Virtual reality (VR) is one of the most talked-about technologies over the last few years, and many believe it will revolutionize how we interact with digital content. However, some significant challenges need to be overcome before VR can become mainstream.

One of the biggest challenges is latency, or the delay between signals that are sent and received across distances, which can cause motion sickness in some users of VR technologies. In response, engineers are tapping mobile edge computing to provide a solution to this problem.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) can also be referred to as Multi-Access Edge Computing. It distributes computational resources across networks and expands cloud computings capabilities by bringing them to the networks edge.

Multi-access edge computing is a cloud computing evolution that employs cloud technologies, mobility, and edge computing to move application hosts from a centralized data center to the networks edge, resulting in process that are closer to end users and computing services that are closer to data generated by applications.

Todays service providers are ideally positioned to supply intelligent traffic routing from the mobile network to the best location of the enterprise application and have people on the ground and professional knowledge of network efficiency, network topology, device management, and more.

Network service providers and others can manage or host the edge infrastructure, and the transition to cloud-native network operations and distributed cloud computing allows service providers to expand beyond traditional connectivity-based models.

Edge computing places computational functionality closer to the data user to improve scalability, lower network stress, and speed up data transmission rates. Rather than being centralized in data centers, edge computing spreads computation resources throughout networks.

Similarly, MEC reduces congestion on host networks, lowers latency, and opens up new 5G business options for carriers and businesses by physically shifting those resources closer to the user.

MEC enables operators to deliver 5G apps with low latency and high bandwidth, and employs a system based on Virtual Network Functions managed by a Virtualization Infrastructure Manager (VIM).

The host, platform manager, and orchestrator are the three primary components of the MEC architecture:

VR is a computer-generated recreation of a real or imagined world, employed in entertainment, games, training, education, and science, allowing users to interact with and explore virtual environments alongside their physical ones. All of these factors make VR a resource and bandwidth-intensive application.

A mobile device can use the computational and storage resources of powerful remote, centralized clouds in LTE networks, available via a mobile operators Enhanced Packet Core (EPC) network and the Internet.

For wireless virtual VR experiences to be immersive, image rendering efficiency is critical, but due to their limited computing power and battery life, image rendering in cordless VR headsets is inefficient. Mobile edge computing offers higher computing capabilities near wireless VR players for real-time and resource-intensive tasks.

MEC could provide immersive experiences with better user experience for wireless VR players:

Under the new MEC paradigm, network resources and computations are located very close to end-users, which shares space with a private LTE site. The VR server application is located close to the MEC, and VR application programs receive LTE packets routed to it.

The MECs co-location with the LTE site provides a distinct advantage over cloud servers located in other distant areas, such as streaming live content up to 8K resolution over 4G/LTE networks while saving more than 80 percent of the bandwidth.

Ultimately, VR hinges on low-latency internet connections of 20 milliseconds or less to realize its full capacity and mitigate motion sickness issues, which is not always the case on todays networks. Mobile edge computings power and speed are critical in achieving this to ensure safer and more profitable adoption of VR.

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The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic propelled cloud adoption at an unprecedented rate. The benefits of cloud computing combined with the promises Web3 holds for such things as blockchain-backed decentralization, scalability and increased ownership for everyday users became clearer when the world shut down in March 2020.

Now, Web3s lesser-known but important counterpart, Cloud3, is also beginning to gain traction. Executives like Salesforce CEO Marc Bennioff are already mapping how their companies will adopt the new iteration of cloud computing the core of which is built around working from anywhere further supporting the workforce shift.

Were in a new world. This is a huge opportunity to create and extend and complement our platform. We realized for each and every one of our clouds, it was time to transform to become a work-from-anywhere environment. We ultimately are focused on delivering the operating system for Cloud3, Bennioff said in a company press release earlier this year.

Cloud3 and Web3 may sound like the latest tech buzzwords, but according to industry experts, the two are on the rise, and enterprise executives and community leaders need to pay attention or risk getting left behind.

Before there was a third iteration of anything, there had to, of course, be a first and second to lay the foundation.

The original iteration of the World Wide Web created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990. It focused on HTML, specification of URLs and hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) commands. While Web 2.0 is complex, it can be simplistically defined as what we know the internet to be today, including access to the web via Wi-Fi, smartphones and the rise of social media usage.

Web3s features ensure more democratization over the web. With blockchain-backed decentralization and scalability, there will be less oversight, which may, of course, lead to bad actors, but could also pave the way for underrepresented people, communities and companies to gain more control.

It always seems that POC [people of color] create the culture of communities or companies, but end up benefiting last from it. And with this kind of new paradigm of power Web3 can provide, were able to finally take ownership of our communities, said Cheryl Campos, head of venture growth and partnerships at Republic.

We can use Web3 to more easily and equally share the wealth with others and make sure we are sharing the profits with others. What is so exciting is that Web3 allows for that through non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)and even with new DeFi (decentralized finance) products coming out that focus on supporting communities or loaning to others. That is not just the wealth gap, but also the ownership gap, that Web3 helps bring back to the hands of communities and the people within in them in a meaningful way, Campos added.

Founder and partner of the Open Web Collective, Mildred Mimi Idada, agrees: The Web3 ethos can bring in more diversity, not just in terms of race, nationality or gender, but also diversity in backgrounds, skills and perspectives.

Diverse skill sets and perspectives are also necessary for innovation in the Web3 space. We need not only technical talent, such as developers, but also creatives, lawyers, bankers and community builders, Idada said.

That said, innovation and benefits Web3 can provide to communities, businesses and investors alike wont happen overnight.

According to Greg Isenberg, cofounder and CEO of Late Checkout, a company that designs, creates and acquires Web3 and community-based technology businesses, Web3 still has a ways to go until the full breadth of its benefits is visible, but its important for executives and community leaders to pay attention now.

Web3 doesnt, and cant, work unless the UX [user experience] is very simple so much so that your grandmother could buy a digital asset like an NFT to have ownership in Web3. But to do that, we need a lot of infrastructure in place, Isenberg said.

Isenberg said he has seen several companies make great strides in UX with a proactive eye toward the rise of Web3 like Rainbow, the Ethereum wallet that allows you to manage many digital assets in one place. Isenberg said he expects other companies across industries to soon follow suit. He also echoes Campos and Idadas excitement and predictions regarding Web3, citing the impressive outpouring of cryptocurrency donations made to Ukraine totaling around $55 million in just days. Its the Web3 infrastructure that these platforms and currencies like crypto are beginning to build that creates the scalability of donations like this.

What gets me excited about Web3 in general is the coordination it brings to capital to address important things. That [was possible] because of the web infrastructure that was built on top of it, Isenberg said. I expect social causes to be a huge part of popular Web3 projects going forward. Now Im thinking, What else can this help change? Its interesting because theres a perception that Web3 is bad for the environment, for example, but I actually think that a large part of solving the worlds problems will stem from coordinating people and capital and Web3 has already proven to be really good at that.

Part of the needed infrastructure to support Web3s promise to coordinate and help solve community and world problems efficiently and at scale will require Cloud3s advanced capabilities which assure secure access to collaborative tools from anywhere.

The evolution of cloud technology began with large IT operations that were disrupted by the software-as-a-service boom. Next came infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service technologies, further relieving pressures placed on IT teams and developers alike. Now, the demand for everything the prior cloud iterations provide is just as fierce as the demand from companies and the public alike to access these tools from wherever, whenever while simultaneously having strong IT security as a backbone from wherever, whenever.

Cloud3 will empower businesses to leverage cloud-based experience platforms as a toolkit to seamlessly compose personalized communication experiences, said Steve Forcum Cloud3 expert and director and chief evangelist for marketing at Avaya.

A report from the health information technology and clinical research company, Iqvia, underscores that emerging Cloud3 technologies will disrupt application development in organizations across all industries. Companies in the life sciences and financial industries, in particular, are well-positioned to leverage Cloud3 to differentiate themselves by applying artificial intelligence to big data.

Cloud3s emergence will also transform how businesses are run and how tools and information are supported and accessed to match the pace and style of life that the world has shifted to post-pandemic.

Rather than businesses focusing on moving to the cloud, [with Cloud3] theyll be forced to think of ways to transform within the cloud. With this comes innovation and new, cloud-based technologies. Disruptive technology should not require disruption to your business, Forcum said. A converged platform approach with composability at its core is malleable in nature, adjusting to the organizations business processes, versus forcing processes to compromise around the limitations of a cloud platform or app.

Though intriguing promises and benefits stem from both the emergence of Web3 and Cloud3, there are concerns where they overlap.

A drawback we do see with [the overlap of the] decentralized web [Web3] and Cloud3, is more the industry recognizing that while there are similarities, these are also two very different spaces with very different mechanisms and tools to achieve their goals, said Idada. Nonetheless, hardware, computation power and cloud computing will be key pieces to the next phase of the web. Improved and enhanced capabilities will change how everyday apps operate and what is possible to meet our changing faster pace and on the go lifestyles.

As for what the future holds as innovation increases and cloud adoption accelerates, pay attention or risk getting left behind is the consensus from experts.

Isenberg predicts that moving closer to the fully fleshed out iterations of both Web3 and Cloud3 that we may see more legacy companies begin to adopt them and make moves in the space, but that along with it, particularly for Web3, we may also see many of those companies fail.

Well likely see legacy companies embrace Web3 and its probably not going to go very well for many of them, he said. I think youre going to see a small percentage, maybe 1% to 5%, embrace it really, really well and become category leaders among crypto data brands while others struggle to find their place.

The future of work is remote. So, you have to make sure that there is infrastructure that will allow for this, or otherwise, you will not retain or get the best talent right for your operations. And more than ever, it has been clear that companies that embrace this Web3 space are more likely to attract younger talent and folks that are bullish on the space, Campos added.

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How Web3 and Cloud3 will power collaborative problem-solving and a stronger workforce - VentureBeat

Red Hat and Accenture have announced an expansion of their strategic partnership which will see the pair look to drive open hybrid cloud innovation for enterprises.

Building on their 12-year alliance, the companies are jointly investing in the co-development of new solutions that they say will help organizations better navigate a multi- and hybrid cloud world, define their strategy, and accelerate innovation.

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The new solutions will be developed over the next year and will initially focus on four key areas: open hybrid cloud application and mainframe modernization, automation, edge computing, and sovereign cloud.

In an announcement, Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president of Partner Ecosystem Success at Red Hat, said that operating in the hybrid cloud enables customers to optimize their existing systems with the added layers and capabilities necessary to support innovation and efficiency at scale.

At Red Hat, we believe that success not only lies in the technical components we bring to the cloud but also with the impactful partnerships that drive successful implementations and business outcomes, she said.

Our long-standing collaboration with Accenture means that customers have access to the open-source solutions they need and expertise they can trust to navigate the complexities of open hybrid cloud and grow their business where it needs to be - in the cloud.

As part of its four key focuses, the partnership is aiming to help clients develop a holistic hybrid cloud strategy to enable greater operational efficiency and drive innovation based on Red Hat OpenShift.

The range of offerings will also include solutions that automate and orchestrate workloads across the IT infrastructure to reduce risk and lower costs of technology operations. This includes the development of Accenture solutions on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to deliver stable, automated cloud computing capabilities.

In terms of edge computing, there will be solutions focused on analyzing and processing data where it is generated to help improve the customer experience and reduce latency. With Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, applications can be deployed and automated at the edge - reducing dependency on a physical footprint.

Additionally, Red Hat and Accenture said they are also developing offerings that will help clients control the location, access to and processing of their data in the cloud through open-source technologies and services.

Organizations are increasingly turning to hybrid cloud to help overcome complex challenges around core business functions like customer service and supply chain, and to drive growth and innovation, commented Raj Wickramasinghe, Accentures Hybrid and Emerging Platform lead.

Through our expanded alliance with Red Hat, we can further help clients embrace the cloud continuum to enable greater operational efficiency and drive innovation.

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Global Crowdsourced Testing Market

Global Crowdsourced Testing Market

Dublin, May 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Crowdsourced Testing Market by Testing Type (Performance Testing, Functionality Testing, Usability Testing, Localization Testing, and Security Testing), Platform, Organization Size, Deployment Mode, Vertical and Region - Global Forecast to 2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global Crowdsourced testing market size to grow from USD 1.6 billion in 2022 to USD 2.5 billion by 2027, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9.4%

The increase in the number of devices, operating systems, and applications is one of the key drivers for crowdsourced testing, With the numerous combinations of mobile devices and operating systems being used, companies are finding possible reasonable approaches to strategize the testing of their applications on all these possible combinations to provide the best User Experience (UX). Thus, investing in innovative end-user testing solutions, such as crowdsourced testing, to curtail the need for a feature-rich and customer-centric product offering.

In a short time, the COVID-19 outbreak has affected markets and customer behaviors and substantially impacted economies and societies. Healthcare, telecommunication, media and entertainment, utilities, and government verticals function day and night to stabilize conditions and facilitate prerequisite services to every individual. The telecom sector, in particular, is playing a vital role across the globe to support the digital infrastructure of countries amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Fujitsu's Global Digital Transformation Survey, offline organizations were damaged more, while online organizations witnessed growth in online demand and an increase in revenue. 69% of the business leaders from online organizations have indicated that they witnessed an increase in their business revenue in 2020. In contrast, 53% of offline organizations saw a drop in revenues.

The Localization testing segment to have a higher CAGR during the forecast period

Organizations are developing software that can be released for users present across the globe. Hence, they implement localization testing that tests the software for compliance with the requirements of the target market. Through localization testing, organizations can evaluate the product based on the language and cultural standards and whether it is tailored as per the existing accuracies or not.

With localization testing, organizations can ensure that their apps are as per the required standards and easy to use for their target audience, irrespective of their geographic presence. Crowdsourced testing provides a hassle-free and cost-effective way to test the app or website on the multiple target demographics, globally.

Retail in vertical segment to account for larger market size during the forecast period

Retailers are now doing business via omnichannel retailing, i.e., through their online, mobile, and point-of-sale technologies. Hence, to remain relevant in the fast-evolving vertical, the quality of these channels is crucial. The success of omnichannel retailing is assessed by security, performance, and delivery offered by them.

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However, retailers investigate their retail systems through the consumer's perspective for enhancing their experience across all the channels available for achieving omnichannel success. Hence, crowdsourced testing is implemented by retailers across the globe to optimize the offerings and stay ahead in the highly competitive market.

Among regions, APAC to hold higher CAGR during the forecast period

The growth of the crowdsourced testing market in APAC is highly driven by the rapid digitalization of enterprises across the region. Enterprises across APAC are working effortlessly on taking up digital transformation, majorly for streamlining their operations and improving the customer experience.

Indicating that spending on software is also expected to grow to keep with up with rising customer demands in terms of online accessibility of services from enterprises. Hence, this rapid investment in technologies and providing online services to the customer is expected to drive the growth of the crowdsourced testing market in APAC.

With the rising digital transformation and offerings, consumer expectations have also changed in terms of timeline, emphasizing on speed and performance of the software used by them. Enterprises in APAC are going for innovative solutions to testing, such as crowdsourcing, for ensuring better UX for customers.

Premium Insights

Increasing Number of Devices, Operating Systems, and Applications for Scaling Quality Assurance to Drive Market Growth

Retail Vertical to Account for the Largest Market Share During the Forecast Period

Large Enterprises to Lead Market Growth in 2022

Crowdsourced Testing Cloud Deployment Mode to Lead Market Growth in 2022

Functionality Testing to Account for the Largest Market Share During the Forecast Period

Web Crowdsourced Testing to Lead Market Growth During 2022-2027

Asia-Pacific to Show Fastest Growth Rate During the Forecast Period

Canada to Account for High Growth During the Forecast Period

Market Dynamics

Drivers

Increase in the Number of Devices, Operating Systems, and Applications

Need for Scaling Quality Assurance of Software for Enhancing Customer Experience

Requirement for Adopting Cost-Effective Software Development Process

Need to Fill the In-House Skill Gap with Crowdsourced Testers During COVID-19

Restraints

Opportunities

Challenges

Industry Trends

Case Study Analysis

Case Study 1: with the Help of Rainforest Qa Cireson to Cut Qa Testing Time from Weeks to Hours

Case Study 2: High-Growth Fintech App Ramps Up a Global Testing Operation in Two Weeks with Testlio

Case Study 3: Soundcloud Paves Road to Revenue with Mobile Testing with the Help of Test Io

Case Study 4: Specsavers Saw Testing Timescales Shrink and Qa Improve with Digivante

Case Study 5: Simplot Embraced Crowd Testing for Its Latest Venture Using Crowdsprint Crowd Testing Platform

Regulatory Bodies, Government Agencies, and Other Organizations

General Data Protection Regulation

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

Cloud Standard Customer Council

System and Organization Controls 2 Type Ii Compliance

Iso/Iec 27001

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

Federal Information Security Management Act

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

Crowdsourced Testing Market: Patent Analysis

Document Types of Patents

Patents Filed, 2019-2022

Innovation and Patent Applications

Total Number of Patents Granted in a Year, 2019-2021

Top Applicants

Top Ten Companies with the Highest Number of Patent Applications, 2019-2021

Company Profiles

Major Players

Startups/SMEs

Global App Testing

Applause

Synack

Testbirds

Rainforest

Digivante

Testlio

Crowdsprint

Mycrowd Qa

Ubertesters

Qa Mentor

Crowd4Test

Testunity

Usabitest

Stardust

Impactqa

Cobalt

Bugcrowd

Qualitrix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/qha6z0

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Global $2.5 Billion Crowdsourced Testing Markets to 2027: Adoption of Cloud Computing to Enhance Device Virtualization and Tester Support - Yahoo...

HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sangfor Technologies is an APAC-based, global leading vendor of IT infrastructure and security solutions specializing in Cyber Security and Cloud Computing. Sangfor works closely with its customers to develop new products and improve their already stellar offerings to help users across the world make their digital transformation simpler and secure.

The Cloud Strategy Cookbook 2021 by Gartner provides infrastructure and operations managers with a virtual template for devising a sound cloud strategy document, which answers the what and why of cloud implementation and adoption.

Gartner research resulted in several interesting findings:

The Cloud Strategy Cookbook provides infrastructure and operation (I&O) leaders with recommendations and guidelines on creating a living cloud strategy document that effectively aligns cloud migration and implementation plans with core business strategy. The cookbook approach divides the cloud strategy document into five major components: Executive Summary, Baselines, Brainstorming, Principles and Inventory, and Aligning with Other Strategies and Supporting Elements.

In response to The Cloud Strategy Cookbook, Sangfor released a detailed newsletter that answers the how of cloud implementation and offers the following practical preparations for a successful cloud journey:

For more detailed information and to read the Sangfor newsletter featuring the Gartner report in its entirety, click HERE.

Source: Gartner Research NoteThe Cloud Strategy Cookbook G00741474, Published 17 February 2021, By Analyst: David SmithGARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Sangfor Managed Cloud Services

Sangfor Managed Cloud Services gives customers the convenience and flexibility of a public cloud, with the security, control, and professional service of a private cloud, making it the best cloud service approach for most SME customers. It provides globally distributed data centers, offering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) as well as dedicated resource/data security and full-stack security protection in a new security responsibilities model. Think of it as a local public cloud, with the security and ease-of-service of a private cloud. Leverage Sangfor Managed Cloud Services and allow your organization to focus on digital transformation and create more business value!

For more information on Sangfor Managed Cloud Services, please visit us online at http://www.sangfor.com.

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Sangfor Newsletter Featuring the Gartner Research: The Cloud Strategy Cookbook, 2021 - Business Wire

Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) Marketreport contains detailed information on factors influencing demand, growth, opportunities, challenges, and restraints. It provides detailed information about the structure and prospects for global and regional industries. In addition, the report includes data on research & development, new product launches, product responses from the global and local markets by leading players. The structured analysis offers a graphical representation and a diagrammatic breakdown of theCloud Application Programming Interface (API) Marketby region.

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Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) is a software interface that allows developers to link cloud computing service together. Application programming interfaces (APIs) allow one computer program to make its data and functionality available for other programs to use. So, basically APIs can connect software component across a network. The increasing demand of cloud computing and new advancements will help the business man to grab business opportunity. For instance: according to NCBI, Microsoft Azure enables customers to build the foundation for a private cloud infrastructure using Windows Server and System Center family of products with the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit.

Furthermore, the adoption of cloud computing and rise in the demand for micro services by organizations are also anticipated to flourish the growth of the cloud application programming interface (API). Also, with the increasing digitalization, the adoption & demand for Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) is likely to increase the market growth during the forecast period. However, rising security concerns associated with the cloud API security will be major limitation for the cloud application programming interface market.

The key regions considered for the global Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) market study includes Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Latin America and Rest of the World. North America is dominating the market of cloud API as the region is well developed and there are high number of early adopters of cloud technology. Whereas, Asia-Pacific is register exhibit highest CAGR over the forecast period 2021-2027. It is expected to witness significant growth owing to increase in number of cloud Enterprise Size providers in the region and rising digitalization in Asia-Pacific region would create the highest growth in the forecasted period 2021-2027.

Major market player included in this report are:Amazon Web Enterprise Sizes Inc.CA Inc.Dell Inc.Google Inc.IBM CorporationMicrosoft CorporationOracle CorporationSalesforce.com Inc.SAP SETIBCO Software Inc.

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The objective of the study is to define market sizes of different segments & countries in recent years and to forecast the values to the coming eight years. The report is designed to incorporate both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the industry within each of the regions and countries involved in the study. Furthermore, the report also caters the detailed information about the crucial aspects such as driving factors & challenges which will define the future growth of the market. Additionally, the report shall also incorporate available opportunities in micro markets for stakeholders to invest along with the detailed analysis of competitive landscape and product offerings of key players.

The detailed segments and sub-segment of the market are explained below:By Organization Size:Large-Scale EnterprisesMedium-scale EnterprisesSmall-scale EnterprisesBy End User:RetailHealthcareTelecomBFSI Media and EntertainmentHospitalityEducationOthersBy Region:North AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeUKGermanyFranceSpainItalyROE

Asia PacificChinaIndiaJapanAustraliaSouth KoreaRoAPACLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of the World

Furthermore, years considered for the study are as follows:

Historical year 2018, 2019Base year 2020Forecast period 2021 to 2027

Target Audience of the Global Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) Market in Market Study:

Key Consulting Companies & AdvisorsLarge, medium-sized, and small enterprisesVenture capitalistsValue-Added Resellers (VARs)Third-party knowledge providersInvestment bankersInvestors

What is the aim of the report?

The report analyses growth rate, market

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About Report Ocean:We are the best market research reports provider in the industry. Report Ocean believes in providing quality reports to clients to meet the top line and bottom line goals which will boost your market share in todays competitive environment. Report Ocean is a one-stop solution for individuals, organizations, and industries that are looking for innovative market research reports.

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Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) Market 2022 Size, Share, Trend Insights on Share, Application and Forecast Assumptions Queen Anne and...

TrueCarbon provides cloud service provider-agnostic tools to measure, monitor, and reduce carbon emissions from cloud operations. These capabilities empower businesses to weigh sustainability considerations as they would other business costs and decisions with a heightened level of transparency. Key features include:

S&P 500 companies are increasingly focusing on sustainability efforts; in 2011, only 20% were publishing a sustainability report, and in 2020, 92% were. Prior to the launch of TrueCarbon, there was no independent product for organizations that reliably measured and analyzed the end-to-end carbon emissions of their cloud operations across multiple cloud service providers and enabled organizations to take immediate action directly within the platform.

"We're proud to bring this revolutionary solution to the market during such a critical moment for climate change," said Chris Noble, CEO, Cirrus Nexus. "The time is now to take bold actions to avoid increasing global temperatures, and companies need tools that not only reduce cloud costs, but also operate their systems with the smallest possible carbon footprint. That is exactly what we hope to help businesses achieve with TrueCarbon."

Beyond the business implications, the lack of clarity and visibility into carbon emissions produced by cloud operations has a direct impact on global warming. To drive real change, real insight is needed. According to theClimate Clock, we have 7 years to take bold actions to avoid increasing global temperature 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, a point of no return that science tells us is likely to make the worst climate impacts inevitable. Getting an independent view of emissions and being able to act on that information rapidly is essential to making meaningful change.

To learn more about Cirrus Nexus TrueCarbon, visit: https://www.cirrus-nexus.com/truecarbon.

About Cirrus NexusCirrus Nexus empowers businesses through its A.I.-driven cloud management platforms that offers direct control of monitoring and optimizing cloud spend across multiple different cloud service providers. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in New York, Cirrus Nexus works with mid-size to large enterprises looking to optimize their cloud computing costs. For more information, visit: https://www.cirrus-nexus.com/.

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Cirrus Nexus Introduces Industry-First Carbon Reduction Tool for Cloud Operations - PR Newswire

Its slipping again, but after Microsoft(NASDAQ:MSFT) reported its third-quarter earnings on April 26, MSFT stock put together a decent rally. A relatively rare rally for a big tech stock in 2022. However, despite the pop which saw MSFT gain 7.3% in the days after its Q3 earnings beat shares are still down over 20% in 2022. Theyre off November 2021s high close of $343.11 by 29%.

Microsoft shares were stuck in the doldrums for the first decade and a half of the century. Windows and Office kept plugging along, but the company wasnt really breaking any new ground. It was finding its footing again after a close call with a government antitrust case that nearly saw the company broken up. In addition, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stepped down as CEO in 2000, leaving Steve Ballmer to run the company.

Current CEO Satya Nadella took over in 2014, with a focus on the cloud. Since then, MSFT stock has been a steamroller. Even after 2022s slump, it is up over 600% since Nadellas appointment. With shares feeling the impact of 2022s market, now would be a great time to buy MSFT stock in anticipation of the growth momentum continuing in the long term. Thats especially true with the way the companys cloud bets are paying off.

Shortly after Microsoft reported its Q3 earnings in April, I wrote about the importance of its legacy businesses, including Windows and Office. They tend to get overlooked these days, but still continue to reliably generate big revenue for the company. However, this time I want to focus on the cloud.

Microsofts cloud services including Azure was one of the quarters highlights. And its an area where CEO Satya Nadella has pushed the company to greatly expand its presence.

Heres what the companys CFO had to say about the third quarter: Continued customer commitment to our cloud platform and strong sales execution drove better than expected commercial bookings growth of 28% and Microsoft Cloud revenue of $23.4 billion, up 32% year over year.

That cloud revenue is creeping close to half of the companys total revenue. Overall revenue for MSFT was up 18% year-over-year, so cloud services are seeing their revenue grow at a faster pace than other divisions.

Right now, Microsofts Azure is in second place globally among cloud computing providers, with a 21% market share. Microsoft is slowly but surely growing its share in a market that is experiencing rapid growth. Everything from online shopping to remote work to the metaverse is continuing to boost the demand for cloud computing. This is a market thats on track to hit a value of $947.3 billion by 2026, with a CAGR of 16.3%.

In other words, look to the cloud to power MSFT stock growth in coming years.

Its not just Microsofts cloud services that are exciting for investors. Its the way the company is able to leverage Azure and its cloud computing infrastructure to wring more revenue from its other businesses including legacy products.

For example, you can still buy a copy of Microsoft Office. But by pushing Office to the cloud and a subscription model, Microsoft is ensuring this cash cow continues to deliver. You can now access Office documents from virtually any connected device, keeping it relevant. In 2017, Office 365 online brought in more revenue than the traditional, boxed Office products for the first time.

Any company benefits from ongoing subscription revenue thats not tied to buying cycles or strict hardware requirements. By leveraging the cloud, Microsoft is ensuring Office a product first released in 1990 continues to be a big revenue generator.

Another great example is the companys Xbox gaming division. One of the key buying propositions for an Xbox game console is Microsofts strong online gaming capabilities through subscription services like Xbox Live. That has expanded to Xbox Cloud Gaming that leverages Azure to Bring Xbox Series X-quality gaming to mobile devices. Naturally, this also adds to the companys growing subscription revenue stream.

Its having a tough 2022, but MSFT stock earns a B in Portfolio Grader. Microsoft is a company with a proven history of innovation. MSFT stock has been an impressive performer since 2014. It has been riding the cloud for momentum not seen since the companys early days as a PC pioneer.

There may be more bumps to deal with in 2022, but the opportunity to buy MSFT stock at this price will almost certainly pay off in the long term.

On the date of publication, Louis Navellier had a long position in MSFT. Louis Navellier did not have (either directly or indirectly) any other positions in the securities mentioned in this article. InvestorPlace Research Staff member primarily responsible for this article did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.

Original post:

The Cloud Is Yet Another Reason to Buy Microsoft Stock - InvestorPlace

This exclusive Q&A interview was conducted by Nages Sieslack of the ISC 2022 conference organization, with Eric Eppe, head of portfolio and solutions, HPC & Quantum at France-based HPC systems vendor Atos.

Nages Sieslack: How are the needs of the European HPC market changing with regard to traditional supercomputing and things like deep learning/AI and data-centric computing?

Eric Eppe: Supercomputers are the soft power for all nationals. They are essential for numerical simulations, accelerating technological, industrial, and scientific innovations. We see a transition from traditional compute-centric simulation toward data-centric, resulting in a more heterogeneous workload. We believe the future of HPC is hybrid. This means combining traditional simulation workflows using CPU & GPU (even TPU, FPGA, IPU, why not QPU) with advanced techniques to accelerate part of these workflows thanks to machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), or even quantum computing (QC). The virtue of deep learning/AI is not only limited to the GPU accelerator on the hardware side but also serves as the foundation of smart software within HPC cluster management and workload optimization. In this regard, deep learning/AI-empowered software optimizes workloads while increasing the systems global efficiency.

Sieslack: How are those changes affecting the types of systems and services you are offering?

Eppe: Atos leads the hybrid computing trend with its existing HPC portfolio and the newly revealed BullSequana XH3000. It is the next-generation hybrid computing platform, the foundation for any scale simulation up to the exascale. It has unparalleled flexibility, industry-leading density, and embedded security. For Atos, Exascale doesnt mean Exaflopic performance only. We believe that Increasing global system and application efficiency is the only way to decrease system cost and stay within a reasonable power consumption at that scale. Thus, we have incorporated ML/AI mechanisms in our HPC Software suites to optimize simulation and keep control of energy consumption for unprecedented efficiency. We have also witnessed the need for high-performance AI simulations and launched the ThinkAI solution last year. With ThinkAI, we eliminate all the roadblocks in designing, developing, and installing high-performance AI systems, putting AI simulations at the fingertips of all businesses and academics. Furthermore, we leverage our HPC-as-a-Service portfolio, enabling any customer to run their simulations anywhere they want.

Sieslack: Geographically, where do see your biggest opportunities for growth in the HPC market, both within Europe and globally?

Eppe: Compared with China, the U.S., and Japan, which are relatively closed HPC economies (they build their own HPCs for their use), Europe is the most dynamic and open HPC market. Europe has significantly invested in the EuroHPC JU, Atos empowers 5 of the 7 EuroHPC centers. Europe continues to invest in supercomputing, including HPC and Quantum computing, e.g.the upcoming Exascale tenders, as an extension of the EuroHPC JU. Atos designs, develops, and builds our HPCs in Angers, France, and is number 1 in HPC in Europe. We also have our HPC, AI & QC R&D centers in France. We actively participate in European initiatives to develop the European microprocessor with EPI and the GAIA-X initiative. Atos is the undisputed leader in the European HPC market, instrumental to its technological and economic sovereignty.

Sieslack: What trends are you seeing for your HPC on-demand service via your Nimbix cloud offering with regards to use cases and the types of customers?

Eric Eppe of Atos

Eppe: As industry analysts have predicted, cloud computing will continue to grow at double-digit rates through 2025*. Our on-demand service through Nimbix is seeing this growth, with customers across the globe consuming computer power at record numbers. We have witnessed on-demand usage increase specifically within automotive manufacturing, Lifesciences, and academic research organizations. We are pleased to offer these industries the most comprehensive hybrid HPC cloud portfolio and are excited to be advancing this space with new offerings and technology. In fact, in the second half of the year, we will deploy the first public cloud offering in partnership with a top hyperscaler to provide Genomic analytics of sequencing data, from specialized cluster resources delivered by Atos Nimbix.

Sieslack: What is Atos doing now on the quantum computing front? Which companies and partners are currently using your Quantum Learning Machine simulator?

Eppe: Quantum Computing will re-invent how we simulate, co-existing with HPC. In Dec 2021, Atos confirmed its role as a global leader in quantum hybridization technologies at its 8th Quantum Advisory Board. For Atos, we work mainly on five strategic directions to accelerate quantum computing:

On top of these five strategic paths, we have launched Qscore, a universal metric to benchmark quantum applications performance. Together with clients worldwide, such as Argonne Labs, BMW, CESGA, SENAI CIMATEC, and Total, we are accelerating the arrival of the quantum era.

*Source: Intersect360 Research forecasts cloud computing will continue to grow at double-digit rates through 2025.

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Atos Talks European HPC Openness and a Hybrid Future of AI, Machine Learning and Quantum Supercomputing - insideHPC

In the first quarter, most of the FAANG companies delivered underwhelming financial results. Alphabet missed earnings estimates on the bottom line, Meta Platforms posted its slowest salesgrowth as a public company, Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in a decade, and Amazon (AMZN -3.20%) turned in its first quarterly loss since 2015.

With the exception ofApple, all of the FAANG stocks have fallen at least 20% from their highs, and most have fallen much further. That creates a buying opportunity, and Amazon looks like the best bargain of the bunch.

Here's why.

Image source: Getty Images.

In the first quarter, Amazon's revenue grew just 7% to $116 billion, and online store sales actually fell 3%. On the bottom line, the retail titan posted a net loss of $3.8 billion -- its first quarterly loss in seven years. At first glance, Wall Street's disappointment is understandable, but investors need to dig a little deeper.

Those results are set against an exceptionally difficult macroeconomic backdrop. Russia's war on Ukraine has sent fuel prices soaring. During the earnings call, management noted that the cost to ship overseas containers has more than doubled from pre-pandemic levels, and inflation pressures collectively added $2 billion in expenses compared to last year. Amazon's net loss also reflects $8.2 billionin unrealized losses from its equity investment portfolio. Rivian alone accounted for $7.6 billion of that total.

Without those expenses and unrealized losses, Amazon's net income would have been $6.4 billion. And that doesn't even account for any inflationary pressure on consumer spending.

Despite a disappointing performance in Q1, Amazon still benefits from an ironclad competitive position in the e-commerce industry. Its marketplace accounted for 41%of online retail sales in the U.S. last year, more than the next 14 retailers combined.

To reinforce that edge, Amazon has built out an extensive fulfillment and logistics network, giving the company greater control over shipping costs and delivery times. Building upon that infrastructure, the company recently announced Buy with Prime, a service that extends the benefits of its Prime membership program to third-party websites.

Amazon also dominates the cloud computing industry. In Q1, Amazon Web Services (AWS) captured 33% market share, easily outpacing second-place Microsoft Azure. In fact, a report from Okta suggests that Amazon has six times more cloud computing customers than Microsoft. Few businesses have ever achieved that level of success even one time, but Amazon has pulled it off twice.

In Q1, AWS revenue growth accelerated to 37%, and its operating margin expanded nearly five percentagepoints to 35.3%. That makes Amazon's cloud computing business much more profitable than its retail business, which typically achieves an operating margin in the mid-single digits. That means Amazon should become increasingly profitable as AWS accounts for a bigger part of its total business.

To some extent, the novelty of e-commerce and cloud computing has worn off, but both markets are still growing at a good clip. According to eMarketer, online retail sales will climb 50%over the next four years, reaching $7.4 trillion by 2025. And Gartner says cloud spend will more than double over the same period, reaching $917 billion. That means both of Amazon's core businesses still have a long runway for growth.

Better yet, the company is actually gaining ground in a third high-growth market: digital advertising. Amazon accounted for 11.6% of digital ad spend in the U.S. last year, but eMarketer says that figure will hit 14.6% by 2023. For context, U.S. digital spend is expected to reach $270 billion in 2023. That means Amazon will generate about $40 billion in U.S. ad sales.

Amazon doesn't provide details about its ad business, but a 30% operating margin seems like a reasonable estimate. In Q1, Alphabet achieved an operating margin of 37% on its Google services segment, which primarily consists of advertisingacross Google Search, YouTube, and partner websites. In other words, digital advertising is much like cloud computing for Amazon. As it becomes a bigger part of the total top line, the company should become increasingly profitable.

To sum things up, Amazon has a commanding lead in two high-growth industries, and it's gaining ground in a third. And with shares trading at 2.4 times sales -- their cheapest valuation in the last six years -- this FAANG stock is a screaming buy.

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My Best FAANG Stock to Buy Now and Hold Forever - The Motley Fool

Software as a service has become the default for how organizations adopt and use apps these days, thanks to advances in cloud computing and networking, and the flexibility of pay-as-you-use models that adapt to the evolving needs of a business. Today, a company called Paddle, which has built a large business out of providing the billing backend for those SaaS products, is announcing a large funding round of $200 million as it gears up for its own next stage of growth.

The Series D investment led by KKR with participation from previous backers FTV Capital, 83North, Notion Capital, Kindred Capital, with debt from Silicon Valley Bank values London-based Paddle at $1.4 billion. With this round, the startup has raised $293 million.

Paddle today works with more than 3,000 software customers in 200 markets, where it provides a platform for them to set up and sell their SaaS products in those regions, primarily in a B2B model. But with so many consumer services also sold these days in SaaS models, its ambitions include a significant expansion of that to areas like in-app payments.

Were been growing a lot in the last couple of years. We thought it would tail off [after the COVID-19 peak] but it didnt, said Christian Owens, the CEO and co-founder. Indeed that includes more videoconferencing use by everyday people, arranging Zoom dinner, but also the explosion of streamed media and other virtual consumer services. B2C software has over the years blurred with what is thought of as B2B. Suddenly everyone needed our B2B tools.

Payments has long been a complicated and fragmented business in the digital world: banking practices, preferred payment methods and regulations differ depending on the market in question, and each stage of taking and clearing payments typically involves piecing together a chain of providers. Paddle positions itself as a merchant of record that has built a set of services around the specific needs of businesses that sell software online, covering checkout, payment, subscription management, invoicing, international taxes and financial compliance processes.

Sold as a SaaS itself basic pricing is 5% + 50 cents per transaction Paddles premise follows the basic principle of so many other business tools: payments is typically not a core competency of, say, a video conferencing or security company (one of its customers is BlueJeans, now owned by Verizon, which used to own TechCrunch; another is Fortinet).

To be fair, there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of merchants of record in the market for payments services from PayPal and Stripe through to Amazon and many more no surprise since it is complicated and just about any businesses selling online will turn to these at some point to handle that flow. However, Paddle believes (and has proven) that there is a business to be made in bringing together the many complicated parts of providing a billing and payments service into a single product specifically tailored to software businesses. It does not disclose actual revenues or specific usage numbers, but notes that revenue growth (not necessarily revenue) has doubled over the last 18 months.

Paddle as a company name doesnt have a specific meaning.

Its not a reference to anything, just a name we liked, Owens who himself is a Thiel Fellow said. And that impulse to make decisions on a hunch that it could be catchy is something that seems to have followed him and the company for a while.

Image Credits: Paddle

He came to the idea of Paddle with Harrison Rose (currently chief strategy officer and credited with building its sales ethos), after the two tried their hands at a previous software business they founded when they were just 18, an experience that gave them a taste of one of the big challenges for startups of that kind.

You make your first $1 million-$2 million in revenue with a handful of employees, but gradually those businesses become $2-20 million in sales, and then $300 million, but the basic problems of running them dont go away, he said.

Billing and payments present a particularly thorny problem because of the different regulations and compliance requirements, and practices, that scaling software companies face across different jurisdictions. Paddle itself works with some half dozen major payment companies to enable localized transactions, and many more partners, to provide that as a seamless service for its customers (which arenot payment companies themselves).

You may recognize the name Paddle for having been in the news last autumn, when it took its observations on the challenges of payments to a new frontier: apps, and specifically in-app payments. It announced last October that it was building an alternative to Apples in-app payments service.

This was arrived at through much of the observational logic that started Paddle itself, as Owens describes it. Apple, as is well known, has been locked in a protracted dispute with a number of companies that sell apps through the app store, which have wanted to have more control over their billing (and to give Apple less of a cut of those proceeds). Owens said Paddle felt encouraged to build an alternative in the heat of that dispute, before it has even been resolved, based on the response from the market (and specifically developers and app publishers) to that public dispute and governments stance.

Its approach is not unlike Apples itself, ironically:

There is one thing Apple has done right, which is to build a full set of tools around commerce for these businesses, he said. But, he added, its failing has been in not giving customers a choice of when to use it, and how much to charge for it. There has to be an alternative to cover all that as well.

(Paddle plans to charge 10% for transactions under $10, and just 5% on transactions over $10, compared to Apples 30%, a spokesperson later told me.)

The product is built and ready to go, Owens said, adding that there are already 2,000 developers signed up, representing $2 billion in app store volume, ready to try it out. Due to launch in December, Paddle has held off as Apples case with Epic (one of the most outspoken critics of IAP) has dragged on.

And he said, found Paddles name included, and not in a good way, in an update to Apples complaint.

That bold attitude may indeed keep Paddle in Apples bad books, but has made it a hero to third-party developers.

Paddle is solving a significant pain point for thousands of SaaS companies by reducing the friction and costs associated with managing payments infrastructure and tax compliance, said Patrick Devine, a director at KKR, in a statement. By simplifying the payments stack, Paddle enables faster, more sustainable growth for SaaS businesses. Christian and the team have done a phenomenal job building a category-defining business in this space, and we are excited to be supporting them as they embark on the next phase of growth.

More:

Paddle, the company that wants to take on Apple in IAP, raises $200M at a $1.4B valuation to supercharge SaaS payments - TechCrunch

The wheel, steam engine and the internet created revolutionary jumps in the way people work and play. Today, artificial intelligence is reshaping science, business and personal interactions with equal magnitude. In every industry, including agriculture, healthcare, customer service, finance, manufacturing, retail and more, companies are quickly adopting AI to ensure theyre not left behind during this tectonic shift.

AI workloads have unique requirements, including strategic planning to ensure data scientists and researchers work efficiently on delivering successful projects. For IT teams just starting out, its helpful to know that while AI workloads require accelerated infrastructure and software, many of the solutions IT is most familiar with are already AI-ready for integration into an innovative strategy for creating an AI Centre of Excellence.

Few resources are as readily available and easy to use as the cloud, and this easy access to infrastructure extends to AI workloads. With GPU-accelerated instances available from every cloud service provider, these resources are ideal for prototyping AI projects. They provide the scale needed when training new models. The cloud also can serve enterprises well as infrastructure for AI inference workloads, where AI models are deployed for things like computer vision, conversational AI, speech, language and translation, and recommendation systems.

The challenge here is that data governance and cloud costs can complicate AI adoption. Training models generally require processing large datasets, and as AI projects grow, hosting all the data on the cloud can result in unexpected costs. Additionally, when AI is deployed in applications, many apps require real-time responsiveness for automation or user experience, which can become a challenge when data makes a round trip from the cloud.

To overcome these hurdles, enterprises are building AI Centres of Excellence with on-prem systems for AI that connect with cloud-based AI computing for prototyping and scale. This involves planning for data gravity and putting computing closer to the source of data to ensure costs are balanced and resources are at the ready. It also helps enterprises start with small projects in the cloud that grow into the hybrid ecosystem when its time to deploy. All major cloud service providers offer hybrid accelerated computing solutions, making it easier to harness both on-prem and cloud-based compute resources as needed.

With this hybrid approach, enterprise data scientists always have the resources they need to stay as productive as possible whether theyre creating new models, training AI, or evaluating a deployed model to ensure its still accurate.

Its also important to consider the big picture when looking at the cost of accelerated computing in the hybrid cloud. On paper, high-performance instances may at first look costly, but they end up delivering significant cost savings. They enable large datasets to be processed much more quickly, which results in lower total costs. Most importantly, these instances provide faster time-to-market for products and services. In addition, software technology can help right-size accelerated computing resources to maximise efficiency on diverse AI training and inference workloads.

For AI use cases like conversational AI services, accelerated computing platforms train large, sophisticated networks in hours instead of weeks. When deployed as AI-powered services, these networks deliver immediate, natural-sounding replies to complex questions.

Central to every AI project is a software architecture built to deliver on enterprise AI objectives. Workloads for conversational AI, recommender systems, robotics automation and computer vision all depend on specialised software designed for these unique applications.

These software requirements can present the biggest challenges for AI teams getting started on new projects. To help companies hit the ground running on their AI Centres of Excellence, NVIDIA offers free software resources for developers and data scientists. The NVIDIA AI platform also offers a single architecture to develop and optimise the applications while offering the flexibility to run them anywhere.

For businesses, one size rarely fits all. The same is true for AI workloads. With a hybrid cloud strategy to augment an enterprise AI Centre of Excellence, IT teams can deliver AI acceleration thats both on demand and within budgets. By keeping AI software in mind and developing a strategy to keep pace with software innovation, enterprises will be ready to scale easily from the data centre, to the cloud, to the edge.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? The Data Centre Congress, 4th March 2021 is a free virtual event exploring the world of data centres. Learn more here and book your free ticket:https://datacentrecongress.com/

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How the hybrid cloud is key to enterprise AI infrastructure strategies - Cloud Tech

The shift to cloud computing has been one of the most significant tech trends of the past few years. While it used to be the norm for companies to own and operate their own data centers, the amount of business software running on traditional servers is set to shrink to 32% of all enterprise applications by 2022, roughly half what it was in 2019.

Forrester senior analyst Tracy Woo put it bluntly:

"It's well understood using cloud is necessary to stay competitive," she told Insider. "The question most are weighing is when and should we be moving all of our workloads to the cloud?"

Moving to the cloud can create a host of benefits for companies, including slashed IT costs, more flexibility, increased efficiency, improved security, boosted performance, and the potential for innovation and developing new capabilities, according to Woo and other experts. And the pandemic has only accelerated this transition and digital transformation.

One of the first benefits that brought attention to the cloud, according to Canalys research analyst Blake Murray, was scalability, meaning the ability to increase or decrease resources to satisfy evolving demands. That remains a draw: For example, the NFL was able to lean on Amazon Web Services to live-stream its virtual draft last year, when it needed to use far more cloud capacity than typical.

Companies that embrace the cloud can additionally find "benefits in innovations" like artificial intelligence and machine learning use cases, according to Gartner research vice president Ed Anderson, as well as "operational efficiency and cost savings."

For example, American Airlines told Insider that uniting its backend system on cloud improved the customer experience, like giving people more control over rescheduled flights, while Capital One said that moving completely to the cloud allowed it to save money and increase the security of its products.

Case studies like that highlight why firms are anxious to make the leap to the cloud: A whopping 85% of enterprises will adopt a cloud-first principle by 2025, according to Gartner research VP Sid Nag, meaning that they'll be focusing on how to free up IT resources and deliver the most business value using the cloud.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also increased cloud adoption: Almost 70% of organizations using cloud services plan to increase their cloud spending in the wake of the pandemic according to a Gartner survey published in November.

"COVID and the shaky economy brought on a lot of focus to business priorities specifically accelerating to a more digital business that would enable a company to more readily respond to changing circumstances," said Woo. "It also forced companies to take a bigger focus on good business fundamentals in reducing costs in order to get through tough financial times."

Nag's report highlights three priorities firms have focused on: Preserving cash and optimizing IT costs, supporting and securing a remote workforce, and ensuring resiliency. "Investing in cloud became a convenient means to address all three of these needs," he wrote.

Cloud services also helped companies "keep their businesses viable and online and connected to their customers and partners," added Anderson, who co-authored a report about this shift.

Experts note that the trajectory of the pandemic, and the lingering effects thereafter, have informed their predictions for cloud adoption in 2021.

"I think that cloud services are maybe to steal the term like a 'new normal' for business," said Canalys' Blake Murray. "I think the growth will continue. There doesn't seem to be anything that would change minds, especially if the economy stabilizes more. I think people will pour more investment into digital transformation."

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Why companies are flocking to the cloud more than ever - Business Insider

This column was originally published on Roger Waldrons blog atThe Coalition for Government Procurementand was republished here with permission from the author.

Seeding the schedules cloud means addressing 1980s-era Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) pricing policies that limit access to 21st-Century commercial solutions, especially leading-edge commercial technologies, like cloud computing. By so doing, the General Services Administration can increase agency access to best value commercial products, services, and solutions.

MAS consolidation has eliminated contracting stovepipes, duplication, and process burdens at the contract level. The next step for GSA is to streamline, reform, and enhance the underlying pricing policies governing contract negotiation, award, and compliance. Reforming these underlying pricing policies will unleash the MAS program, enhancing best value mission support by focusing on increasing commercial market access and competition at the task order level.

Nowhere will this effort be more impactful than in the MAS programs cloud computing offerings. The federal government is scratching the surface on cloud, with the federal market for cloud expected to grow to over $8.5 billion in the next few years according to Bloomberg Government. Cloud enables data analytics, machine learning, and AI capabilities that are the focus of government modernization. Moreover, the pandemic has served to accelerate the commercial cloud transition and usage, with remote work and virtual offices driving demand. Given the growing demand for cloud, the MAS program has the opportunity to leverage the commercial market to deliver increased capabilities to support agency IT needs. So, pricing reform clearly is a game changer.

For example, MAS commercial cloud capabilities are held back by the outdated, anti-competitive pricing policies, like the Price Reduction Clause (PRC) and Commercial Sales Practices (CSP) that are the basis for MAS price negotiations. The PRC and CSP are static, formulaic, catalog-driven mechanisms that limit pricing flexibility. By so doing, they restrict flexibility and competition and emphasize oversight and compliance. In contrast, the cloud pricing environment is dynamic and flexible. Pricing is driven by customer business models and frameworks, volume, and variable pricing is driven by market demand, technology, business models, and customer frameworks. These factors require flexible pricing that can react over time depending on use and market conditions. The PRC and CSP were simply not built for this kind of dynamic approach to the market.

Negotiating cloud pricing terms consistent with the current MAS pricing policies is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Thus, with these current pricing policies, customers, contractors, and GSA suffer increased pricing risk and restricted access to technology solutions. It is time to waive application of the PRC and CSP for cloud computing services. Likewise, the Economic Price Adjustment clause should be waived for cloud. In their place, a flexibly priced model at the contract level should exist to enhance the ability of MAS contractors to effectively and efficiently price and deliver best value cloud solutions at the task order level.

Together, these changes will provide an opportunity to ensure that task order terms and conditions retain the flexibility for contractors to effectively respond to customer needs and adjust to changing market conditions in meeting those needs. The net benefit will be to streamline customer access to innovative commercial cloud solutions at the competitive task order level. For these reasons, the Coalition stands ready to work with all stakeholders on seeding the cloud for a best value customer forecast.

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Seeding the schedules cloud whats the forecast? - Federal News Network

As cloud adoption rises, so does cloud "sticker shock." That tremendous savings seen from the switch to up-front CapEx investments in information technology to subscription mode soon gets soured as the rising monthly bills come in for services nobody knows where and when they are being used.

If you feel your organization is behind the curve with automating even the most routine parts of cloud, and cloud spending is an unseen disaster waiting to happen, don't feel so bad -- even the most informed financial experts are still trying to figure these things out.

We're talking about those who are part of a rising new discipline called "FinOps" -- the practice of monitoring, measuring and mitigating the costs and value delivered from cloud. The perspectives of FinOps practitioners (yes, they are out there) provide a good look at understanding what lies ahead in cloud. Here, we see automation is still a struggle to fully attain, and cloud spending a big question mark.

These are the findings of the FinOps Foundation, a non-profit trade association focused on codifying and promoting cloud financial management best practices and standards, detailed in a recent survey of more than 800 FinOps practitioners from around the world with a collective $45 billion in annual cloud spend. "The dirty little secret of cloud spend is that the bill never really goes down," says J.R. Storment, executive director of the FinOps Foundation.

The results show massive adoption of public cloud spend, and the struggle to contain and optimize cloud spend. Nearly half of survey respondents (49%) had little or no automation of managing cloud spend. Of those with some automation, almost one-third automated notifications (31%) and tagging hygiene (29%.) Only 13% automated rightsizing and 9% spot use. This "indicates that companies are likely missing opportunities to optimize cloud spend," the survey's authors note.

Half of compute spend on public cloud was for on-demand, the highest-price service; and 49% for reserved, savings or committed use coverage, the next-costliest option. Only 13% was for spot use, the least expensive service, even though respondents identified 28% as being an "excellent" target for that option.

Getting engineers to act on cost optimization was cited by 40% of respondents as the biggest challenge, followed by dealing with shared costs (33%) and accurate forecasting spend (26%.)

The most oft-used tools used for managing cloud costs include AWS Cost Explorer, Cloudability (Apptio), CloudHealth (VMWare), Azure Cost Management, GCP Cost Tools, and Cloudcheckr. About half, 46%, use cloud native tooling as their primary technology, 43% use a 3rd party platform, and 11% use home grown tools or spreadsheets. At the same time, many FinOps practitioners still rely on data collection, collation, and analysis via spreadsheet. Almost all practitioners use a combination of tooling, while still relying on spreadsheets for some tasks -- with forecasting being the biggest Excel use.

The survey's authors project that significant growth is ahead for FinOps, the field of cloud financial management, as more companies accelerate their cloud plans, especially amid COVID-19, and struggle to contain and optimize cloud spend. The survey respondents predicted an over 40% growth in FinOps team size in the next 12 months.

For the most part, FinOps is a part-time pursuit, and organizations need to buy into supporting efforts to monitor and manage cloud costs. Some challenges cited by respondents in the survey include the following:

Go here to read the rest:

Cloud computing 'sticker shock' is on the rise, and containing it may be a new career path - ZDNet

It all starts with the cloud

The cloud stores your data, all your pictures and your phone contacts, and it processes information that helps make your favorite apps work. Cloud computing can do several things at once, really well: It can compute, store data and work with the network, all in one location. Many cloud providers, for example, have storage facilities that do cloud computing in locations all over the world. When you take a photo with your phone and send it to Instagram, it goes to a cloud facilitypossibly several hops and four or five states awaywhere all the necessary computing takes place, and then it publishes to Instagram. Its a similar process for reading your morning email or listening to a podcast. For things like that, the centralized cloud works really well, and the latency is low enough that your experience is just fine.

But certain experiences require a lot of data to move very quickly to and from a device and the cloud. Thats where MEC comes in. It brings the cloud closer to you.

The edge refers to the part of Verizons network that is closest to you: Your device connects to the network at the edge. And edge computing means bringing the cloud to the edge of the network closest to your device.

So how do you make edge computing more mobile, and closer to the devices that need it?

MEC is an entire network architecture that brings computing power close to any device thats using it. Instead of data going back and forth to cloud servers four or five states away, its processed just miles or meters from the device. For this purpose, Verizon has installed cloud servers in its own access points across its networks.

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The cloud without the wait: mobile edge computing and 5G - Verizon Communications

Featured 2020 was a fascinating year for cloud technologies. The Covid-19 pandemic forced remote working initiatives which accelerated demand for cloud software and infrastructure. 2021 is going to be about taking advantage of the opportunities which have arisen, with multi-cloud and hybrid cloud to the fore.

As Andrew Brown, general manager EMEA for IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software wrote for this publication last month, while 2021s exact playout is unknown, the company expects hybrid cloud technologies to continue to play a large role in breaking down barriers for the enterprise. Brown added he believed regulated industries would go hybrid, while open source tools would unify clouds.

With this in mind, CloudTech has selected seven companies in the wider cloud economy to feature for 2021, from managed hyperscaler service providers, to security firms. Read their stories below:

2nd Watch is a provider of consulting and managed cloud services to enterprises. The company is a Microsoft Azure gold partner and Google Cloud partner but, headquartered in Seattle, its AWS premier partnership is the flagship service.

For these consultants and MSPs targeting the enterprise, its not good enough to just talk the talk. Chris Garvey, EVP product, tells CloudTech 2nd Watchs born-in-the-cloud culture, fluent in enterprise is key. By applying public cloud technology to our clients IT environment needs, we create a bias towards innovation enabling our clients to benefit from the latest technology and capability provided by the major cloud service providers, says Garvey.

Our approach enables our clients to reduce the level of complexity inherent to enabling digital transformation and achieve their strategic vision.

One such client is an engineering company focused on large-scale municipal water management. The company needed to gather telemetry data in real-time from tens of thousands of water meters and flow devices to support a variety of strategic data needs, as Garvey puts it. Using AWS services such as Amazon Forecast, Amazon SageMaker, and AWS Glue, 2nd Watch created a data lake to capture inbound IoT data streams, data cleansing and preparation processes, and a reuseable machine learning data pipeline.

The company is hiring strategically, recently announcing Chris Whaley, late of IBM, as its EVP cloud solutions sales. Going forward, there are key trends 2nd Watch is betting on, from industry vertical-based clouds, to technological expansion.

The enterprise market in cloud is maturing and its not enough to enable their journey to cloud, explains Garvey. Enterprises are increasingly looking to leverage their applications and data in the cloud to drive innovation, market agility and increased security and governance.

2021 will be a year of reinvention for many companies, Garvey adds. Four technology trends we foresee driving the biggest chance are around the pace of cloud migration accelerating, artificial intelligence and machine learning delivering even greater business insights, edge computing taking on greater importance, and platform as a service gaining added urgency.

AppOmni is a San Francisco-based provider of cloud security posture management (CSPM) for SaaS. The company secured additional funding from Salesforce at the end of December to bolster its goal of helping companies with monitoring and security across clouds, business units, and apps.

Tim Bach, vice president at AppOmni, explains that while many cloud security tools focus on network access, an increasing need exists for securing third party applications connected to SaaS environments, as well as public access portals. AppOmni was designed to continuously monitor all of these non-network data access points as well as configuration settings for third party applications, and both internal and external users to SaaS systems, Bach tells CloudTech.

For AppOmni, like many other companies in the space, Covid-19 saw something of a boon professionally. Enterprises were forced to rely more heavily on SaaS solutions to house sensitive data and as the stakes get higher, companies found they fell foul of the new provisions.

The company says that, in more than 95% of cases analysed where external users regularly logged into enterprise SaaS environments, they were over-provisioned. Typical industries where AppOmni has a presence include technology, banking and healthcare as well as other security providers. Yet Bach notes: Were seeing this issue across all industries.

With funding in the bank, the task ahead of AppOmni is expansion. Our goal in 2021 is to enable our customers to enjoy the huge benefits of SaaS without inadvertently introducing new security risks, adds Bach. With the right security tools, increased SaaS adoption doesnt have to lead to increased SaaS data breaches.

CloudSphere, a cloud governance provider based primarily in the United States and Ireland, is another relative new kid on the block. Formed last year as a merger of HyperGrid, a provider of cloud management and governance, and iQuate, a company focused on agentless discovery and application mapping, the company sits as a middleman for the hyperscalers.

Keith Neilson, technical evangelist at CloudSphere, says the companys offering empowers users to safely harness the power of the cloud. Securing and governing multi-cloud environments is a top IT challenge facing enterprises as cloud adoption accelerates amid the pandemic, Neilson tells CloudTech. This has driven demand for CloudSpheres solution.

The company is attempting to stamp its mark with the appointment of Jane Gilson, formerly of Microsoft and Google, as CEO. Gilson spoke to CloudTech earlier this month around how the enterprise adoption of multi-cloud architectures was a once-in-a-generation transformation of the IT landscape.

This feeds in to work the company is conducting with one of its largest customers, a global service integrator (GSI). CloudSphere is assisting with the GSI across the board, on cloud migration and discovery, cloud cost economics, and governance.

CloudSphere has provided a single multi-cloud platform that addresses all of these use cases, some of which are proving to be disruptive to their current tooling, to allow them to offer a differentiated services offering that benefits both them and their enterprise customers, says Neilson. The company is also consolidating tools to help manage multi-cloud environments.

Going forward, Gilson noted that she believed CloudSphere has the right approach and tech differentiation to become a worldwide leader in this space and expect the roadmap to follow. CloudSphere plans to announce some exciting new product developments in 2021, which will strengthen CloudSpheres current solution, while adding some new features unique to the market, adds Neilson. Watch this space.

Compared with the previous two entries, Fujitsu has a lifetimes experience literally, having been founded in 1935. While the Japan-headquartered ICT services company doesnt get the headlines of the hyperscalers, it does have an extensive cloud portfolio, focused on hybrid cloud and multi-cloud support for the Amazons, Microsofts et al.

Yet this suits the company fine. As Brad Mallard, CTO for digital technology services north west Europe explains, Fujitsus focus is trust, and a deep ability to provide transformation at pace that aligns business and operational priorities together seamlessly.

We understand that a transformational big bang is no longer attractive or realistic for organisations that are seeking to undergo digital transformation, Mallard tells CloudTech. Many organisations have instead moved their transformation to an as a service model with quarterly horizons to reset and realign priorities based on pre-agreed, composable services.

Our experience and breadth of skill in delivering mission-critical services from the cloud in countries around the world including services at the highest levels of security provides confidence and ensures the resilience needed by customers in the wake of Covid, Mallard adds.

Fujitsu is taking plenty of work in helping organisations continuously respond to Covid-19 related challenges. The company has rolled out rapid cloud solutions, and enabled tens of thousands of healthcare professionals to deliver critical support remotely. Recent research conducted by the company found two thirds of businesses polled are reinventing their digital transformation strategies amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Another customer success story hinges around a major manufacturer in the automotive sector, helping the company shift towards a digital business and mobility services provider approach. Our value here centres around accelerating innovation through cloud-native applications and microservices, built by deploying agile development squads and methodologies, says Mallard.

For 2021, Mallard predicts a year where responsible digital business models prevail, with reinvention and sustainability the watchwords. We will be at the forefront of this with a focus on maximising the impact for our customers by supporting them in their operating model shift, enabling them to take advantage of their data to create actionable insights, he says.

Pax8, a Colorado-based provider of cloud management technologies, has had a hot start to the year. The company secured $96 million (69m) in funding at the beginning of January, looking to expand its geographic reach as well as improve its cloud automation and orchestration capabilities.

Nick Heddy, chief revenue officer, explains the companys rationale for providing cloud services to the IT channel and its appeal to investors. There is no company on the market today quite like Pax8, he tells CloudTech. The leadership team built Pax8 into a true innovator. Pax8 is accelerating cloud transformation, enabling our partners to easily buy, sell and manage cloud technology to SMBs worldwide.

The geographic expansion includes a UK launch, also announced last month. One UK customer, seen by CloudTech, noted the need for a simple way to bring the best of breed products available to us as an MSP or MSSP and make it easier to buy, install, implement but only pick what we need for that specific client.

Bolstering the product line is the recent launch of Pax8 Pro, which offers partners an introduction to cloud automation and simplified software as a service lifecycle management, as Heddy puts it.

Ultimately, the company focuses on automation and simplicity for partners but a rigorous process to approve vendors. Vendors go through a more than 150-step process before launching with Pax8. We have a unique approach that tightly couples our technology platform with an unparalleled customer experience that simplifies cloud adoption, says Heddy.

We are excited about the future, and how we are helping IT professionals bring best-in-class cloud technology to businesses across the world.

Ping Identity, headquartered in Denver, promises intelligent identity for the enterprise. In the words of Emma Maslen, VP and GM EMEA and APAC, this means the company understands the challenges enterprises face as they navigate through the current digital transformation acceleration, often including the need to leverage a hybrid mix of cloud solutions to successfully modernise legacy IAM systems.

This manifests itself in various ways: passwordless authentication, integration with multiple risk, fraud and threat signals, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to detect and analyse anomalous behaviour. The company asserts that a trade-off between strong security and ease of use is not necessary, and has earned praise as a result, being shortlisted in the international Cloud Computing Awards for best hybrid cloud solution.

One recent customer success story focuses around telecoms: an ISP was dealing with continual outages from use-surges and relied on multiple login credentials for different parts of the business, as Maslen puts it. The goal was to achieve a streamlined experience for identity. As they look ahead to new business opportunities with 5G, they will be ideally positioned to provide the experience customers demand between services and applications, Maslen tells CloudTech.

The ISP is not the only one to be well positioned. With remote working an inevitability even after Covid, Ping Identity sees itself as an arbiter of frictionless and secure digital experiences.

For Ping, 2021 will be the year of cloud-enabled scalability, adds Maslen. We will prioritise centralised solutions that facilitate cost reduction, enable Zero Trust security through passwordless-ness, and help businesses deliver more personalised digital experiences from anywhere.

Uptycs, headquartered in Massachusetts, looks to take a broader view when it comes to cloud security. The cloud security is still nascent and many vendors are tackling niche problems, such as identifying vulnerabilities in containers, securing Kubernetes systems, spotting misconfiguration of cloud resources, or analysing identity and access, CEO Ganesh Pai tells CloudTech.

As a result, the company promises a cloud-native approach to cloud infrastructure security. The risk of tackling these problems piecemeal is the type of tool sprawl that weve seen in the traditional, on-premises enterprise space, only mirrored in the cloud, Pai adds.

Pai admits that, looking at the shared responsibility model, it can be quite difficult to get comprehensive visibility across various services and accounts. Amazon Web Services (AWS), with more than 200 products available, is a case in point.

This is where the companys recent AWS integration, extending the types of data in Uptycs SQL-powered security analytics platform, comes in.

For comprehensive cloud workload security, you need both a view of workloads from the outside and a view from the inside, explains Pai. Data from AWS services and resources provides an outside-in view of the cloud environment to complement the inside-out view from within hosts and containers that Uptycs already provides. Flexport, a digital freight forwarder and customs broker, is one such customer of the AWS side.

With regard to 2021 plans for Uptycs, who secured $30 million (21.6m) in funding back in June, Pai notes greater integration with cloud providers, alongside extensions which provide deeper visibility into identity and access management. The company is also keen to give something back. Uptycs recently released Kubequery and Cloudquery, two open source extensions for the osquery project a key part of Uptycs rationale and more is promised.

We will also continue to contribute back to the open source community, providing a strong technical foundation for the next generation of cloud security tools, says Pai.

Editors note Feb 17: An original version of this article stated that AppOmni raised $10 million in series A funding at the end of last month. That funding round was in January 2020 while the company received funding from Salesforce at the end of the December. This has since been corrected.

Photo by Quentin Rey on Unsplash

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The cloud machine-learning algorithms could learn from billions of real and simulated miles.

The quest for automated vehicles continuesIn fact, with the deluge of new vehicles in the market, there has been glimpse of automation in one way or another. At Volkswagen Group, automated driving remains one of its goals and the German auto group has partnered with Microsoft to accelerate the development of automated functions into its vehicle offerings.

ADAS require large-scale computational capabilities, especially since petabytes (1 million GB) of data are expected to be transferred every day. Likewise, connected driving experiences also require machine-learning algorithms that could learn from billions of real and simulated miles.

To address these requirements, Car.Software Organization and Microsoft will simplify the developer experience while leveraging the "learnings from miles driven" from real traffic data (from VW vehicles) and simulation data. With Microsoft Azure and Microsoft's agile development tools and methods, Car.Software Organizations developers could work on a single development environment.

RELATED:Let's Volt In! Volkswagen's Mobile Charging Robots Reach Prototype Status

ADAS and AD functions will be tested, deployed and operated through Volkswagen Automotive Cloud, another collaboration between VW and Microsoft. Started in 2018, the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud will allow the integration of digital services and mobility offerings across VW's brands in the future. It will also allow VW to deliver vehicle updates and new features without installing new hardware.

The first test vehicles connected to the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud will hit the road this year, with production rollout expected in 2022. The integration of the ADP and Volkswagen Automotive Cloud will occur as Car.Software Organization integrates its software solutions, tools and methods. Once integrated, the ADP can cut development cycles from months to weeks, while efficiently a managing massive amount of data.

Source: Volkswagen

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Julybien Atadero writes from the island of Cebu covering various automotive topics including new sports cars, classic muscles, pickup trucks and SUVs. While I like peace and quiet, I love playing with my kid. When I have nothing else to do, I watch documentaries and animations.

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As companies plan to reopen their doors to bring employees back, a lot is going on to decide what the future workplace will look like. There are a few common themes emerging which make a lot of sense for both the employees and the company. It is time to make some bold decisions and manage the change process.

It begins with safety and wellness. Companies will need to rethink air quality, wellness programs, rearranging seats for a safe distance and much more. Any decision made will require the workplace to have a seamless, transparent digital end-to-end process in place. The days of packing people into rooms will disappear for the next many years to come.

Clearly, culture plays a huge part in the future workplace. I spent 6 months at home and when I went to work none of the people I work with showed up on the same day. Sounds familiar? Thats a No-No to encourage people back to work. It kills productivity. Organizations need to have a clear strategy for ensuring teams work together, neighborhoods created for teams and departments and let intelligent solutions ensure rostering happens in a way that people get to collaborate when they are at work. The concept of Hybrid work is a reality and to get it right culture, team dynamics and work schedules need to be well thought through. Its time the HR team and workplace team work very closely together.

Flexibility is great but you need to keep in mind productivity, collaboration and cost. A well-planned organization can get the best of both worlds. After guiding the transition from fixed to the hybrid working of over 200 odd offices worldwide, one thing that stands out is that a well-planned Hybrid workplace model is the way to go. 3 days at work, 2 days at home brings about an ideal scenario. This model based on averages combines a set of 3 categories permanently work from home, permanently work in the office and Hybrid workers. With the right tools every employee feels engaged, they know where their teammates are, they go to work based on the need and tasks at hand. With the right automation, this will drive up productivity and increase employee satisfaction.

Cost is a big factor at play. Real estate and workplace overall costs have been very high for underutilized spaces. Check you P&L and sum it all up. This is #2 or #3 on the balance sheet. Heres a great opportunity to cut it down. With Hybrid working, you can safely let go of 30 % of your space. Let technology determine the best way space gets allocated and consumed. With Rs. 6-7 lakhs per annum seat cost including rentals, cleaning, power and using them a few times a month is not an optimum way to run the business.

The talent equation is fast changing. You can now hire for the skills, not location. This is a huge plus. Location doesnt matter anymore and gives you access to talent globally. Hybrid working and access to talent pools worldwide will really help and keep companies competitive.

One thing is for sure that as we move from fixed timing, fixed location and fixed desk to the new Hybrid and Flexible Workplace, technology is going to play a huge part. The ability to manage all the variables at play and getting it right requires a sophisticated AI solution with a very easy to use seamless interface for employees. Reducing employee and operations teams toil will be critical.

Businesses will journey across the stages as they shift to the new hybrid workplace and a solution which can support this journey can help get the most value both in adoption as well as real cost savings. With AI recommendations, business teams will be able to make informed decisions about space optimization. At the end of the day, technology will be the catalyst to the new paradigm of flexible workspaces, bringing to the table better collaboration and space optimization opportunities that will eventually change the way we work.

The new Hybrid workplace is here and now and can become a competitive advantage for companies. The early ones will learn and be ready ahead of the rest. The time to act is now.

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