Archivo de la categoría: Microsoft

Azure Data Factory, Big Data, Cloud Dataflow, Database, Google, Microsoft, News & Analysis

Google, Microsoft punt big data integration services into GA

Big cloud incumbents are doubling down on data integration

Big cloud incumbents are doubling down on data integration

Google and Microsoft have both announced the general release of Cloud Dataflow and Azure Data Factory, their respective cloud-based data integration services.

Google’s Cloud Dataflow is designed to integrate separate databases and data systems – both streaming and batch – in one programming model while giving apps full access to, and the ability to customise, that data; it is essentially a way to reduce operational overhead when doing big data analysis in the cloud.

Microsoft’s Azure Data Factory is a slightly different offering. It’s a data integration and automation service that regulates the data pipelines connecting a range of databases and data systems with applications. The pipelines can be scheduled to ingest, prep, transform, analyse and publish that data – with ADF automating and orchestration more complex transactions.

ADF is actually one of the core components of Microsoft’s Cortana analytics offering, and is deployed to automate the movement and transformation of data from disparate sources.

The maturation and commoditisation of data integration and automation is a positive sign for an industry that has for a very long while leaned heavily on expensive bespoke data integration. As more cloud incumbents bring their own integration offerings to the table it will be interesting to see how some of the bigger players in data integration and automation, like Informatica or Teradata, respond.

Microsoft, News, Services

Azure Data Factory Launch

Microsoft has greatly improved its big data analytics sector through the release of Azure Data Factory, a cloud based data integration service. Azure Data Factory (ADF) has been designed to both automate and streamline moving data from sources into and organizations business intelligence and analytics system to change it into a form companies can utilize.
Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president of Information Management and Machine Learning at Microsoft, has stated, “With ADF, existing data processing services can be composed into data pipelines that are highly available and managed in the cloud. These data pipelines can be scheduled to ingest, prepare, transform, analyze, and publish data, and ADF will manage and orchestrate all of the complex data and processing dependencies without human intervention. Solutions can be quickly built and deployed in the cloud, connecting a growing number of on-premises and cloud data sources.”
DataFactoryOverview_960
ADF is the connecting thread between services such as Azure HDInsight, Azure ML, and Power BI.
Sirosh also added “Using ADF, businesses can enjoy the benefits of using a fully managed cloud service without procuring hardware; reduce costs with automatic cloud resource management, efficiently move data using a globally deployed data transfer infrastructure, and easily monitor and manage complex schedule and data dependencies.”
The new service is very efficient and has been decreasing prices. Sirosh has commented, “At the same time, with the new cost efficiencies gained with the on-demand use of cloud resources, they were able to utilize 600 percent more compute hours and double their supported customer base.”

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Azure, Internet of Things Telecoms, Jasper Wireless, Ken Laversin, Macario Namie, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Sam George, Softbank

Jasper, Microsoft partner on enterprise IoT

Jasper and Microsoft are integrating Jasper's IoT tech with Azure

Jasper and Microsoft are integrating Jasper’s IoT tech with Azure

IoT platform provider Jasper has announced a new strategic partnership with software giant Microsoft designed to help businesses bring IoT services to market more easily, reports Telecoms.com.

The partnership will involve integrating Jasper’s platform with Microsoft’s Azure cloud suite, a preview of which will be available later this year. The combined platform will aim to cater for the full IoT journey, from sensors and devices, to wireless communication, to big data collection and analysis.

“Through this strategic partnership with Microsoft, we continue to increase the business value of IoT by making it easier and faster for enterprises to bring their IoT services to market, and to scale those services globally,” said Macario Namie, vice president of Strategy at Jasper.

“Our vision for the Azure IoT Suite is to help companies thrive in this era of IoT by delivering preconfigured solutions and world class services that any company, whether startup or the most established global enterprises, can use to create new value,” said Sam George, director of Azure IoT at Microsoft.

“Jasper’s IoT services platform is a critical component of delivering on this vision. By bringing together the Jasper Platform and the Azure IoT Suite, businesses of any size and in any industry can build cost effective IoT solutions for themselves or their customers.”

While it’s been around for over a decade, Jasper is currently accelerating its partnership activity with big tech companies in a sign that IoT itself is approaching critical mass. Earlier this week Jasper announced a similar partnership with Japanese telco SoftBank, to help it introduce IoT solutions to enterprise.

“The Japanese market is enthusiastically embracing the opportunity created by the Internet of Things to transform the way they operate, interact with customers and create revenue,” said Ken Laversin, senior vice president of Worldwide Sales at Jasper, “SoftBank’s partnership with Jasper demonstrates their commitment to bringing cutting edge IoT technology to Japan.”

David Dennis, GroundWork, Hyper-V, KVM, Microsoft, OpenStack, Opinion, Virtualisation, VMware

Will Microsoft’s ‘walled-garden’ approach to virtualisation pay off?

Microsoft's approach to virtualisation: Strategic intent or tunnel vision?

Microsoft’s approach to virtualisation: Strategic intent or tunnel vision?

While the data centre of old played host to an array of physical technologies, the data centre of today and of the future is based on virtualisation, public or private clouds, containers, converged servers, and other forms of software-defined solutions. Eighty percent of workloads are now virtualised with most companies using heterogeneous environments.

As the virtual revolution continues on, new industry players are emerging ready to take-on the market’s dominating forces. Now is the time for the innovators to strike and to stake a claim in this lucrative and growing movement.

Since its inception, VMware has been the 800 lb gorilla of virtualisation. Yet even VMware’s market dominance is under pressure from OpenSource offerings like KVM, RHEV-M, OpenStack, Linux Containers and Docker. There can be no doubting the challenge to VMware presented by purveyors of such open virtualisation options; among other things, they feature REST APIs that allow easy integration with other management tools and applications, regardless of platform.

I see it as a form of natural selection; new trends materialise every few years and throw down the gauntlet to prevailing organisations – adapt, innovate or die. Each time this happens, some new players will rise and other established players will sink.

VMware is determined to remain afloat and has responded to the challenge by creating an open REST API for VSphere and other components of the VMware stack.  While I don’t personally believe that this attempt has resulted in the most elegant API, there can be no arguing that it is at least accessible and well-documented, allowing for integration with almost anything in a heterogeneous data centre. For that, I must applaud them.

So what of the other giants of yore? Will Microsoft, for example, retain its regal status in the years to come? Not if the Windows-specific API it has lumbered itself with is anything to go by! While I understand why Microsoft has aspired to take on VMware in the enterprise data centre, its API, utilising WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), only runs on Windows! As far as I’m concerned this makes it as useless as a chocolate teapot. What on earth is the organisation’s end-goal here?

There are two possible answers that spring to my mind, first that this is a strategic move or second that Microsoft’s eyesight is failing.

Could the Windows-only approach to integrating with Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualisation platform be an intentional strategic move on its part? Is the long-game for Windows Server to take over the enterprise data centre?

In support of this, I have been taking note of Microsoft sales reps encouraging customers to switch from VMware products to Microsoft Hyper-V. In this exchange on Microsoft’s Technet forum, a forum user asked how to integrate Hyper-V with a product running on Linux.  A Microsoft representative then responded saying (albeit in a veiled way) that you can only interface with Hyper-V using WMI, which only runs on Windows…

But what if this isn’t one part of a much larger scheme? The only alternative I can fathom then is that this is a case of extreme tunnel vision, the outcome of a technology company that still doesn’t really get the tectonic IT disruptions and changes happening in the outside world. If it turns out that Microsoft really does want Windows Server to take over the enterprise data centre…well, all I can say is, good luck with that!

Don’t get me wrong. I am a great believer in competition, it is vital for the progression of both technology and markets. And it certainly is no bad thing when an alpha gorilla faces troop challenger. It’s what stops them getting stale, invigorating them and forcing them to prove why they deserve their silver back.

In reality, Microsoft probably is one of the few players that can seriously threaten VMWare’s near monopolistic market dominance of server virtualisation. But it won’t do it like this. So unless new CEO Satya Nadella’s company moves to provide platform-neutral APIs, I am sad to say that its offering will be relegated to the museum of IT applications.

To end with a bit of advice to all those building big data and web-scale applications, with auto-scaling orchestration between applications and virtualisation hypervisors: skip Hyper-V and don’t go near Microsoft until it “gets it” when it comes to open APIs.

Written by David Dennis, vice president, marketing & products, GroundWork

AWS, Financial Results, Google, IBM, Microsoft, News & Analysis

AWS rakes in $1.8bn in Q2 as ‘big four’ corner half the cloud services market

AWS is bringing in nearly $2bn in quarterly revenues

AWS is bringing in nearly $2bn in quarterly revenues

AWS revenue for the second quarter of this year topped $1.82bn, an increase of about 81 per cent year on year. The results come as other major IT service providers revealed strong cloud growth for the quarter.

Last quarter, the first time it pulled the curtain back on its cloud business, Amazon revealed AWS raked in $1.57bn in revenue. Operating income for Q2 increased 407 per cent to $391m.

Commenting on the results Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos said “[we] continued to double down on our fastest growing geography — India, launched 350 significant AWS features and services so far this year, ahead of last year’s pace, introduced AWS Educate, and entered into agreements for new solar and wind farms — enough to exceed our 2016 goal of 40 per cent renewable energy.”

Speaking to analysts this week Amazon’s chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky said the company is also getting more competitive on cost as it continues to optimise its services.

“We had over 350 significant new features and services and we believe that’s what resonates with customers. While pricing is certainly a factor we don’t believe it’s always the primary factor; in fact what we hear from our customers is that the ability to move faster and more agility is what they value,” he explained.

But he deflected questions about the capital intensity of the AWS business – which represent about 80 per cent of its overall capex.

Synergy Research Q2 Cloud Market Estimates“We do realise it’s a capital-intensive business and we have modelling that shows it’s going to be a very good business for us and that’s what we aim for as long-term return on invested capital and free cash flow. So, we’re certainly cognizant of the capital part of the calculation,” he said.

Amazon revealed the results as other large incumbents pulled back the curtain on their cloud performance. The second quarter saw Microsoft grow its cloud revenues 88 per cent and IBM 60 per cent.

But the results suggest some of the smaller cloud providers are being left in the dust. According to John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group, quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues (including IaaS, PaaS and private & hybrid cloud) are now approaching the $6bn, while trailing twelve-month revenues hitting close to $20bn. Synergy estimates AWS, Microsoft, IBM and Google (the ‘big four’) control well over half of the worldwide cloud infrastructure service market.

“The cloud infrastructure services market is quite clearly bifurcating with a widening gap between the big four cloud providers and the rest of the service provider community,” Dinsdale explained. “Developing the necessary global hyperscale datacentre infrastructure along with the required marketing and operations support is simply beyond the reach of all but a very small number of players. This is not going to change.”

The good news for smaller and medium-sized cloud providers, he said, is that there does remain a wealth of opportunity for them to specialise in a particular niche industry or geography. At the moment the firm reckons North America accounts for over half of the worldwide cloud services market, followed by the EMEA and APAC regions.

Ginni Rometty, IBM, Kevin Turner, Luka Mucic, Microsoft, News & Analysis, quarterly results, SAP, Vendor

IBM, Microsoft struggle while SAP largely bucks the trend

IBM, Microsoft and SAP all released their financial results this week

IBM, Microsoft and SAP all released their financial results this week

IBM and Microsoft revealed steep losses this week as the two companies released their Q2 financial results, but SAP seems to have bucked the trend with close to 130 per cent growth in cloud revenues and 13 per cent growth in revenue.

IBM revealed second quarter net income from continuing operations was $3.5bn compared with $4.3bn in the second quarter of 2014, a decrease of 17 per cent, and revenue was down 13 per cent, much of which it blamed on recent large divestitures and related cash impairments.

Year on year growth in its cloud business – from $2.8bn in the second quarter last year to $4.5bn in Q2 2015 – and ten per cent growth in its analytics business hasn’t fully compensated for some of the challenges the company facing elsewhere in its business. The company’s revenues have been in decline for almost three years sequentially.

“Our results for the first half of 2015 demonstrate that we continue to transform our business to higher value and return value to shareholders,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. “We expanded margins, continued to innovate across our portfolio and delivered strong growth in our strategic imperatives of cloud, analytics and engagement, which are becoming a significant part of our business.”

Microsoft saw quarterly revenues hit $22.2bn in Q2 this year, but the company reported record losses of $14.7bn, much of which resulted from the impact of its $7.5bn write-down of its failing Nokia business, with other costs related to the restructuring nearing $1bn. The company also said the strengthening of the dollar relative to other currencies had a significant impact on its results.

But Microsoft reported commercial cloud revenues grew of 88 per cent in the quarter, driven largely by Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM Online uptake, while the division selling on-premise licenses for its productivity offerings declined 4 per cent; the company said it added roughly 3 million cloud users in the quarter.

“In our commercial business we continue to transform the product mix to annuity cloud solutions and now have 75,000 partners transacting in our cloud,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft.

German software giant SAP seems to be one of the few large incumbents bucking the trend this quarter. The company revealed cloud subscriptions and support revenue grew 129 per cent in Q2, new cloud bookings were up 162 per cent, and it more than doubled its SAP HANA customers year on year (from 3,600 to over 7,200). The company reported overall quarterly revenues rose 13 per cent to €1.39bn.

“Our second quarter growth in new cloud bookings was significantly higher than in the first quarter. This momentum showed across our entire cloud and business network portfolio,” said SAP chief financial officer Luka Mucic. “Our operating profit performance is beginning to reflect the business transformation we initiated to make SAP ready for the future. We are on track to achieve our full year business outlook.”

The results come as all three companies – Microsoft, IBM and SAP – continue ambitious redeployment and reorganisation efforts to address a shift in the market towards cloud services and away from legacy software and services.

Cloud computing, cloud security, Microsoft, News

Microsoft Plans to Buy Security Firm Adallom

Microsoft is set to be paying 320 million dollars in cash for Adallom, a startup with software for monitoring the use of cloud-based services. A source has claimed all 90 employees, including the 30 in the US, will function an independent unit of Microsoft and will manage material related to cybersecurity for Microsoft.

While Microsoft has refused to comment on the supposed deal, the Wall Street Journal claims, “According to the people familiar with the matter, Adallom, which employs 90 people world-wide, will continue to operate from Israel, building up Microsoft’s cybersecurity-focused operations in the country.” The first to report the deal were Israeli media outlets Calcalist and Globes, with reports later coming from the Wall Street Journal.

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Microsoft has continued making the cloud a priority throughout the whole company, and building an intelligent cloud platform is one of three areas of investment for the company. Cloud security is vital to the company as they switch to more internet based occupations, hence the move to purchase Adallom. Usage and revenue from application Office 365 has increased during the first quarter of 2015, and Microsoft want to protect this trend.

This is just one of Microsoft’s myriad of partnerships and acquisitions this year. Microsoft has previously attained a provider of machine learning technologies for e-discovery and information governance. The company’s software uses advanced text analytics to perform multidimensional analyses of data collections, intelligently sorting documents into themes, grouping near-duplicates, and isolating unique data. In addition,  Microsoft has purchased N-trig and Aorato.

The post Microsoft Plans to Buy Security Firm Adallom appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Enterprise IT, GE, Microsoft, News & Analysis, Nokia, Office 365, Software as a service

Microsoft signs GE in massive cloud deal

General Electric has signed up to use Microsoft's cloud software

General Electric has signed up to use Microsoft’s cloud software

Microsoft announced this week that it has signed up long-time tech partner GE to its cloud-based productivity software in a multimillion dollar deal.

The move will see GE deploy Microsoft’s cloud productivity suite Office 365 to GE’s more than 300,000 employees in 170 countries.

Jamie Miller, senior vice president and chief information officer of GE said: “As we deepen our investments in employee productivity, Microsoft’s innovative approach to collaboration made Office 365 our first choice for providing scalable productivity tools to our employees worldwide.”

GE said it will integrate a number of its line of business applications with Office 365 and deploy cloud-based email and Skype for Business calling and meetings, real-time document co-authoring, and team collaboration.

“Microsoft and GE share many values in common — openness, transparency, data-driven intelligence and innovation — all of which are driving forces behind Microsoft’s own mission to help people and organizations achieve more,” said John Case, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office. “As one of the most innovative companies in the world, GE understands what it takes to unleash the potential of its employees. We’re delighted GE has selected Office 365 as the productivity and collaboration solution to empower its global workforce.”

GE and Microsoft are longtime technology partner. The two companies have even set up a joint venture together – Caradigm, a company that develops and sells a healthcare technology platform for clinical applications and population management.

Nevertheless, the deal comes at a critical time for the company and is in some ways a validation of Microsoft’s goal of turning its business around from a number of strategic stumbles and focusing on its core strengths in software and the cloud. Earlier this month the company reported it would write off its entire Nokia acquisition and shed about 7,800 jobs in the process, mostly from its phone business.

Adallom, M&A, Microsoft, Middle East, News & Analysis

Microsoft buys Islraeli security startup Adallom for $320, plans Israel cybersecurity centre – report

Microsoft has reportedly acquired Adallom for $320m in a cloud security push

Microsoft has reportedly acquired Adallom for $320m in a cloud security push

Microsoft has apparently added Israeli cloud security startup Adallom to its arsenal, with multiple reports claiming the software company paid nearly $320m for the firm. The reports also suggest Microsoft is planning to open a cyber security centre in the region using some of the local talent it has acquired.

Adallom has not confirmed the acquisition, while Microsoft spokespeople told BCN that the company has “nothing to share” about the reports.

Adallom (an abbreviation of the Hebrew saying “ad halom,” which means “up to here” or “the last line of defence”) is a security service that integrates with the authentication chain of a range of SaaS applications and lets IT administrators monitor usage for every user on each device.

The software works with a conjunction of end-point and network security solutions and has a built-in, self-learning engine that analyses user activity on SaaS applications and assesses the riskiness of each transaction in real-time, alerting administrators when activity becomes too risky for an organisation given its security policies.

The company, which has its headquarters in California and a research and development outfit in Israel, was founded by cybersecurity veterans Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik in 2012.

The acquisition, first reported by Israeli business paper Globes, comes over half a year after its last security purchase; according to that report Microsoft plans to put Adallom and a number of other Israeli startups at the core of a new cybersecurity centre in Israel, a thriving hub from cybersecurity startups.

In November last year Microsoft ended months of speculation when it confirmed it bought another Israel-based security startup, Aorato, which offered software that tracks user behaviour when accessing applications linked to Active Directory, both in the cloud and on premise.

Big Data, Enterprise IT, Microsoft, natural conservation, News & Analysis

The Natural Capital project deploys cloud, big data to better quantify the value of nature

Microsoft is teaming up with several US universities to use cloud and big data technologies to forward natural conservation efforts

Microsoft is teaming up with several US universities to use cloud and big data technologies to forward natural conservation efforts

The Natural Capital Project, a ten-year partnership between Stanford University, The Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund and the University of Minnesota to determine the economic value of natural landscapes is using Microsoft’s cloud and big data technologies to help analyse and visualise data that can help municipal policy-makers improve the environment in and around cities.

The recently announced partnership will see Microsoft offer up a range of technologies to help the project’s researchers better analyse the features impacting natural ecosystems surrounding cities, and quantify the impact of natural disasters, development or how other dependencies are brought to bear on those ecosystems.

Mary Ruckelshaus, managing director of the Natural Capital Project told BCN the project is important because it will help demonstrate both how people depend on the environment and increase awareness of their impact on nature.

“City dwellers depend on nature in many ways–wetlands, marshes, and dunes protect them and their property from coastal flooding, trees and other vegetation filter particulates for clean air, and green spaces reduce temperature stress and improve cognitive function and mental health, just to name a few,” she said.

The researchers will collect data from that broad set of sources including satellite imagery, remote sensors, and social media, and use Microsoft Azure to model the data and deliver the results to a range of mobile devices.

“Our focus with The Natural Capital Project is on enabling leaders in the public and private sector to have access to the best data, powerful analytic and visualization tools so that they can more deeply understand historical trends and patterns within the city or company, predict future situations, model “what-if” scenarios, and gain vital situational awareness from multiple data streams such as satellite imagery, social media and other public channels,” explained Josh Henretig, senior director of environmental sustainability at Microsoft.

“The increased prevalence and availability of data from satellite imagery, remote sensors, surveys and social media channels means that we can analyse, model and predict an extremely diverse set of properties associated with the ecosystems on which we depend,” he said.

Henretig explained to BCN that the Natural Capital Project is the first to try and quantify the economic and social value of natural capital, which means developing the required models and tools needed to complete the analysis will be a challenging undertaking in itself.

“That is a huge, complex undertaking, without any precedent to guide it. As a result, we face the challenge of driving awareness that these tools and this knowledge is available for leaders to draw from. In addition, the sheer diversity of global ecosystems, shared ecosystems, their states of health or decline and differing local and regional priorities make creating tools that can be adapted to assess a variety of circumstances quite a challenge.”

While Henretig acknowledge that it’s often hard for municipal policy-makers to make long-term environmental decisions when people are struggling with more immediate needs, he said the Project will help generate both vital data on the economic value of natural systems as well as suggestions for how they can move forward in policy terms.

“In partnership with cities, we are going to help turn this data—produced across multiple systems for, among other things, buildings, transportation, energy grids, and forests, streams and watersheds—into actionable information and solutions,” he said, adding that the company hopes to apply the models and techniques generated by the research partners to other cities.