India seems to be attracting a ton of tech companies of late, partly because of its young and educated population and a burgeoning middle class that’s ready to consume almost everything that comes to the market. The latest company to join this list is Oppo, the Chinese smartphone maker that wants to make the most of the opportunities available in this country.

According to media reports, Oppo plans to move its cloud service locations to India. This move is not just to better cater to the Indian consumers, but also to comply with the latest orders from the Indian IT ministry that wants Chinese companies to keep Indian data within its own territory.

This requirement has come in the wake of security questions in pre-loaded apps that are installed on these smartphone handsets. Though companies, including domestic smartphone producers, are waiting for clarification from the IT ministry on the security guidelines, it is largely expected that the government would want data to stay within its own country.

This is not so new considering that Germany and other countries have also brought in such territorial restrictions with a view to protect the safety of users within their respective countries.

To proactively comply with these yet-to-be-announced restrictions, Oppo has decided to open cloud services within India to store and manage the data of its Indian users.

Another Chinese smartphone manufacturing company called Vivo is planning to open cloud centers in India for the same reason.

Currently, Vivo and Oppo and the third and fourth largest producers of smartphone handsets in India, based on their market share. Both these companies though have refused to give out the exact details of their launch.

To give you a perspective, Amazon Web Services and Azure are the two leading cloud service providers in the world and both have a presence in India. Others like Google and IBM are looking for a slice in the Indian cloud market, so it’ll be interesting to see if Oppo and Vivo can make any in-roads in this highly competitive market or if they will use these services simply to cater to their own clients.

Either way, this would a cost-effective and long-term solution for both countries, considering the stand-off that’s been happening between India and China in the remote region of Doklam. Though none of the industry experts or political analysts expect a war, there’s a higher chance for the Indian government to put pressure on Chinese companies to comply with its security protocols.

Anyway, moving cloud centers shouldn’t be so expensive too and the entire shift can be done within a span of two to three weeks, according to cloud experts.

The positive side is that both such moves can bring more jobs for Indians, and that’s also something that the government would look into.

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Hitachi has unveiled a new Unified Compute Platform designed for customers who’re looking for hybrid cloud strategies.

This new platform, powered by VMware Cloud Foundation, is a fully integrated and software-defined data center (SDDC) rack scale platform that gives customers the flexibility to deploy their product using an integrated SDDC stack. The other choice is to deploy by themselves using Hitachi’s vSAN ready node and the underlying Vmware software.

So, how is this platform from Hitachi useful? First off, it gives customers the power to deploy and manage applications by automating the process of monitoring SDDCs.  Also, this adds an extra layer of security through VMware’s NSX networking software that’s built into it. As a result, the entire system is micro segmented, thereby making it easy to secure it.

Probably, one of the key aspects of this software is that the hybrid cloud enabler and the cloud management software built into it makes it easier than ever before to move your work seamlessly between private and public clouds.

To top it, the entire on boarding process took less than five hours at Hitachi’s labs, though we’re yet to get an idea of how long it would take in the real world that comes with many dependencies.

These features sure make UCP an attractive option for customers who use hybrid cloud.

If we look at Hitachi’s products in general, they’re mostly innovative and are based on customer’s expectations. This product too came out of Hitachi’s customer feedback, which was to have real-time analytics built into a product, so they can make decisions faster  and can get their products and solutions to the market faster to get a competitive edge.

This is not all. Hitachi is also embracing many modern technologies and products such as Intel’s SkyLake and NVMe to provide critical services for managing data.  Going forward, we can expect to see many more such innovative products that will ease the work of customers and maybe even make cloud-related technologies a more attractive option for all segments of businesses.

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Goldman Sachs has pledged $45 million to a relatively unknown cloud company called Skytap that’s based in Seattle.

With this round, the total funding for Skytap has touched $100 million and it is planning to have its IPO within the next 18 to 24 months, if everything goes according to the management’s plan.

So, what is Skytap and what does it do?

Well, Skytap started off as a project at the University of Washington a few years ago. Over the last few years, it has garnered a niche area of the cloud, which is to help companies to update their old software to keep pace with modern technology.

Earlier on, Skytap understood that it can never compete with companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google simply because it doesn’t have the infrastructure and finance. Instead of working in the shadows of these companies, Skytap decided to carve a niche for itself by addressing an issue that’s not often considered as a mainstream cloud service.

But, in reality, working with legacy systems is a big problem faced by many companies today. When you have legacy systems, it’s difficult to migrate to the cloud, which means, you miss out on the benefits that come with it. To prevent that, Skytap helps companies to update their old software, so they’re in a better position to move their operations to the cloud.

How does Skytap do this?

Essentially, Skytap has a cloud computing platform that behaves like a legacy datacenter to make it easy for enterprises to bring their applications to the cloud. So, when companies move their applications, they can tap into the many benefits of cloud.

That’s not all. You can add or remove computing capacity on this platform, just like how you would on AWS. It even allows you to use software like Docker software containers to help you modernize your existing software.

This unusual idea has helped Skytap to have a growing list of clients that includes big names such as NBC Universal and GE Healthcare. It’s also growing in a big way as is evident from its second-quarter revenue, that was almost three times more than what it earned during the same period last year.

It’s also entered into an agreement with IBM, under which the latter gives Skytap’s technology for its own customers who want to upgrade their legacy systems.

With such an impressive clientele and a growing customer base, it won’t be long before we see Skytap listed on New York’s Stock Exchange.

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Looks like Alibaba is on a roller-coaster ride and there’s nothing to stop it, as is evident from the results of last quarter.

During the quarter that ended on June 30, Alibaba’s cloud business crossed more than one million customers the revenue during this period rose to 2.43 billion yuan, which roughly equals US$359 million.

According to the reports released by the company, it saw an increase of 137,000 paying customers. As a result, a good chunk of its revenue came from value-added services and it drove up the average revenue per user (ARPU) metric.

Among the high-paying clients, some of the notable ones are China’s CITIC Group, Huaneng Group and PICC Finance.

This good news is sure to motivate the company to take many more steps to widen its worldwide customer base. Already, it’s been opening many centers in different parts of the world, starting from Sydney in Australia to Dubai and even London to provide cloud services to a global clientele.

Besides cloud, many of the core business segments also saw a robust growth during the second quarter. In this period, Alibaba’s retail e-commerce business grew by a whopping 57 percent as it touched $5.4 billion in sales. A notable aspect is that the revenue per buyer as well as the customer base have increased, thereby setting the stage for increased growth over the next few quarters too.

Overall, Alibaba’s revenues increased a massive 56 percent year-on-year to reach revenue of around $7.4 billion. These numbers make Alibaba one of the largest companies in the world and it joins ranks with those of Microsoft, Google and Amazon.

Much of this success can be attributed to the fact that Alibaba and its subsidiaries dominate the Chinese digital market. So, how can dominance in one country make it into the elite $400-billion and up club?

Simply because China is the world’s single largest Internet market with more than 700 million customers. To give you a perspective, that roughly twice the entire population of the United States. To top it, any average Chinese spends more money online than Americans.

This surge in Internet users has happened in a controlled space where many American companies don’t have access and this is probably why Alibaba was able to make such rapid strides within a short period of time.

Though we can continue to debate about whether this protectionism is right or wrong, one thing that’s going to stay for sure is Alibaba’s astounding growth as it marches on to capture the world market.

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Nothing is permanent in this world except change, and only companies that understand this can thrive and prosper. One company that understands this well is Walt Disney Company as it has announced a slew of measures that would address the changing media landscape and cater better to the needs of its audience.

To this end, it has launched two streaming services, similar to Netflix. One of this streaming service will be for sports and the other for movies and television shows. Both these would be stand-alone services that allow users to choose the kind of entertainment they want to view. For example, if you’re a sports lover, you can simply opt for the sports stream while the other would work well for movie buffs. You don’t have to subscribe to everything for a single fee now.

In fact, the company believes that such a standalone subscription would appeal to a younger audience when compared to traditional media. ESPN, which is a joint venture between Walt Disney Company and Hearst Corporation, would be the sports service. It is expected to feature more than 10,000 sporting events including Major League Baseball. Such a move is expected to make ESPN the most preferred and go-to sports stream for audiences across the world.

The television and movie stream will also feature a ton of movies including some of the original content developed by Walt Disney Studios. Obviously, this will be a major attraction for viewers, considering the many pieces of quality original content that’s being developed by Walt Disney Studios.

Both these services will be operational in 2019 and we can expect these services to complete alter the way we view and choose our entertainment. Walt Disney has announced that it will pay $1.58 billion to increase its stake in a video streaming company called Bamtech, that will be developing both these streams.

Another important move by Walt Disney was to end its movie distribution agreement with Netflix. This move comes at a time when there’s a growing caution in Hollywood about the spectacular increase in the popularity of Netflix.  Many people believes that Netflix has changed consumer preferences and as a result, many traditional business models have been failing. Though some companies like HBO and CBS are starting to offer their own streaming service, there’s still much unease about how consumers want to watch their favorite shows.

While these announcements by Walt Disney may seem like a way to check the popularity of Netflix, in reality, it represent a strategic shift in the way entertainment is delivered to customers. As a result, Netflix and Walt Disney have become competitors from partners and this could turn out to be an interesting match, after all.

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T2 Cloud, an upcoming Chinese cloud provider, has raised RMB100 million or USD $14 million today in a series B round of investment.

This round of investment was led by an unnamed securities company along with a software and integrated system developer called Sinosoft Company Limited. In fact, as a part of the investment, T2 Cloud will partner with Sinosoft to enter the financial industry.

This round of investment is well in tune with the company’s aim to list itself on the domestic stock exchange within the next three years. While this may sound too ambitious in other countries, it’s definitely possible in China simply because the size of cloud computing market here is expected to reach RMB75 billion or USD$11 billion by the end of this year. Out of this, the private cloud market alone is likely to contribute RMB46 billion, that roughly translates to about USD $6.8 billion.

By 2020, the overall cloud market is expected to touch $20 billion and contribution from the private cloud market alone will be $12 billion. Considering this growth, T2 Cloud’s ambitious are not so lofty.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in the capital city of Beijing, T2 Cloud has developed an open source platform called T2Cloud OS, an automatic tool for maintenance called MaigsStack, a few cloud security solutions and a hyper-converged hardware. It’s target customer base is companies that provide private, hybrid and industrial cloud solutions for different end-clients.

Within a short span of about six years, this company has racketed an impressive list of clients in various industries such as finance, energy, radio, television, government and the fast growing Internet of Things.

So, what made such a dream run possible?

One of the main reasons is that the company was founded with clear goals. Many clients that use open source software such as OpenStack have faced challenges with respect to operations and maintenance. To overcome these problems, T2 Cloud wanted to create solutions that would enable cross data center management, deep monitoring, daily scrutiny and more that would give its clients an edge over competitors who operate in the same segment. So far, it has been successful in its mission.

It’s little wonder then that this company was able to attract clients quickly. Along with good clients, came prospective investors who believed that the company could make it big. Before this round of investment, it raised RMB36 million or USD $5 million from companies like Lenovo Capital, Phoenix Tree Group and F&G Venture.

Overall, the prospects for T2 Cloud is big as it plans to put its proceeds in research and development along with market expansion.

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Cognizant Technology Solutions, a major IT provider headquartered in the city Teaneck in New Jersey, has posted better than expected results during the second quarter of this year.

It’s net income increased by 86.5 percent to $470 million, though analysts attribute much of this rise to the lower income tax levels it paid last year. Last year, the Indian subsidiary of Cognizant repurchased shares valued at $2.8 billion from shareholders and this led the company to take a $190 million expense last year.

Even without this, the company earned 93 cents per share and this is more than the analysts’ prediction of 90 cents per share. The overall revenue also rose to $3.67 billion, slightly more than the analysts’ expectations of $3.66 billion. This revenue accounts for a nine percent increase when compared to last year.

In addition, the company said that the revenue for the next quarter will be anywhere between $3.73 to $3.78 billion, and this is fairly close to the analysts’ prediction of $3.76 billion.

Despite such positive results, the company’s shares rose only slightly in the stock market. This is mainly because Cognizant lowered its 2017 revenue and it estimates the revenue between $14.7 billion and $14.84 billion. Though analysts were expecting $14.76 billion, the fact that it lowered the revenue is a cause of concern for investors.

This brings up the next question – why Cognizant lowered the revenue when it has posted such impressive results?

The culprit is the U.S healthcare industry. Uncertainty surrounding Trump’s policies and the scrapping of Obamacare has put a lot of pressure on this industry and it has cut back spending in a big way. As a result, It service providers that offer software and maintenance support to these healthcare companies are affected.

Since Cognizant gets a major chunk of its revenue from healthcare and financial services companies, it is forced to lower its forecast as it expects healthcare companies to put in tighter controls for spending.

For this quarter though, revenue from the healthcare sector grew by 9.5 percent to around $1.05 billion, but this growth rate may not be sustainable over the coming year due to the confusions about healthcare policy.

Otherwise, Cognizant seems to be doing well and is poised to take a big share in newer technologies like IoT.

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NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, a part of Quality Systems, has paid $26 million to buy EagleDream Health. This deal is likely to close by the end of this month.

NextGen is a company that specializes in providing the foundation for any organization that wants to promote healthy living and way of life among different communities. Headquartered in Horsham Pennsylvania, this company’s products are geared towards user management of healthcare records, Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) and Electronic Practice Management (EPM).

Some of its products include:

• Ambulatory EHR
• Inpatient Clinicals
• Health Quality Measure
• Patient Portal
• EDI Services
• Data Protection
• Revenue Cycle Management

To boost these products, NextGen has accquired EagleDream Health, as the latter focuses on cloud-based analytics for the healthcare industry. In a big way, the products of both these companies are complementary, so it makes sense for them to come under the same unit.

In fact, EagleDream Health takes clinical, financial and administrative data and comes up with an optimal practice performance that enhances productivity and performance of client organizations. It’s intuitive and user-friendly platform converts data from disparate sources into actionable information that can help an organization to understand its current position. Such deep insights can help with decision-making and add value to an organization.

This deal is expected to give a big boost for NextGen because the entire healthcare  industry is moving away from a fee-based model to a value-based one, so any service that provides more value will be able to surge ahead of competition. And that’s exactly what NextGen is aiming to do with this acquisition.

This company has clear vision and objectives and it is moving well in the right direction. Earlier this year, it acquired another company called Entrada to increase the value offerings it can provide to its clients. This acquisition of EagleDream Health is another important milestone on this direction.

From EagleDream Health’s perspective too, this deal is a good one because it gets access to a wider customer base and possibly even a greater revenue. Since both these companies operate in the same sphere, it makes sense to align the products of all these companies together.

Such acquisitions reflect the changing landscape of the healthcare industry and in some ways the tech industry too, as value is taking center stage over other aspects.

For the healthcare industry, this is a good move because it has the potential to reduce the per-capita cost of healthcare and also improve the overall work-life balance for all employees in the healthcare industry including clinicians.

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Joviam, an Australian-based cloud computing infrastructure company, has announced that it will be expanding into the U.S market.

Headquartered in the city of Sydney in Australia, this company is just two years old and already, it has started catering to a wide customer base comprising mostly of mid-market companies. In fact, this company was started with an objective to make cloud services accessible to smaller companies by providing them an enterprise-grade cloud platform that will help to improve the performance and stability of companies.

So far, it has been successful in achieving this objective. It’s price offering is cheaper than both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. At the same time, it doesn’t compromise on quality as it uses a fully redundant and hyper-converged architecture that gathers different commodity servers into a single large cluster.

To top it, Joviam also uses a network technology called InfiniBand to bring together multiple servers into a single large resource pool. This technology is mostly used only in large supercomputers to improve the efficiency of resource utilization. The fact that Joviam uses it within its own platform means the client companies get to enjoy the best available technology at affordable prices.

According to Gabby Jarrett, the co-founder and director of Joviam, every server in the cluster has its own CPU, storage and memory resources, so it makes it that much easier to increase the efficiency of customers’ virtual machines.

This also gives users the flexibility to attach or detach different disks and even clone all of them if needed, without having to turn off the virtual machines. Joviam executes this idea through solid state drives or SSDs. A related advantage is that there are no proprietary hardware involved, so the overall cost of offering is much less.

A price comparison shows that Azure is about 65 percent more expensive than what Joviam is offering right now while AWS is about 30 to 40 percent more expensive. Keep in mind this comparison is based on the cost per GB of the DV2 instance family.

Also, if you’re buying a storage service, you’ll have to buy only in blocks of 32 GB, 64GB and so on. So, you’ll be paying more if you don’t use all the available storage area. But Joviam’s platform is more flexible as it allows you to choose any size and any app without having to lock yourself into any specific vendor’s ecosystem of products.

With such cool features, this company wants to expand into the U.S and maybe into other developing economies in the future. If you’re wondering why this company chose U.S as its destination for expansion and not countries like Singapore or Europe for that matter, it’s because the company’s management believes that the U.S will account for more than half of the global cloud computing market within the next three years.

It is definitely well-poised to take a big slice of this cake, even if it is much smaller than the likes of AWS, Microsoft, Google and IBM.

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Cloud computing is almost everywhere today. Yet, many American counties are behind when it comes to cloud adoption.

That’s the conclusion from 2017 Digital Counties Survey conducted by the Center for Digital Government (CDG). This survey collected a sample from many counties across the length and breadth of the country and found that 78 percent of respondents have less than 20 percent of their systems in the cloud.

One quick word about this survey – many of the counties that took part in this survey are digitally more advanced than other counties, so this number tends to reflect higher than average numbers.

If you think about it, the picture is really dismal. It goes to show that most counties have just started on the path to cloud adoption or are yet to begin this process. What could be the possible reasons?

The most important one could be lack of knowledge about the benefits that come from cloud systems. Unfortunately, there continues to be much apprehension surrounding cloud security and many counties are hesitant to put public information on the cloud. This lack of awareness about cloud security advancements is one of the major impediments when it comes to moving apps to the cloud.

The second important factor could be the cost. Moving existing apps and data to the cloud can be a costly affair, even if it’s one time and pays off eventually. The initial investment is fairly high and the existing budgetary constraints in counties can make it difficult to make this transition.

A third factor could be the presence of legacy systems. Many apps that are in place are at least a decade old, which means, they may not be so cloud friendly. Moving them to the cloud could possibly entail much effort and cost, and sometimes, the migration may be complicated too.

A combination of these three factors could be the reason for this poor cloud adoption rate among counties.

A surprising aspect is that many counties want to leverage the power of cloud by moving their data to the cloud. In fact, in the same survey, more than 45 percent of respondents said that half of their apps would be in the cloud soon. Another 22 percent said that they plan to move anywhere between 40 to 50 percent of their data to the cloud within the next year.

These are positive signs that can bring cheer to cloud specialists. From a cloud service provider’s perspective, this survey is good news because it means there’s a dearth of opportunities available in the government tech sector. However, it’s important for these providers to be more proactive and address any concerns that counties may have with respect to cloud computing.

Also, it’s important for cloud service providers to reach out not only to the richest and digitally advanced counties, but also to the relatively backward and smaller ones, so the development is uniform and everyone gets to gain some benefit out of it.

With such measures, we can expect to see improved results in the next annual survey of CDG.

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