How cool would it be if all our data is stored inside a DNA instead of tapes and drives? Imagine the amount of data that can be stored when you use DNA for storage instead of tapes and other relatively bulkier forms of storage.

Well, that will soon be a reality, going by what Microsoft is planning. Computer architects and researchers in this company are formalizing the goal of having a DNA system for storage inside large data centers by the end of this decade. They are working towards having a working prototype for using DNA to store the ever-growing volume of data.

Researchers primarily want to use the DNA to replace tape drives that are currently used for archiving information. The obvious advantage with this form of storage is the space and money savings that’ll accrue to a company. When you store in a DNA, you can store tons of data when compared to tapes because a DNA is only a miniscule size when compared to tapes.

Also, the cost per square foot of storage goes down because you can store petabytes of data in a small space and this is another added advantage that companies can get.

Already, there’s much buzz surrounding the announcement made by Microsoft. Researchers, IT administrators and tech geeks are looking forward to how see how this idea will shape up in the next few years.

On one side, it also reflects the commitment of companies like Microsoft that are taking innovation to the next level. A wild and weird idea like saving valuable documents, photos, videos and more in a small molecules that are genes are made of, is gaining traction. In fact, the company has allocated money and resources to further this abstract and wild idea in the hope that something would come out of it in the future.

That’s the spirit of innovation and this spirit is what takes companies and ideas to new heights. In fact, history is filled with the successful implementation of such ideas. When a couple of PH.D students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were working on a search engine, little would they have thought that today Google would become such a large corporation. The same goes for Bill Gates and millions of other entrepreneurs and scientists who have changed the way we live and communicate.

Considering these past examples, we can’t dismiss Microsoft’s idea as absurd or impractical. For all you know, it could be on the threshold of a great discovery that can set it apart from other companies in the tech world.

Right now, the efforts to shrink memory size are reaching physical limits. There’s only so much you can go in terms of size, so the next option would be to look for something that is already small and is capable of taking data. What better than the DNA as it fits the description well, both in terms of size and in terms of storage capacity.

Exciting days are surely ahead for mankind.

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Africa is catching on with technology as many countries as adopting computers and cloud in a big way. The widespread work of many private organizations, philanthropists and nongovernmental organizations have helped to eradicate poverty and illiteracy in many communities, and this new generation of educated people are turning to technology to improve their lives and those of others in their communities.

With such a trend, it’s only natural for all major companies to make a bee-line to this continent to tap into the new and growing opportunities it presents. Microsoft has announced that it will be opening two data centers here by next year to serve customers who use the Azure cloud platform. This will be one of the largest data centers ever in this continent and Microsoft plans to open them in Johannesburg and Cape Town, both located in South Africa.

The choice of location is a little disappointing from a technology adoption point of view. South Africa is the most developed country in the African continent and has one of the highest rates of literacy. Also, there’s much economic development happening there already. Microsoft could have chosen a developing economy to boost their presence and impact on the local markets.

In their defense though, Microsoft would argue that it’s the nest choice from an economic standpoint. South Africa is a stable nation with plenty of educated workforce, so the data centers are more likely to be safe and secure here. In addition, cloud growth is happening more in this country than other areas in Africa.

According to Data Corp International, the renowned Research Firm, cloud revenue in South Africa was a mere $243 million last year, but is expected to grow by an annual rate of 20% a year through 2021. Considering these numbers, it’s only fair that Microsoft cater to this growing market before expanding to other regions within this continent.

Like Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon also have been working to capture this potential market, but none have so far opened a dedicated operational center in this continent yet. In this sense, Microsoft has a lead over the other two. But, we can expect both Alphabet and Amazon to follow suit soon.

Reports show that these three major companies combined together have $31.54 billion in 2016 alone for capital expenses and leases. This is a whopping 22% more than what these companies spent in 2015. Though not every penny was spent on cloud infrastructure or data centers, a substantial part of this investment went into their cloud computing line of business.

This entry of Microsoft marks a new beginning for Africa and hopefully it can act as a catalyst for this continent to develop more rapidly. We can hope that these companies will soon move beyond lucrative countries like South Africa and spread their operations in poorer countries too, in order to give every community a chance at development.

Overall, this is a positive move that could transform Africa, like it did for many Asian countries that were grappling with many social and developmental issues.

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It’s that time of the year again when tech companies report their quarterly results. For investors and the general public, this is a good time to evaluate how a company is performing, how its different sectors and what can be expected from the company over the next few months.

Microsoft announced its results for the third quarter of 2017, and surprisingly, it fell short of analysts’ expectations. The company reported a revenue of $23.56 billion while analysts were expecting a revenue of $23.62 billion. But in terms of earnings per share (EPS), Microsoft surpassed investors’ expectations as they had been expecting a revenue of $0.70 and Microsoft reported $0.73.

One of the key things to note in the results is the role played by cloud business in boosting the overall revenue of Microsoft. The cloud-based services including Azure and “Intelligent cloud” brought in revenue to the tune of $15.2 billion and this is a 11 percent increase year-on-year. In fact, Azure’s revenue jumped by 93 percent when compared to the same time last year.

According to Amy Hood, the Chief Financial Officer at Microsoft, strong execution and the growing demand for cloud business drove up the revenues this quarter and as a whole, the company expects this demand to sustain over the next few quarters as well. In this sense, they expect to generate more revenue from Azure and its “intelligent cloud” division over the upcoming months.

This is an important trend as it clearly lays out the path for Microsoft, or for that matter, many tech companies that operate in this line of business. Already, Microsoft has been investing heavily in its cognitive services and Azure platform, and we can expect this investment to increase too.

Other important gleanings from these results include the price that customers are willing to pay for services. For example, the results show that 80 percent of Azure customers use premium pricing plans. This means, customers are willing to pay more money provided they get the right value additions for the money they pay.

One aspect that we’ve been seeing is that the cloud wars have brought down the price of cloud services. Leading cloud providers like Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google have been slashing their prices greatly in a bid to woo more customers. Due to this trend, premium services itself don’t cost a lot and can in fact, be affordable to many clients. That said, we can infer that this demand for premium plans could be because it’s affordable and companies get more from it.

Besides cloud, Microsoft’s Productivity and Business processes segment registered a 22 percent increase when compared to the same time last year, as its revenues soared to $8 billion. Commercial office was up by seven percent while consumer revenues grew by 15 percent respectively. The Personal Computing segment took a beating though as it registered a seven percent decline in sales.

Overall, Microsoft had a decent performance though not a stellar one, and much of it was driven by its cloud business.

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Microsoft wants to expand its cloud computing presence and it believes the best way is to bring in more cloud computing developers into its fold. To this end, it has acquired a cloud container specialist called Deis from a cloud orchestration company called Engine Yard. The financial details have not been disclosed.

Deis is a technology that works well with cloud containers. If you’ve never heard this term before, container means independently deployable code that accomplish a specific task. Each of these containers are discrete and require little to no interaction with other container components. The entire logic for a single functionality is contained within it.

This container is the fundamental building block of virtualization environments. In addition, a container knows how much of processing power it needs and the calls it has to make through the respective Application Programming Interface (API).

These containers are the most essential for an agile cloud-based development environment as they can be quickly deployed when compared to monolithic architecture. Also, microservices architecture that is based on these containers, is catching up in a big way because of the need to have short deployment circles on the cloud and also to overcome the many disadvantages that come with monolithic architecture.

Handling these container components is the cornerstone of Deis’ operations. It provides three open-source tools for managing all kinds of Kubernetes deployments. These three container services are:

• Workflow – this is the technology that allows developers and organizations to deploy and manage container components.
• Helm – this is a Kubernetes manager that handles different components
• Steward – this is a Kubernetes-native broker that enables communication between different containers, on a need basis.

Since Deis specializes in creating such components, it makes sense for Microsoft to bring it under its fold before other companies get to it. Also, such a container-based environment can work well for Azure too, and this is one of the main reasons for Microsoft to make this move. With this acquisition, Microsoft hopes to catch up with AWS in terms of cloud market share.

Also, Microsoft believes this acquisition can give it a lead over other players such as Google and IBM that are fast catching up. Through this move, Microsoft has also filled a gap in cloud skills development and this can give it an edge over other players in the long run, provided other companies continue in the same state of operations.

From Deis perspective, this is the best thing that can happen to it. In general, small companies expect to get acquired by one of the larger players, so being acquired by Microsoft is in many ways an honor for Deis and its parent company Engine Yard.

So what does this acquisition mean for the cloud market as a whole? Well, not much really.

AWS is so widespread and pervasive that it doesn’t see these developments as a threat to its competition and existence. For the others, it’s simply more food to the party.

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