has 14 data centers located in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the east and west coast of the USA. This company also processed the largest ever volume of online shopping in a single day, when it handled a record-breaking $17.7 billion in sales on China’s “Singles Day” that fell on November 11. With such a proven infrastructure, it’s no surprise that the company is willing to expand beyond Chinese shores.

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Intercloud, as the name suggests, is a network of clouds that are connected with each other in some form. This includes private, public, and hybrid clouds that come together to provide a seamless exchange of data, infrastructure, and computing capabilities. In many ways, it is similar to the Internet- the network of networks that power the world today.

This concept of Intercloud was started as a research project in 2008 at Cisco, and it was later taken over by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It  is based on the idea that no single cloud can provide all the infrastructure and computing capability needed for the entire world. Also, if a cloud does not have a presence in a particular geographic region, but gets a request for storage or computation, it should still be in a position to fulfill it. In addition, if a particular cloud has reached its maximum capacity and yet if more resource is needed, the cloud should be able to borrow from another cloud seamlessly, so the user has no idea whether it is coming from a single cloud or from a combination of clouds. To achieve these objectives, Intercloud is seen as the best solution.

So, how does it work? Let’s look at a practical scenario. You’re traveling to a foreign country, and you use your cell phone to make a call. The call will go through and you’ll talk to the person you want, even if your service provider does not have a presence in the country in which you’re traveling. How is this possible? Cell phone providers enter into an agreement with providers of different countries to use their network for routing calls. In technical terms, this is called inter-carrier operability. As a result of this agreement, the call you make is routed through the partner’s network to help you talk to someone. The best part is you have no idea how your call is routed, and you don’t care about the technical aspects too, as long as you’re able to make the call you want. The same principle applies for Intercloud too.

When a cloud is saturated or gets a request from a new geographical region, it simply taps into its partners’ infrastructure to give the service you want. Here too, you’ll never know which cloud provider is servicing you, as long as you’re able to store or access what you want. In fact, such a convenience can help cloud providers to offer a more comprehensive service to its customers. Due to these reasons, more cloud providers are looking to enter into such strategic partnerships with other cloud providers who have a strong presence in local regions.

Currently, this technology is in its nascent stage, as it requires substantial efforts and advancements in technology to improve interoperability and sharing among network providers. The good news is that a lot of companies, and organizations such as IEEE have started working towards it, so we can expect the concept of Intercloud to become a reality soon.

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