Enterprises are rapidly implementing private clouds for sound business reasons. Private clouds offer greater agility, enabling companies to quickly adapt to constantly changing business needs and innovate faster than competition. Digital and cloud services can be provided to developers at a pace of innovation that equals any public cloud. Companies can maintain security and compliance, along with the reliability, availability and stability of IT systems of large enterprises. Private clouds also provide better SLAs for new services than most public clouds offer.
How Close are we to a Green Cloud?
Climate change is one of the hottest topics of discussion today, with many people for and against this idea. Though this debate rages on, the fact is we continue to use non-renewable sources of energy like coal to power our homes, businesses, and data centers. This is not sustainable for many reasons, the primary of which are these sources of fuel will dry out one day, and its extraction process has a definite impact on the surrounding environment. To avoid the hassles that come with this form of energy, many companies are striving to switch to renewable sources of energy like the sun and wind. Cloud companies are not to be left behind in this quest to move to green energy.
Amazon Web Services, the leading provider of cloud services, has opined that one day it’ll shift completely to renewable sources of energy, but it has not been too specific on the time line. This could be partly why it’s lagging behind in adopting green energy when compared to that of its competitors. A report by Greenpeace shows that only 17 percent of energy used by AWS is clean energy, while 30 percent of its energy consumption comes from coal and another 24 percent comes from natural gas. Out of the remaining, 26 percent comes from nuclear and the remaining three comes from other sources. These numbers are surprising considering that AWS has been a vociferous supporter of green energy, and it is also expected to take the lead in this regard because it’s the most dominant player in the cloud market today.
In contrast, Apple uses renewable energy for more than 83 percent of its operations. The remaining comes from coal (five percent), natural gas (four percent), nuclear (five percent), and others (three percent). Surprisingly, other major cloud players also fare better than AWS when it comes to green energy usage. For Google, 56 percent of its energy consumption comes from clean sources, 15 percent from coal, 14 percent from natural gas, 10 percent from nuclear, and five percent from other sources respectively. Likewise, 32 percent of Microsoft’s data centers are powered by clean energy that include renewable as well as large hydroelectric projects, 31 percent from coal, 23 percent from natural gas, 10 percent from nuclear, and four percent from other sources respectively.
Given these numbers, are we close to a green cloud? Not really, simply because AWS is the largest provider, and this company uses less than one-fifth of clean energy for its data centers. Hopefully, there’ll be a greater impetus from AWS in this area, especially after the many public announcements it has made to move to clean energy. The heartening news however is that other companies are moving farther along, and this is good for the industry as a whole.
In short, it may take a few more years, say around five years, for the cloud industry to transition to a green cloud model. Until then, we’ll have to live with the fact that our digital footprint is having an impact on the environment in a negative way.
The post How Close are we to a Green Cloud? appeared first on Cloud News Daily.
How the cloud is improving healthcare in remote populations
(c)iStock.com/wasja
From improved diagnosing to enhanced treatment methodologies for a multitude of illnesses and diseases, the healthcare industry has benefited tremendously over the past decade thanks to advancements in technology. One of the most notable improvements has come about as the result of cloud technology – an increased ability to provide healthcare to remote populations.
In India, approximately 70% of the population lives in villages, many of which have limited access to healthcare providers, if any. Thankfully though, health technology specialists are tapping into the $125bn healthcare market and creating cloud-based equipment, such as all-flash storage arrays, and solutions that provide point of care diagnostic abilities along with telemedicine antidotes. These digital health breakthroughs are empowering more than 8,000 healthcare technicians to serve as proctors for physicians in rural areas.
When data is shared through cloud-based health programs, it enables health workers, including physicians, nurses, and health technician specialists, to link their data through shared networks located at central medical facilities. The data can be integrated into today’s most accurate diagnostic systems, allowing extremely effective medical objectives and treatment methods to be developed and implemented.
A cloud-based healthcare program proves to be of benefit because it operates within a large pool of unique, easily accessible useable resources that are virtualised. The resources have the ability to be dynamically reconfigured so that they are able to adjust to a variable scale, or load, which then provides users of the program to perform optimum utilisation of the resources stored in the cloud pool.
As with any type of healthcare solution, there are challenges that must be appropriately addressed. Cloud-based computing, especially within the healthcare field, requires lots of maintenance and training. Physicians and healthcare technicians must not only know how to utilise cloud-based software programs and equipment, but owners of healthcare clinics and medical centres must also address all legal issues that coincide with using cloud-based technology.
One program which is cloud-based and increasing healthcare to remote populations is ReMeDi. This program provides a unique form of video and audio capabilities between physicians and patients located in rural areas. The video and audio features allow real-time consultations to take place, which can be critical and even life-saving in some situations.
Take, for example, a patient who arrives at a village centre. A health technician takes vitals and performs basic diagnostic testing, followed then by adding the data and information to an electronic health record. The information is then shared via the appropriate cloud-based healthcare program and viewed by an offsite physician; this physician can quickly create a treatment plan, as well as prescribe any medications that may be needed to fight off a deadly infection.
Systematic innovation has always been a major factor in the development of advanced healthcare. Innovation drives cost-effectiveness as well as efficiency and high quality resolutions to today’s healthcare concerns. Cloud-based technology is proving to be a breakthrough in modern healthcare tactics, allowing research outcomes to be greatly improved, thus changing the face of IT. Data handling problems, coupled with complex and even sometimes unavailable or expensive computational methods have always resulted in research complications, especially within the biomedical research field. Cloud-based programs, though, are showing a lot of potential in being able to overcome these hurdles.
Read more: Why the healthcare industry’s move to cloud computing is accelerating
How the cloud is improving healthcare in remote populations
(c)iStock.com/wasja
From improved diagnosing to enhanced treatment methodologies for a multitude of illnesses and diseases, the healthcare industry has benefited tremendously over the past decade thanks to advancements in technology. One of the most notable improvements has come about as the result of cloud technology – an increased ability to provide healthcare to remote populations.
In India, approximately 70% of the population lives in villages, many of which have limited access to healthcare providers, if any. Thankfully though, health technology specialists are tapping into the $125bn healthcare market and creating cloud-based equipment, such as all-flash storage arrays, and solutions that provide point of care diagnostic abilities along with telemedicine antidotes. These digital health breakthroughs are empowering more than 8,000 healthcare technicians to serve as proctors for physicians in rural areas.
When data is shared through cloud-based health programs, it enables health workers, including physicians, nurses, and health technician specialists, to link their data through shared networks located at central medical facilities. The data can be integrated into today’s most accurate diagnostic systems, allowing extremely effective medical objectives and treatment methods to be developed and implemented.
A cloud-based healthcare program proves to be of benefit because it operates within a large pool of unique, easily accessible useable resources that are virtualised. The resources have the ability to be dynamically reconfigured so that they are able to adjust to a variable scale, or load, which then provides users of the program to perform optimum utilisation of the resources stored in the cloud pool.
As with any type of healthcare solution, there are challenges that must be appropriately addressed. Cloud-based computing, especially within the healthcare field, requires lots of maintenance and training. Physicians and healthcare technicians must not only know how to utilise cloud-based software programs and equipment, but owners of healthcare clinics and medical centres must also address all legal issues that coincide with using cloud-based technology.
One program which is cloud-based and increasing healthcare to remote populations is ReMeDi. This program provides a unique form of video and audio capabilities between physicians and patients located in rural areas. The video and audio features allow real-time consultations to take place, which can be critical and even life-saving in some situations.
Take, for example, a patient who arrives at a village centre. A health technician takes vitals and performs basic diagnostic testing, followed then by adding the data and information to an electronic health record. The information is then shared via the appropriate cloud-based healthcare program and viewed by an offsite physician; this physician can quickly create a treatment plan, as well as prescribe any medications that may be needed to fight off a deadly infection.
Systematic innovation has always been a major factor in the development of advanced healthcare. Innovation drives cost-effectiveness as well as efficiency and high quality resolutions to today’s healthcare concerns. Cloud-based technology is proving to be a breakthrough in modern healthcare tactics, allowing research outcomes to be greatly improved, thus changing the face of IT. Data handling problems, coupled with complex and even sometimes unavailable or expensive computational methods have always resulted in research complications, especially within the biomedical research field. Cloud-based programs, though, are showing a lot of potential in being able to overcome these hurdles.
Read more: Why the healthcare industry’s move to cloud computing is accelerating
IDC: Cloud IT infrastructure spend to hit $44.2bn in 2017
(c)iStock.com/oztasbc
Total spend on IT infrastructure products deployed in cloud environments will hit $44.2 billion (£36.6bn) in 2017, according to the latest analysis from IDC.
The findings appear in the firm’s latest quarterly cloud IT infrastructure tracker, and argue that the primary spend (61%) will come through public cloud data centres, while off-premises private cloud environments will contribute almost 15% of spending.
Overall spend on IT infrastructure – including server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switches – will increase by 18.2% in 2017, while spending on traditional, or ‘non-cloud’ IT infrastructure will decline by 3.3% this year.
IDC argues that in the longer term, spending on off-premises cloud IT infrastructure will have a CAGR of 14.2% and an overall size of $48.1 billion by 2020, with public cloud data centres accounting for more than 80% of this figure.
“In the coming quarters, growth in spending on cloud IT infrastructure will be driven by investments done by new hyperscale data centres opening across the globe and increasing activity of tier two and regional service providers,” said Natalya Yezhkova, storage research director at IDC in a statement.
“Another significant boost to overall spending on cloud IT infrastructure will be coming from on-premises private cloud deployments as end users continue gaining knowledge and experience in setting up and managing cloud IT within their own data centres,” Yezhkova added.
Back in July, IDC noted in a short research note how public cloud IaaS will ‘transform’ the enterprise IT value chain. By 2018, the analyst firm says, four in five IT organisations will be committed to hybrid architectures, while public cloud IaaS revenues are set to more than triple between 2015 and 2020.
IDC: Cloud IT infrastructure spend to hit $44.2bn in 2017
(c)iStock.com/oztasbc
Total spend on IT infrastructure products deployed in cloud environments will hit $44.2 billion (£36.6bn) in 2017, according to the latest analysis from IDC.
The findings appear in the firm’s latest quarterly cloud IT infrastructure tracker, and argue that the primary spend (61%) will come through public cloud data centres, while off-premises private cloud environments will contribute almost 15% of spending.
Overall spend on IT infrastructure – including server, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switches – will increase by 18.2% in 2017, while spending on traditional, or ‘non-cloud’ IT infrastructure will decline by 3.3% this year.
IDC argues that in the longer term, spending on off-premises cloud IT infrastructure will have a CAGR of 14.2% and an overall size of $48.1 billion by 2020, with public cloud data centres accounting for more than 80% of this figure.
“In the coming quarters, growth in spending on cloud IT infrastructure will be driven by investments done by new hyperscale data centres opening across the globe and increasing activity of tier two and regional service providers,” said Natalya Yezhkova, storage research director at IDC in a statement.
“Another significant boost to overall spending on cloud IT infrastructure will be coming from on-premises private cloud deployments as end users continue gaining knowledge and experience in setting up and managing cloud IT within their own data centres,” Yezhkova added.
Back in July, IDC noted in a short research note how public cloud IaaS will ‘transform’ the enterprise IT value chain. By 2018, the analyst firm says, four in five IT organisations will be committed to hybrid architectures, while public cloud IaaS revenues are set to more than triple between 2015 and 2020.
What Is #MQTT? | @ThingsExpo #IoT #M2M #RTC #DigitalTransformation
The mad dash to connect virtually every noun to the internet or The Internet of Things, is creating a massive M2M network for all the devices, systems, sensors and actuators to connect & communicate on the Internet. With that, they need a communications protocol to understand each other. One of those is Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT). MQTT is a “subscribe and publish” messaging protocol designed for lightweight machine-to-machine (or IoT) communications. In this episode of Lightboard Lessons, I light up how MQTT works.
Building the Internet of Things | @ThingsExpo #IoT #IIoT #M2M #API #AI
It’s been way too long, but the next in the series of IoT «Build-along-at-home» videos is done. In this edition I will show you the «Hello World» project for interacting with the IO ports on your Raspberry Pi. Please click here to watch the video and as always, comments and questions are appreciated and welcomed! If you are the type (like me) who just likes to figure stuff out on their own, I have heavily commented the code for you so you can get started quickly without the video, but it will help you with the hardware assemblies! Also I am already working on the next projects, using the moisture sensor (the original project), and another future project using a sound sensor to illustrate some of the «threshold» principals of IoT sensors
DevOps Trend | @CloudExpo @AppDynamics #APM #DevOps #Microservices
Software development is a moving target. You have to keep your eye on trends in the tech space that haven’t even happened yet just to stay current. Consider what’s happened with augmented reality (AR) in this year alone. If you said you were working on an AR app in 2015, you might have gotten a lot of blank stares or jokes about Google Glass. Then Pokémon GO happened. Like AR, the trends listed below have been building steam for some time, but they’ll be taking off in surprising new directions before the end of 2016. Here’s an overview of what’s coming next and what software developers can do to prepare for it.
$1B Opportunity: #DarkData | @CloudExpo #BigData #BI #AI #ML #DataScience
Every organization collects, stores and retains portions of dark data. It’s the digital equivalent of emotional baggage which hangs around after every user interaction, transaction, and customer engagement. In fact, not using data effectively is costing United Airlines almost $1 Billion annually in lost revenue. Gartner Inc. describes dark data as «information assets that organizations collect, process and store in the course of their regular business activity, but fail to use for other purposes.»