Canonical, the company that distributes Ubuntu GNU/Linux, has announced that it plans to sue a European cloud provider for violation of its agreement terms. Canonical claims that the cloud provider distributed insecure and broken images of Ubuntu, despite repeated warnings to refrain from doing so. Though Canonical has not named the provider, it has already started taking legal steps to remove these  images from all places on the Internet.

According to company sources, this lawsuit is expected to act as a deterrent for other companies, so only approved images are published. The company’s management believes this is essential as it can undermine the success of Ubuntu’s certified images.

This incident also brings to light some of the problems that come with third-party Ubuntu images. According to the founder and executive Chairman, Mark Shuttleworth, clouds tend to have baked private keys into their public images, so this can lead to a potential security pitfall, as any user can SSH into any machine they want. When such a situation occurs, it becomes the responsibility of the parent company, Canonical in this case, to protect its customers, and that’s exactly what it claims to have done with the European service provider.

In addition, when broken images of a software are released, users tend to assume that something is wrong with Ubuntu, and may even refrain from buying it. The company believes such “homegrown” images may cause it to behave unpredictably, and this can lead the user to believe that Ubuntu is unstable, when in reality it’s not.

Though this incident has not translated to a significant loss of revenue yet, there is always a possibility for this to happen. To get the facts straight, and to let its users know that everything is fine with Ubuntu, such a lawsuit becomes imperative. In this sense, Canonical has taken the right decision to protect itself as well as its customers from security hazards and misinformation.

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution that comes with Unity desktop. Currently, it runs in all cloud platforms such as AWS, Google, Rackspace, and OpenStack. The best part is Ubuntu offers same the look and feel, regardless of the underlying cloud provider, and this is what makes it easy for users, as they can use it on any cloud provider for their needs. Besides the cloud, Ubuntu also runs on different smartphone devices, PCs, and servers.

Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu. It is in-charge of helping organizations around the world make the most of Ubuntu with the right deployment on clouds, servers, and even desktops. In addition, it also offers 24/7 support for any question pertaining to this open-source software.

It’s a UK-based company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth in 2004. It employs more than 500 employees, and is headquartered in London. With a presence in more than 30 countries, its offices are also located in Boston, Montreal, Tokyo, Taipei, and Isle of Man. This company provides commercial support for many open-source projects including Ubuntu. Some of the other projects that it supports include Snapcraft, GNU Bazaar, Storm, Juju, Upstart, and Quickly.

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Plex, the cloud media provider that helps customers to access files across a range of different devices, started with providing support only for AWS cloud platform. Now, this company is expanding to include other service providers as well, and this means, Plex Cloud users can also use Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft’s OneDrive to store and access their files. Already, Plex cloud works across major game consoles, smart TVs, and other streaming devices.

Plex launched a beta program in September to give customers continuous access to their media from a wide range of devices. In this beta program, Plex chose AWS as its exclusive cloud provider. However, many users began to face issues with Amazon, and Plex was forced to work out the possible errors to make its beta program fully operational and free of errors. In the meantime, the company also decided to expand to other cloud providers as well.

This is a significant move for both the customers of Plex, and for the cloud market in general. The obvious advantage with this expansion is you can pay the same subscription fee, and access files stores across any of the above cloud storage companies. This way, as a user, you’re not solely restricted to subscribing to AWS when you want to access Plex’s media content.

As for the cloud market, it signifies changing competition. Even until a few months back, AWS was the dominant player, and the other players did not have a significant market share. All this is changing, as is evident from the many changes and deals that have happened over the last six months or so. Google has embarked on an aggressive strategy to increase its market share, and this is evident in the many product releases and acquisitions that have happened over the last few months. Likewise, other companies like IBM and Microsoft are also coming up with different strategies to woo customers and increase their market share. Due to this growing competition, companies like Plex want to expand their offerings to reach more customers. In all, this expansions reflect the growing might of other companies in the cloud space, and in some ways, also reflects the growing maturity of the cloud market.

Plex is a next-generation media provider that is looking to fully tap into the potential of cloud and networking to give customers uninterrupted access to their content from anywhere. This service offers multi-fold advantages for users. Firstly, gone are the days of “always-on” PCs. You are no longer confined to just your PC for accessing your media content, as you can now do it on any device. Secondly, there is no need to own or manage your home server, or even for that matter a storage device like NAS. Hence, you can store all your media on Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Dropbox. Thirdly, you can have the same ease of access with Plex, as if the content was stored on your local storage.

With these features and advantages, it won’t be long before Plex becomes a major player in the connected media market.

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Juniper Networks has announced that it will acquire a startup company called AppFormix at an undisclosed price. This acquisition is likely to give a big boost to Juniper’s cloud operations.

AppFormix is a cloud operations management and optimization company that was started in 2013 by Sumeet Singh, a former employee of Microsoft and Cisco. In fact, Singh started the Windows Azure team at Microsoft, and later quit the company, to pursue his own entrepreneurial interest. AppFormix works with any OpenStack or Kubernetes infrastructure to provide real-time insights into the health and operations of customers’ respective clouds. Built on big data analytics and machine learning, AppFormix  is redefining telemetry and cloud management with its features that include historic monitoring, visibility, and dynamic performance optimization for private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. As a result, this software has the power to create a self-driving infrastructure for every cloud.

Juniper Networks, headquartered in Sunnyvale California, was founded almost 20 years ago by Pradeep Sindhu. Today, it is a leader in routers, switches, security, and software, and is looking to establish a strong foothold in the cloud market as well. It already has a cloud product called Contrail that gives customers the platform to create, scale, and join together seamlessly different OpenStack clouds using the most secure and intelligent networks. The obvious advantage of these federated clouds is the reliability and flexibility that comes with combining different clouds, not to mention the benefits of speed, agility, and operational excellence to the organization.

Such a federated platform has helped Juniper to carve a niche for itself, and this is all set to get a boost with the acquisition of AppFormix. Specifically, the combination of Contrail and AppFormix will improve cloud security, accounting, planning, and implementation of cloud projects. As a result, customers will stand to gain a more secure, intelligent, and automatic operational excellence at a lot lesser cost. As for the company, such benefits are sure to translate to more happy customers.

Under the terms of the deal, AppFormix team will report directly to the CTO of Juniper Networks, Pradeep Sindhu. Also, AppFormix will continue to exist as a standalone brand, and will have the freedom to develop its own platform. No layoffs or changes are expected at this time, and both the companies believe that the formalities for closing the deal would be completed by the end of 2016.

This deal is another significant one not just for both the companies, but also for the cloud and networking industry at large, as analytics and machine learning can help companies to stay on top of their ever-growing networks. These tools are essential to keep pace with the unprecedented growth of networks. In this sense, the coming together of AppFormix and Contrail can give a lot to cheer.

Though current users may not see any changes right away, this acquisition is sure to augur well for Juniper’s customers in the future, as they can get the benefit of having an orchestrated monitoring system while connecting across different cloud environments.

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American Airlines, the ubiquitous airplane company in the US, has turned to IBM for cloud tech. Both the companies announced on early Tuesday morning that the airlines will use IBM’s cloud for some of its applications. Though neither company mentioned the complete list of applications that would be moved to IBM’s cloud, it is expected that American would move some of its legacy applications to the cloud.

The financial terms of the deal is not disclosed at this time, which is not that surprising considering that IBM is one of American’s cloud partners, and there is no exclusivity involved. So, American is free to strike a deal with other companies, and can even have a few cloud providers to host different applications, though there has been no mention of any other deal so far. Amazon is the market leader, though other providers like Google, Microsoft, IBM, and VMware are catching up.

This deal between IBM and American Airlines reflects the long-standing partnership of the two giants, that goes back decades. For example, when American Airlines wanted to introduce an online reservation system called SABRE, IBM was the one that developed and managed it for the airline company. This deep relationship is also partly why American chose IBM when it decided to move to the cloud. Going forward, both the companies are expected to further cement their partnership, and may even tap into IBM’s “Watson” – the artificial intelligence software that IBM is customizing to meet the needs of different clients.

A few months ago, American Airlines’ chief information officer, Maya Leibman, announced that the company would be embracing cloud soon to leverage the opportunities that come with it. This deal with IBM seems to be the first step towards achieving this goal. From this deal, it is clear that American has started on the process of modernizing its tech segment to keep in tune with the growing demands of its customers, who expect faster and a more reliable set of online tools. Also, its growing digital footprint necessitates a scalable infrastructure, that is best filled by a cloud architecture.

In fact, this airline is not alone in making this massive technological shift. Most companies world over are looking to move some or all of their operations to the cloud, with an aim to reap the benefits of such a move. As the volume of data grows, companies can choose to have their own data center or can store their data and applications in a service provider’s infrastructure. There are advantages and disadvantages in both the choices, so sometimes, companies prefer to store some data in their own data center and some in the cloud. American Airlines is also taking this hybrid approach as of now, as it plans to keep some applications on its own premises. But, that may change, depending on how this move to the cloud plays out for the company.

Thus, this is the first baby step taken by American Airlines to make a foray into cloud, and over time, the company may even move all of its applications to the cloud.

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Cohesity has recently launched a cloud extension of its existing product, and is called DataPlatform Cloud Edition, that can run on both Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure. This California-based startup company specializes in providing hyperconverged secondary storage for its clients located around the world.

This announcement is good news for companies that are dependent on cloud for their services, as well as the cloud market as a whole. Currently, the storage market is highly fragmented, so it is almost impossible for companies to have a seamless data portability from their on-premise location to the cloud. In most cases, it requires special software or gateways to move data to the cloud, not to mention the data format conversions that come with it. In fact, this entire process of migrating data to the cloud becomes cumbersome, and can lead to a lot of frustrations for companies that are looking to leverage the power of cloud.

To overcome this problem, Cohesity came up with an idea to provide native replication for all data, so it makes it easy to move from DataPlatform deployments located on-premises to DataPlatform CE deployments located on the cloud. The CloudReplicate feature of Cohesity’s product ensures that replications happen instantly from on-premises to remote cloud locations. In addition, the seamless integration with both AWS and Azure makes it convenient for companies to tap into the scalability and reduced cost that come with cloud computing and storage. Due to these options, more companies are expected to move their operations to cloud, thereby auguring well for not just Cohesity, but for the cloud market as a whole.

Another advantage of Cohesity’s DataPlatform Cloud Edition is that it consolidates backup, archive, and DevOps workloads into an efficient and scalable architecture that can run completely on the cloud. Also, customers can make the most of the existing Hadoop-based analytics resources available in DataPlatform Cloud Edition.

Further, this product makes transition between private and public cloud a lot easier, as it handles all bottlenecks including conversion of data between different formats. Since many companies prefer to use a hybrid environment for their data and applications, Cohesity’s DataPlatform can turn out to be a sought-after product in the near future. What’s more – it can be licensed through public cloud service providers like AWS and Azure too.

This edition is currently in preview mode, and can be accessed through an early access program. A complete version is expected to be rolled out during the first half of 2017.

Cohesity was founded in 2013 by Mohit Aron, who is also credited with co-founding another cloud company called Nutanix. With about 108 employees, and $70 million in venture funding from companies like Google Ventures and Sequoia Capital, this company has made rapid strides over the last three and a half years. Its first product, a web platform to consolidate and manage secondary storage and all its associated workflows, was launched in July 2015. Its flagship products are DataPlatform, that was launched in October 2015, and the recently announced DataPlatform Cloud Editions.

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IBM announced that it will add four more data centers in the UK to meet its increasing client demand. With this investment, IBM will increase its number of data centers in the UK to six, and its overall presence in Europe to 16. In a press release, IBM has said that this expansion is a part of the long term commitment that it has made to its UK clients.

With this move, IBM joins the ranks of Google and Facebook in investing in the UK. These tech giants feel the need to expand their presence in the UK market, especially after Brexit. Earlier, data centers located elsewhere in Europe was sufficient to cater to the UK market, but all that is likely to change after the UK voted to leave the European Union. This is why IBM and other companies are investing here to ensure that there is no disruption in service for their UK clients.

In many ways, such investments showcase the strength of the UK economy, and the size of its cloud market. According to IBM Europe’s General Manager, Sebastian Krause, a lot of innovation is happening in the UK cloud market, and it’s only right for companies like IBM to support this innovation by providing the right tools, applications, and infrastructure. Further, this move is likely to comply with all rules and regulations pertaining to the presence of data within the country’s borders. Also, it will give UK clients greater control over how they want to manage their data, and leverage the power of cloud for their business.

In addition, the tech scene is UK is unaffected by Brexit, which means, there will be significant opportunities for expanding cloud services. In fact, most tech companies had concluded way back in June, that the UK economy will be strong, regardless of which way voters choose in the Brexit election. This is why they had continued with their expansion plans, and are expected to increase their presence in the near future.

As for IBM, these new data centers would serve some top companies like Thomson, Boots, and Dixon Carphone, National Grid, and the UK government. To give more value to its customers, IBM announced that the new data centers will be infused with cognitive intelligence, so machines can learn and think like humans.

The first of the four data centers will be located in Fareham, and is expected to be operational by the end of this year. Out of the remaining three, another one will also be located in Hampshire, while the location for the remaining two will be revealed next year.

In all, this move augurs well for anyone. For the UK economy, it is expected to create more job opportunities, and also gives small businesses easy access to the cloud. Also, this announcement is likely to support British Prime Minister Theresa May’s efforts to ensure that the UK will be open for business even after Brexit. As for IBM, this presents yet another opportunity to expand its cloud footprint.

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Zuora is the latest cloud company to join the predictive data market. Its new product released today, called Zuora Insights, helps to turn financial, and demographic data into actionable insights, that in turn, can boost the efficiency and operations of a business.

Zuora was founded in 2007, and is headquartered in Foster City, California. This cloud provider helps SaaS companies to manage their subscription, billing, payments, and other kinds of recurring revenue businesses. Its solutions cover a range of roles, starting from the CEO to finance, operations, and billing. Due to the nature of its business, Zuora has seen much success during the last few years.

Like any cloud business, Zuora also handles vast amounts of data, as a byproduct of its business. Since there is a ton of value hidden in the data that is produced every day,  Zuora decided to put this data to good use. They want to help their customers link subscription data with other metrics of the company, so it gives them a better picture of the company’s current position, and where it is headed in the future. Armed with such information, companies can make the right decisions and come up with pertinent strategies that’ll help them move forward.

This move by Zuora is in tune with what other cloud providers have been doing over the last year. Zendesk, another company that offers customer support platform, recently launched a product called Zendesk Explore, to provide better insights into the existing data. More companies may also choose to take the same route in the future, not only because predictive data is lucrative, but also because it adds much value to their customers.

Of course, Zuora would have a marginal advantage when compared to other providers in the same space, because this company’s product is built on Salesforce. This means, data from Zuora Insights can be combined with Salesforce to provide a comprehensive picture of the customers’ businesses.

So, how can Zuora Insights help a customer? Firstly, this software is intuitive and fairly easy to use. Its dashboard gives customers a bird’s eye view of all the information, and users can explore it further for specific reports. Some of the insights it offers include the usage trends, accounts, and the identity of individual customers. In addition, it also helps client companies to compare across different periods, and users, so they can get a better understanding of where most of their revenue is generated, patterns with respect to defaults, insights into its customer base, and more.

This kind of information opens a ton of possibilities for companies to make appropriate strategies. For example, if they know the background of customers, the marketing team can come up with targeted campaigns that’ll help to expand their customer base. Likewise, if the company can get better insights into its top customers, it can do more to build better loyalty with them. Such actions will go a long way in helping a company to increase their revenue, efficiency, and profitability.

In all, Zuora Insights is likely to make a mark in the world of predictive data.

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US-based Oracle Corporation, and China-Based Tencent Holdings Ltd., have come together to tap into a growing Chinese cloud market. This partnership, announced last Wednesday, aims to make the most of Chinese government’s policy to promote the rapid development of cloud market. Earlier this year, the Chinese government announced that it will be earmark certain technological areas including cloud, in an effort to move the Chinese economy up the value chain from a mere manufacturing hub.

To tap into this initiative, Oracle and Tencent have partnered to sell cloud-based solutions to different companies within the country. Under the terms of the partnership, Tencent will be the local partner whose responsibility is to sell Oracle’s cloud computing products in China. Also, this partnership aims to integrate the benefits of Oracle’s cloud functions with Tencent’s WeChat social media platform, to provide a better and more streamlined experience for its users. Currently, WeChat has about 700 million active users, and is termed as one of the fastest growing social media platforms in China. This integration with Oracle is sure to bring on more users within its fold, thereby increasing its reach and customer base.

This is a new beginning for both the companies. For Oracle, this signifies a foray into the lucrative Chinese market, that is already dominated by some big names such as IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft. For the Shenzhen-based Tencent, this partnership opens up new possibilities to expand its business, especially in the areas of retail, and banking. Currently, Tencent plans to sell computing products based on Oracle’s technology to financial companies, manufacturers, and retailers. Depending on the success of these offering, it plans to expand to other sectors too in the near future.

This partnership with Oracle is a natural extension for Tencent for a host of reasons. Firstly, this company understands the importance of getting into the cloud business, but this is not really its domain. It needed a reliable partner with a strong foothold in the cloud market, and Oracle fitted this need well. Secondly, Tencent’s biggest source of revenue is its online games. Though it already uses a limited amount of cloud computing to power these online games, a solid partnership can help to boost revenue from this avenue. Thirdly, it wants to expand its business line, so it has a more diversified portfolio that can withstand any negative impact in the future. Due to these reasons, Tencent stands to gain enormously from this partnership with Oracle.

Besides the two companies, the Chinese market as well as millions of tech-savvy Chinese users will also benefit from this partnership, as it will give them more choices in an already competitive market. Besides, having more companies in the same segment is sure to encourage  innovation. Also, this partnership is expected to boost the digital lifestyle of young Chinese, and can even pave the way for a more interconnected life.

In all, this partnership between Tencent and Oracle augurs well for everyone, even if it’s a little late.

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