Archivo de la categoría: Microsoft

Azure, Datacentre, Equinix, Microsoft, Microsoft Office 365, News & Analysis, Software as a service, TelecityGroup

Equinix and Telecity to offer Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365

datacentre cloudData centre operators Equinix and TelecityGroup are both now offering Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365 as part of their cloud offerings. Microsoft is understood to be announcing as many as five such partnerships with data centre operators.

Co-location specialist TelecityGroup said it is offering the cloud service to three distinct types of customer, these being enterprise customers, co-location partners and a reseller channel. The reseller channel itself is broken down three groups of telcos, managed service providers and systems integrators.

The nature of the market for Office 365 is broadening, according to Adi Ayyagani, the group head of market development for TelecityGroup. “Once interest was restricted to financial services and a couple of other early adopters, but now enterprises from every vertical market are showing an interest.”

TelecityGroup is offering the Office365 service on its software defined networking Cloud-IX platform. Though a number of operators are reportedly making ExpressRoute for Office 365 available, Ayyagani claimed that the Level 3 MPLS network that underpins Cloud-IX will make all the difference. “It means customers can get the service from anywhere, it’s more robust and there’s a greater level of integration available, so that configuration of the service is a lot simpler for service providers,” said Ayyagani.

The managed service providers, telcos and systems integrators reselling the cloud service will be able to use TelecityGroup’s broad footprint to access almost any market in Europe, the Middle East or African, said Ayyagani.

Meanwhile, global data centre operator Equinix has now announced worldwide availability of the cloud version of Microsoft Office for enterprises. The service improves the levels of data privacy since ExpressRoute enables most Office 365 network traffic to avoid the public Internet. Enterprises that use ExpressRoute in an Equinix data centre also get the benefit of being able to run hybrid and multi-cloud services that didn’t previously scale well over the Internet or over typical WAN works, it says.

“Office 365 customers can now benefit from predictable network performance and the ability to better manage network availability,” said Ross Ortega, Microsoft’s Principal Program Manager for Azure Networking.

Apache, Azure, Database, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Ubuntu

Microsoft selects Ubuntu for first Linux-based Azure offering

AzureMicrosoft has announced plans to simplify Big Data and widen its use through Azure.

In a blog post, T K Rengarajan, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Data Platforms, described how the expanded Microsoft Azure Data Lake Store, available in preview later this year, will provide a single repository that captures data of any size, type and speed without forcing changes to applications as data scales. In the store, data can be securely shared for collaboration and is accessible for processing and analytics from HDFS applications and tools.

Another new addition is Azure Data Lake Analytics, a service built on Apache YARN that dynamically scales, which Microsoft says will stop people being side tracked from work by needing to know about distributed architecture. This service, available in preview later this year, will include U-SQL, a language that unifies the benefits of SQL with the expressive power of user code. U-SQL’s scalable distributed querying is intended to help users analyse data in the store and across SQL Servers in Azure, Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has selected Ubuntu for its first Linux-based Azure offering. The Hadoop-based big data service offering, HDInsight, will run on Canonical’s open source browser Ubuntu.

Azure HDInsight uses a range of open source analytics engines including Hive, Spark, HBase and Storm. Microsoft says it is now on general release with a 99.9 per cent uptime service level agreement.

Meanwhile Azure Data Lake Tools for Visual Studio will provide an integrated development environment that aims to ‘dramatically’ simplify authoring, debugging and optimization for processing and analytics at any scale, according to Rengarajan. “Leading Hadoop applications that span security, governance, data preparation and analytics can be easily deployed from the Azure Marketplace on top of Azure Data Lake,” said Rengarajan.

Azure Data Lake removes the complexities of ingesting and storing all of your data while making it faster to get up and running with batch, streaming, and interactive analytics, said Rengarajan.

Azure, Cloud Storage, DataStax, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Storage as a Service

DataStax Enterprise delivered with Microsoft Azure to run on any cloud

AzureOpen source distributed database developer Datastax has worked with partner Microsoft to fine tune the delivery of its new cloud based system over the latter’s Azure service.

The new service, DataStax Enterprise (DSE) running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, was unveiled at the Cassandra Summit in California.

Databases no longer have to be centralised to have integrity according to Microsoft and Datastax, who claim to have created a distributed database that runs smoothly across all the varieties of the cloud. Datastax claims its DSE makes it easy to move Apache Cassandra and DSE workloads between data centres, service providers and Azure. DataStax claims customers can now build hybrid applications that can make full use of all three resources.

The new system aims to bring a stable version of a database to the cloud, overcoming the challenge of maintain one version of each record when elements of the database are stored on different computers at different locations. Datastax claims it can overcome the technical difficulties involved in both integrity and scalability so that users can enjoy the advantage of cloud computing, like flexibility of scale and cost controls, without surrendering the traditional strengths of a monolithic system.

The fine-tuning of the DSE with Azure ensures that the enterprises can have a development and production-ready ‘bring your own license’ clusters, claimed DataStax CEO Billy Bosworth. These can be launched in minutes on the Azure Marketplace platform using Azure resource management (ARM) templates, he told delegates at the summit.

Increasingly DataStax Enterprise customers use the database in hybrid cloud environments. Its alignment with Microsoft helps any company needing to build high-performance IoT, mobile and web apps quickly, said Bosworth.

“DataStax is a natural partner as it can build systems that scale across thousands of servers, which is ideal for a hyper-scale cloud environment,” said Scott Guthrie, Microsoft VP for Cloud and Enterprise.

Cloudflare, Funding, Google, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Qualcomm, startup

Cloud security start up Cloudflare gets $110 million in venture funding

Secure cloudGoogle, Microsoft and chip maker Qualcomm are among the investors to collectively stake $110 million in networking and cyber security start up CloudFlare, according to a report in Fortune.

Cloudflare offers services that speed up cloud systems and web sites while beefing up security. Its main market proposition is to speed up the functioning of any services used by enterprises at the edge of their networks. By doing so it provides a cheaper alternative to the traditional model of on-premise appliances.

Cloudflare claims enterprises can quickly set up cloud-based firewall, load balancing, WAN optimization, distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation, content delivery and domain name services services worldwide without needing any hardware. It claims that in one day it saved Chinese users more than 243 years of time that would have been collectively spent waiting for web content to load.

Last week Cloudflare finalized a joint venture with Chinese Internet giant Baidu that allows both US-based companies and Chinese-based companies to use CloudFlare’s website performance service while adhering to Chinese data laws.

Although CloudFlare maintains no physical operations in China, it has worked with Baidu to set up technology within Baidu’s facilities that mimic CloudFlare’s services elsewhere, Prince said.

The funding round was led by Fidelity Investments with Google Capital, Microsoft, Baidu and Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of Qualcomm all contributing funds. CloudFlare now has $182 million in total funding.

Matthew Prince, CEO of the start up, said Cloudflare didn’t need the funding as much as it needed the credibility that comes with top brand association. The confidence that comes with the backing of Google and Microsoft could convince nervous buyers that this is a solid investment when the company prepares itself for an initial public offering, it was reported. However, the IPO is unlikely to happen this year, said Prince, and he hinted that it would come no earlier than 2017.

Content & Applications, Microsoft, News & Analysis, office 2016, Office 365, Software as a service

Microsoft releases Office 2016 for ‘mobile-first, cloud-first world’

Microsoft Office 2016 devices croppedMicrosoft has promised to ‘re-invent productivity and business processes’ for the mobile and cloud-first world, with its new Office 2016 for Windows. It has also unveiled new additions to Office 365 and made Office 2016 for Mac available as a one-time purchase.

The latest version of Office is designed to make optimal use of Windows 10, with better collaboration and tighter security. The productivity applications within the suite have been updated to make them more cloud friendly, with changes to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Project and Visio to make them more collaborative in nature, according to Microsoft.

One reported change is that groups of employees can now work on a single Word document and view each other’s comments as they are written. The new system now includes Skype for Business so that users of any new Office app can chat, screen share or video chat directly from their documents. Another new feature, enabled by Skype integration, is the ability to simultaneously co-author documents. In October Skype will be available on Office Online, according to Microsoft.

“The way people work has changed dramatically, and that’s why Microsoft is focused on reinventing productivity and business processes for the mobile-first, cloud-first world,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

These latest changes are a ‘big step’ in transforming Office from familiar but individual productivity tools to a connected set of apps and service designed for collaboration and teamwork, according to Nadella.

The security protection for business customers has been beefed up, according to Microsoft, with built-in data loss prevention features designed to cuts the risk of data leaks. New multi-factor authentication will secure the access of those outside the corporate network. Enterprise Data Protection, promised ‘later this year’ will help business to secure the process of sharing corporate content across application and cloud locations.

The delivery of future Office desktop application updates is to change, says Microsoft, so that Office 365 subscribers receive new features and capabilities continuously.

Other new tools include an analytics from Office Delve, a personal work analytics (Delve) and additional charts and formulas for Excel.

“The Office 2016 apps run beautifully on the best Windows ever,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, Microsoft’s corporate VP for the Office Client Applications and Services. “The Office 2016 apps simplify collaboration and remove barriers to team success.”

AWS, Cisco, Dell, Equinix, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Platform as a service, Public Cloud, Salesforce, Software as a service, Synergy Research

Public cloud generating $22 billion a quarter for IT Companies

metalcloud_lowresPublic cloud computing generated over $22 billion in revenues for IT companies in the second financial quarter of 2015, according to a study by Synergy Research Group.

The revenue breaks down into $10 billion earned by companies supplying public cloud operators with hardware, software and data centre facilities and $12 billion being generated from selling infrastructure, platforms and software as a service.

In addition the public cloud supports ‘huge’ revenue streams from a variety of internet services such as search, social networking, email and e-commerce platforms, says the report. It identifies the supply side companies with the biggest share of revenues as Cisco, HP, Dell, IBM and Equinix. On the cloud services side the market leaders are AWS, Microsoft, Salesforce, Google and IBM.

As the public cloud makes inroads into the total IT market, the hardware and software used to build public clouds now account for 24 per cent of all data centre infrastructure spending. Public cloud operators and associated digital content companies account for 47 per cent of the data centre colocation market.

While the total IT market grew at less than five per cent per year, the growth of cloud revenues outpaced it. Infrastructure and platform as a service revenues (Iaas/Paas) grew by 49 per cent in the past year and software as a service (SaaS) grew by 29 per cent.

“Public cloud is now a market that is characterized by big numbers, high growth rates and a relatively small number of global IT players,” said Synergy Research Group’s chief analyst Jeremy Duke.

However, the report noted that there is still a place for regional small-medium sized public cloud players.

Microsoft, Services

Microsoft Purchases Adallom

While Microsoft did not specifically relay how much it had paid for the purchase of Israeli based Adallom, website TechCrunch has estimated that the purchase was around $250 million dollars. This purchase serves as Microsoft’s response to the trend of increased cloud based computing. While Microsoft originally sold packaged programs such as its Office software, the company has begun to shift to software offerings through cloud based applications.

Adallom helps customers “protect critical assets across cloud applications,” according toMicrosoft vice president Takeshi Numoto’s blog post. “With more frequent and advanced cybersecurity attacks continuing to make headlines, customer concerns around security remain top of mind. These concerns pose real challenges for IT, who are charged with protecting company data in this rapidly evolving mobile-first, cloud-first world.” Adallom works with cloud based applications such as Salesforce and Dropbox. The three-year-old startup’s technology will be used in other Microsoft offerings as well, such as its Enterprise Mobility Suite and Advanced Threat Analytics.

adallom

The announcement of the acquisition was released the same day that Microsoft relayed its expanding partnership with Dell which will help diversify the amount of Windows 10 powered devices and services for a multitude of businesses. The center of this push is Microsoft Surface Pro tablets and accessories, which Dell will begin to sell in Canada and the United States through online shops, with more markets being added the next year.

“Our global enterprise customers have asked us to match the Surface Pro 3 and Windows 10 experience with enterprise-grade support and services -– and our partnerships like this one with Dell will do just that,” Microsoft chief Satya Nadella said in a release. Dell partnership has kicked off a “Surface Enterprise Initiative.” Microsoft has plans to release a new tablet for businesses.

This comes a day before an event hosted by Apple, which was anticipated to unveil a new tablet which could insert Apple into the market for Surface.

Microsoft is set to increase the business capabilities of its Windows 10 operating system.

The post Microsoft Purchases Adallom appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Azure, cloud security, Gemalto, Microsoft, News & Analysis

Gemalto’s cloud-based encryption now available in Microsoft Azure marketplace

Mobile securitySecurity vendor Gemalto is to sell its SafeNet ProtectV encryption system on the Azure Marketplace. This means Microsoft’s Azure users will find it easier to encrypt and protect data and applications in the cloud and meet compliance regulations, it claims.

Gemalto says SafeNet ProtectV simplifies the protection of data. It encrypts each virtual machine created in the cloud in its entirety and extends this protection to attached storage volumes. By automating this process it saves users from the aggregated admin burden of configuring each virtual machine individually. Though the process is automated, SafeNet ProtectV allows customers to separate security administration duties. This means security enforcers can exert ‘granular’ levels of control and establish clear accountability with audit trails and detailed compliance reporting, it claims.

Maryland-based SafeNet was bought by Gemalto in August 2014 for US$890 million. SafeNet technology protects 80 per cent of the world’s intra-bank fund transfers and it employs 550 cryptographic engineers. Gemalto specialises in the protection of data, digital identities, payments, and transactions, at all points from the point of sale to the data centre.

The cloud infrastructure services market is on target to be a $42.7 billion industry in the next four years, said Gemalto’s encryption product VP Todd Moore. But, he said, that momentum will only be maintained if cloud services like Azure can meet the top levels of security and compliance.

“Easy implements of strong data protection and security in the cloud are a major consideration when moving sensitive workloads,” said Moore. Gemalto’s strategy is to make robust encryption frameworks simple so companies can move to the cloud with confidence – and ProtectV provides the audit controls, according to Moore.

Adding companies with cloud-based data encryption, like Gemalto, will convince more companies that it’s safe to use the cloud, according to Nicole Herskowitz, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Microsoft Azure. “Azure Marketplace provides customers with choice, flexibility and access,” said Herskowitz.

acquisition, Adallom, cloud security, M&A, Microsoft, News & Analysis

Microsoft unveils cloud security plans for Adallom amid rising cloud unrest

Cloud securityMicrosoft has announced its plans for Israeli founded cloud security firm Adallom, the cloud security firm it bought for a reported $250 million.

Detail of the plans for its new acquisition was unveiled in a Microsoft blog by corporate VP for cloud and enterprise marketing Takeshi Numoto. Though reports of the acquisition emerged in July details of Microsoft’s cloud security strategy have only just been unveiled.

The frequency of advanced cybersecurity attacks has made security ‘top of mind’ among cloud users, according to Numoto. The acquisition of Adallom will expand Microsoft’s existing identity assets by acting as a cloud access security broker, allowing customer to see and control application access, Numoto explained. It will also protect critical company data stored across cloud services. Adallom helps secure and manage popular cloud applications including Salesforce, Box, Dropbox, ServiceNow, Ariba and Microsoft’s own Office 365.

Adallom will complement existing Microsoft offerings as part of Office 365 (serving in a monitoring capacity) and the Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), which includes Microsoft’s Advanced Threat Analytics system. Microsoft had previously bought another cloud-security vendor, Aorato, with Israeli Defence Force ties, in 2014. Aorato was rebranded as Advanced Threat Analytics.

Adallom’s technology monitors the use of software-as-a-service applications and was created by founders 2012 by Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik who met while serving in intelligence for the Israel Defense Forces.

The unveiling of Microsoft’s cloud defence plans coincides with an independent report, by Osterman Research, that 76 per cent of UK firms are concerned about the lack of security in the cloud, with consumer-grade cloud storage of corporate documents being named as the chief cause of unease.

The report found that employees preferred consumer-focused file sync and share (CFSS) solutions to enterprise-grade file sync and share (EFSS) solutions in the workplace, and often failed to consider the security risk posed by CFSS solutions.

Services that will be monitored by Microsoft’s new cloud security acquisition, such as Dropbox, which allow consumers to instantly sync files across all devices, but do not provide the same protection of information as EFSS, were identified in Osterman Research’s report as a particular cause for concern.

“Use of CFSS over EFSS significantly increases corporate risk and liability,” the Osterman Research report warned.

“We are thrilled to welcome the Adallom team into the Microsoft family,” said Numoto in his Microsoft blog, “cybercrime will persist in this mobile-first, cloud-first era, but at Microsoft we remain committed to helping our customers protect their data.”

M&A, Microsoft, News & Analysis, productivity, Volometrix

Microsoft buys VoloMetrix to include people analytics in its cloud offering

MicrosoftMicrosoft has bought Seattle-based people analytics software maker VoloMetrix. The new addition will become part of an organisational analytics offering to Microsoft’s cloud service customers.

VoloMetrix uses information about employee email and calendar use to assess their individual and collective productivity. The system can also pull in data from Salesforce and other sources. By identifying employees that have too many meetings or who create excessive email traffic it can help companies manage their time resources more effectively.

According to Microsoft corporate vice president Rajesh Jha the newly acquired technology will be a strand in Microsoft’s new organisational analytics service Delve which will be unveiled for previews in October. Eventually, the service will become part of Microsoft’s cloud service Office 365.

The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. VoloMetrix co-founder and CEO Ryan Fuller blogged that joining Microsoft means the company can grow far more quickly. “Microsoft has a huge vision to reinvent productivity and a set of assets in Office 365 that are fundamental to how work gets done,” Fuller said.

VoluMetrix had previously raised $17 million in funding, including a $12 million cash injection in September 2014. Its enterprise clients include Boeing, Facebook, Genentech, Qualcomm, Seagate and Symantec.

Quantifying employee productivity is a new growth area with two start ups, Culture Amp and VoloMetrix, leading the field. These systems collate data about employees’ electronic calendar and email behaviour and use that data to assess people’s impact at work.

The systems can expose those who spend all their time “managing up” to senior executives or promoting themselves in status meetings, rather than working, according to Volometric founder Fuller. “You can quickly see the load senior executives are imposing, as well as the social graph of who else is affected,” said Fuller.

Cloud based people analytics will be used to understand the external and internal relationships and drive corporate decision-making, Fuller said: “Once a company understands the behaviours that correlate to success, they can measure them.”

In anticipation of opposition over privacy issues, VoloMetrix recently hired former Microsoft privacy strategist, Peter Cullen, to advise it. Reports are currently anonymous and private but individuals can see their own statistics.

Australian rival Culture Amp, used by enterprises like Airbnb, Box, Etsy, GoDaddy and Jawbone,

received $6.3 million in Series A funding from Felicis Ventures, Index Ventures and Blackbird Ventures in March 2015.