State COVID-19 dashboard changing to reflect total and positive tests – kwwl.com

Posted on by

(KWWL) -- Iowa's COVID-19 dashboard is updating to reflect total positive tests in the state, rather than individuals who have tested positive.

This change was discussed by Gov. Reynolds and IDPH Director Kelly Garcia during a press conference on Wednesday.

Reynolds mentioned that back in October she said that "continuing to report results for individuals would become more complicated and less valuable overtime as repeat testing became the norm."

According to Garcia, the shift from individual tests to total tests means that their positivity rate will align with total test results.

Previously on the homepage of coronavirus.iowa.gov, the state showed individuals tested and individuals who tested positive. Now, they will show the total tests the state has administered and the total number of tests that have come back positive. The difference in these numbers is caused by individuals getting tested more than once.

The number of positive tests is not the same as the number of positive cases. COVID-19 positive people may be getting tested multiple times. Rather than just reporting the new positive tests, we want to continue to report how many new individual people have tested positive.

To see recoveries for the state you must also scroll down to the bottom of the homepage and look at the "grand total" row of the summary chart.

The number of individuals positive will still be available on the website's "Positive Case Analysis" page. KWWL will continue to add the individuals positive from PCR and Antigen tests, to give the total number of individuals who have tested positive. We will subtract that number from the previous day to provide the number of new cases within the 24 hour period.

KWWL will continue to draw statewide numbers and those for Johnson and Dubuque counties from coronavirus.iowa.gov. We will still be using the Black Hawk County and Linn County dashboards to report those numbers respectively.

Follow this link:

State COVID-19 dashboard changing to reflect total and positive tests - kwwl.com

COVID-19 in Illinois updates: Heres whats happening Friday – Chicago Tribune

Posted on by

Illinois has surpassed 2 million COVID-19 vaccinations, public health officials reported Friday. The state reached a total of 2,060,706 doses after 83,673 vaccinations were administered Thursday.

Over the past seven days, the state averaged 59,460 vaccinations administered daily, down from a high of 66,320 on Feb. 14. Vaccinations have been affected this week by the severe winter weather, as the state had warned earlier in the week.

The citys CARES Act spending drew an angry rebuke from activists and aldermen who said the money could have instead provided badly needed housing, health care and business lifelines to struggling residents.

Also on Friday, state officials announced 2,219 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 and 63 additional fatalities, bringing the total number of known infections in Illinois to 1,170,902 and the statewide death toll to 20,192 since the start of the pandemic.

Heres whats happening Friday with COVID-19 in the Chicago area and Illinois:

6:05 p.m.: Pritzkers tax plan: Closing corporate tax loopholes, or the best way to shoot yourself in the foot?

Gov. J.B. Pritzker wants to close $932 million of what he called corporate tax loopholes to help Illinois balance its budget after the fiscal ruins of COVID-19, but the controversial proposal comes as cities and states gear up to land relocating jobs and strengthen an economy battered by the pandemic.

Trade groups spoke out against Pritzkers plan after it wasannounced Wednesday, saying businesses are struggling even without new costs.

Real estate experts said Pritzkers proposal to phase out or eliminate some tax breaks could add a hurdle at an unprecedented moment, when swathes of corporations are rethinking their space needs.

Raising taxes during a pandemic is the best way to shoot yourself in the foot, when it comes to attracting jobs, said John H. Boyd, principal of The Boyd Co., a corporate site selection consulting firm. Its ill-timed and shortsighted.

5:50 p.m.: Far fewer COVID-19 deaths in Illinois nursing homes

In another promising sign Illinois is beating back the COVID-19 pandemic, cases and deaths at Illinois long-term care facilities have dropped to levels not seen since late summer, according to state data released Friday.

Following weeks of focused vaccination of long-term care residents and workers, the state reported 33 residents died from the virus over the past week. Thats the lowest reported tally since mid-August and exponentially lower than the 650 weekly deaths reported in early December.

Long-term care residents not only have seen a sizable drop in the number of deaths, they also now make up a far smaller share of those who are dying of COVID-19 each week going from roughly half or more of these deaths in Illinois to near 10 percent now.

Long-term care residents were among the first groups prioritized for vaccination, and advocates for seniors and industry officials credit the vaccines for reducing the viruss toll in long-term care facilities. But both groups cautioned that the pandemic remains far from over.

We still need to remember were in a crisis, even though were seeing positive trends, said Ryan Gruenenfelder, a director of advocacy and outreach for AARP Illinois.

In the past week the state recorded its 9,689th death of a long-term care resident, leaving the state just a few hundred shy of 10,000 deaths among nearly 75,000 cases.

5:40 p.m.: Younger Hispanic Kane County residents hit harder by COVID-19 deaths, new data shows

Younger Hispanic residents of Kane County have been hospitalized for COVID-19 and have died with the virus at disproportionately high rates, new health department data shows.

The data confirms what community advocates say they have long known: that Kane County has faced the same COVID-19 inequities that have played out across the country. But public information about the local communities most affected by COVID-19 deaths has been hard to come by.

The data also highlights the need to reach the countys Black and Hispanic communities with vaccines, Kane County Assistant Director of Community Health Michael Isaacson said, as small fractions of the countys doses to date have been administered to Black and Hispanic residents.

At the high level, these inequities show us that as a society we have a long way to go to get everybody better access to good health, Isaacson said. Specific to COVID, I think this data shows how important it is that we get vaccine to our Black and Latinx communities.

The information obtained by the Beacon-News shows vast divides in those who have died of COVID-19 when broken down by age.

In those under age 60, Hispanic residents made up about 68% of Kane County COVID-19 deaths through February 8 and about 64% of hospitalizations among younger residents for severe cases of the illness. That stands in contrast to the 32% of Kane Countys population that is Hispanic.

5:10 p.m.: Lightfoot joins mayors statewide in urging Illinois congressional delegation to back Bidens COVID-19 relief package

Illinois municipal groups and mayors, including Lori Lightfoot, have sent a letter to Illinois congressional delegation urging passage of President Joe Bidens COVID-19 relief plan and its $350 billion in direct aid to state and local governments nationally.

In a letter released Friday by the White House, the mayors and groups representing nearly 1,300 municipalities warned that without local recovery, there is no national economic recovery.

As mayors on the front line of the pandemic response, we have taken necessary steps to keep our communities safe and continue flattening the curve to save lives, the letter sent Thursday said. Undoubtedly, these steps have come with severe financial hardship. Not only have tax revenues been dropping drastically, but funding essential services critical to the health and safety of our residents has and continues to be challenged.

Of the $350 billion in direct relief to states and municipalities under the plan approved by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Illinois state government would receive $7.55 billion while municipalities in the state would get $5.7 billion. Of the municipal share, Chicago would get more than $1.8 billion.

While the letter was sent to all 18 members of Illinois House delegation and Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, it was primarily aimed at the states five Republican congressmen: Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Channahon, Darin LaHood of Peoria, Rodney Davis of Taylorville, Mike Bost of Murphysboro and Mary Miller of Oakland. They have joined with other GOP members in opposing direct state and local pandemic relief funding.

2:13 p.m.: Suburbanites are getting COVID-19 vaccine appointments on Chicagos South and West sides. But should they?

Within the first couple days of vaccinating seniors and essential workers on the South Side of Chicago late last month, doctors at Howard Brown Health noticed something unusual: patients traveling from the North Side of the city to the clinics.

They werent the people that lived in the community, said Dr. Maya Green, Howard Browns regional medical director for the South and West sides. The fact is, the link (for appointments) was being communicated and shared faster on the North Side of Chicago, and not among Black and brown communities on the South and West sides of Chicago.

Its a scenario thats been playing out across the city in recent weeks since Illinois opened vaccinations to seniors and front-line essential workers Jan. 25. Many vaccine doses were sent to underserved parts of Chicago in an effort to make sure people in the communities hardest-hit by COVID-19 had access to shots. But with overall vaccines in short supply, people from outside those areas have been traveling to them to get vaccinated.

1:43 p.m.: Illinois surpasses 2 million COVID-19 vaccinations, but 7-day average down amid severe winter weather

The number of COVID-19 vaccinations administered in Illinois has surpassed 2 million, public health officials reported Friday.

The state reached a total of 2,060,706 doses after 83,673 vaccinations were administered Thursday. According to state records, that is the second-highest daily total, behind 95,375 doses on Feb. 11.

Over the past seven days, the state averaged 59,460 vaccinations administered daily, down from a high of 66,320 on Feb. 14. Vaccinations have been affected this week by the severe winter weather, as the state had warned earlier in the week.

The number of Illinois residents who have been fully vaccinated receiving both of the required two shots reached 507,862, or 3.99% of the total population. Over the past seven days, the state averaged 59,460 vaccines administered daily.

12:21 p.m.: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot defends spending $281.5 million in federal COVID-19 relief money on police payroll, says criticism is just dumb

Mayor Lori Lightfoot defended Friday the citys decision to use $281.5 million in federal CARES Act money on Chicago police payroll costs, saying criticism from progressive aldermen and community groups on the issue is just dumb.

We saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by saying yes to the federal government. Should we have said no? No, no, no federal government, well incur this expense, well put this burden entirely on city of Chicago taxpayers and you can take your money elsewhere? Lightfoot said. That would be foolish and of course we didnt do that.

The city took advantage of the federal CARES Act funding, which provided reimbursement money for COVID-19 related expenses, to avoid an even bigger deficit, Lightfoot said.

Criticism comes with the job of mayor but this ones just dumb, Lightfoot said.

The citys CARES Act spending drew an angry rebuke from activists and aldermen who said the money could have instead provided badly needed housing, health care and business lifelines to struggling residents.

12:13 p.m.: 2,219 new confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases and 63 additional deaths reported

Officials also reported 85,963 new tests in the last 24 hours. The seven-day statewide rolling positivity rate for cases as a share of total tests was 2.8% for the period ending Thursday.

10:13 a.m.: Chicago reports improvement in COVID-19 vaccine distribution efforts among citys Black and Latino population

The number of vaccines going to Black and Latino people in Chicago has gone up but the city still has work to do in closing the equity gap, according to newly released data.

The city has improved its vaccination record among minority groups since December, when Chicago began receiving doses for distribution. White people initially were receiving roughly 60% of doses per week, a figure thats dropped to about 40% in the past week as city officials pushed efforts to promote the vaccine in Black and Latino neighborhoods, city officials said.

Over the past month, we have doubled down on our efforts to not only drive vaccines into communities that need them most but ensure that our vaccination rates match the demographics of our city, Lightfoot said in a statement touting the citys efforts.

News of improving vaccination distribution efforts comes a week after state data showed that Black and Hispanic Illinoisans so far have been vaccinated at half the rate of white residents, confirming fears of inequity in COVID-19 vaccinations and spurring calls to action.

7:01 a.m.: Lightfoot, city officials to give vaccine update

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago health officials were scheduled to give an update on vaccine distribution in the city Friday morning.

Lightfoot and city Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady were to join other city officials at Ombudsman Chicago South high school in Englewood.

The news conference comes as Chicago-area counties have struggled to reach even the states low vaccination rates. The city, Cook and DuPage counties reported that less than 10% of their populations had received their first dose, while Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties each had vaccinated 8% or less.

The announcement also comes as state officials have tried to ramp up vaccine distribution in areas throughout the state with lower vaccination rates, opening mass vaccination sites, including by opening three new mass vaccination sites in central and southern Illinois this week.

Stay up to date with the latest information on coronavirus with our breaking news alerts.

Here are some recent stories related to COVID-19:

Read this article:

COVID-19 in Illinois updates: Heres whats happening Friday - Chicago Tribune

Covid-19 Was Spreading in China Before First Confirmed Cases, Fresh Evidence Suggests – The Wall Street Journal

Posted on by

New evidence from China is affirming what epidemiologists have long suspected: The coronavirus likely began spreading unnoticed around the Wuhan area in November 2019, before it exploded in multiple different locations throughout the city in December.

Chinese authorities have identified 174 confirmed Covid-19 cases around the city from December 2019, said World Health Organization researchers, enough to suggest there were many more mild, asymptomatic or otherwise undetected cases than previously thought.

Many of the 174 cases had no known connection to the market that was initially considered the source of the outbreak, according to information gathered by WHO investigators during the four-week mission to China to examine the origins of the virus. Chinese authorities declined to give the WHO team raw data on these cases and potential earlier ones, team members said.

In examining 13 genetic sequences of the virus from December, Chinese authorities found similar sequences among those linked to the market, but slight differences in those of people without any link to it, according to the WHO investigators. The two sets likely began to diverge between mid-November and early December, but could possibly indicate infections as far back as September, said Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on the WHO team.

This, and other evidence, suggest the coronavirus might have jumped to humans sometime during or shortly before the second half of November, she said, sickening too few people to attract attention until it led to an explosive outbreak in Wuhan. By December, the virus was spreading much more widely, both among people who had a link to the market, as well as others with no tie.

More here:

Covid-19 Was Spreading in China Before First Confirmed Cases, Fresh Evidence Suggests - The Wall Street Journal

Gov. Northam takes questions on COVID-19 issues including about when he thinks masks can come off – WAVY.com

Posted on by

HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) On Friday, 10 On Your Side met with Gov. Ralph Northam while he was at Fort Monroe in Hampton.

10 On Your Sides Andy Fox asked Northam some of the pressing questions, including why it took so long to launch a statewide vaccination registration system, and why some health districts still dont have directors during a pandemic.

And finally, the question that many Americans are also wondering: When can the masks come off?

There are 10 healthdistricts in Virginiawhere the director isforcedto dodouble duty and manage multiple departments.That includes Dr.Demetria Lindsay,who isdistrict health director for Virginia Beach and Norfolk.

There are nine other directors just like Lindsay. Hampton and Newport News share a district health director, as do Portsmouth and the Western Tidewater Health District, which covers 1,500 square miles.

This pandemicis the likes we have never seen in decades,so we have been stretched thin, the governor said when 10 On Your Side inquired about the shortage of directors.

Some critics argue everything appears thin,from vaccinations to leadership at the top of some health districts.

We asked thegovernor why,during the worst global health crisis of our lifetime, do we have so many health districts without their own director? Does it look like we are not prepared?

Well,wevemade a lot ofmodifications. Wearein a very good place now compared to a year ago. We still have alot of work to do, Northam acknowledged.

And why donthealth districts,especially larger urbanones, havetheir own leadership?

The governor did not give a why when asked by 10 On Your Side.

10 On Your Side also pressed Northamabout therocky start to the statewide pre-registration vaccination website that crashed the morning it was launched. People in droves complained to WAVY.com.

As the site crashed, those residents also couldnt get their answers because Virginialaunched a help hotlinethe day after they launched the pre-registrationsite.

What about those issues?

We have had over300,000who havesuccessfully enrolled,and wehave transferred information from those who haveenrolledpreviouslythroughthehealthdepartmentinto the new system, Northam said.

So, is therelight at the end of the long, dark COVID-19 tunnel?

We havebeen at this a year. Numbersshowwe are moving in the right direction.Our positivity rates are going down, our number of vaccinations are going up, he said.

What about thisquestion: When does he think the masks can comeoff?

Hopefully, byearlyor mid-summer, we willhave folksvaccinatedand getto the herd immunity that we need to put COVID-19 in the rear-view mirror, he said.

But when will we be able to not wear masks anymore?

As theGovernor walkedaway to the next meeting, he declined to say.

Ill call you and let you know, Andy.In themeantime,keep it on.he told Andy Fox.

More here:

Gov. Northam takes questions on COVID-19 issues including about when he thinks masks can come off - WAVY.com

Tracking COVID-19 in Alaska: 210 new infections and no deaths reported Friday – Anchorage Daily News

Posted on by

We're making this important information available without a subscription as a public service. But we depend on reader support to do this work. Please consider supporting independent journalism in Alaska, at just $1.99 for the first month of your subscription.

Coronavirus cases in Alaska have been steadily declining over the last few months after a surge of infections in November and early December that strained hospital capacity.

Hospitalizations in Alaska are now less than a quarter of what they were during November and December. By Friday, there were 33 people with COVID-19 in hospitals throughout the state, including four on ventilators. Another patient was suspected of having the virus.

The COVID-19 vaccine reached Alaska in mid-December. By Friday, 137,124 people nearly 19% of Alaskas population had received at least their first vaccine shot, according to the states vaccine monitoring dashboard. Thats far above the national average of 12.4%. Among Alaskans age 16 and older, 24% had received at least one dose of vaccine by Friday. The Pfizer vaccine has been authorized for use for people ages 16 and older, and Modernas has been cleared for use by people 18 and older.

Health care workers and nursing home staff and residents were the first people prioritized to receive the vaccine. Alaskans older than 65 became eligible in early January, and the state further widened eligibility criteria last week to include educators, people 50 and older with a high-risk medical condition, front-line essential workers 50 and older and people living or working in congregate settings like shelters and prisons.

Those eligible to receive the vaccine can visit covidvax.alaska.gov or call 907-646-3322 to sign up and to confirm eligibility. The phone line is staffed 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. on weekends.

Despite the lower case numbers, public health officials continue to encourage Alaskans to keep up with personal virus mitigation efforts like hand-washing, mask-wearing and social distancing. A highly contagious variant of the virus reached Alaska in December.

Of the 185 cases reported among Alaska residents on Friday, there were 59 in Anchorage plus one in Chugiak and five in Eagle River; two in Kenai; one in Soldotna; one in Kodiak; 18 in Fairbanks plus one in North Pole; one in Big Lake; 11 in Palmer; one in Sutton-Alpine; 38 in Wasilla; two in Utqiagvik; six in Juneau; 15 in Ketchikan; one in Petersburg; two in Sitka; one in Wrangell; one in Unalaska; and one in Dillingham.

Among communities with populations under 1,000 not named to protect privacy, there were three in the Copper River Census Area; one in the southern Kenai Peninsula Borough; three in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area; one in Yakutat plus Hoonah Angoon region; and nine in the Bethel Census Area;

Twenty-five cases were also identified among nonresidents: one in Anchorage, one in Fairbanks, one in Juneau, and 22 in Unalaska.

While people might get tested more than once, each case reported by the state health department represents only one person.

The states data doesnt specify whether people testing positive for COVID-19 have symptoms. More than half of the nations infections are transmitted from asymptomatic people, according to CDC estimates.

Of all the tests conducted over the last seven days, an average of 2.27% came back positive.

Read more here:

Tracking COVID-19 in Alaska: 210 new infections and no deaths reported Friday - Anchorage Daily News

Imposters posing as county officials reported to be spreading false COVID-19 info in Puna – KHON2

Posted on by

Posted: Feb 19, 2021 / 01:20 PM HST / Updated: Feb 19, 2021 / 01:26 PM HST

(AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

HONOLULU (KHON2) Imposters claiming to be Hawaii County officials have recently been reported to be spreading false information about COVID-19 policies in the Puna area.

Get Hawaiis latest news sent to your inbox, click here to subscribe to News 2 You, a daily newsletter.

Hawaii County Mayor Mitch Roths office has received reports that claim two women were seen at multiple businesses in the Puna Kai Shopping Center telling employees and customers that face coverings are no longer necessary. The women also allegedly made false claims about social-distancing practices.

In one report, two imposters claimed to be from the Hawaii County Assembly of Health and Safety Commission. No such commission exists, the mayors office said in Fridays news release.

Its disheartening to think that there are folks out there who are trying to trick people into abandoning the practices that have allowed us to keep our [COVID-19] counts some of the lowest in the nation, said Roth. We have done a great job of keeping each other safe and caring for our community in these uncertain times, and I truly believe that we are close to the finish line. As those most vulnerable continue to receive their vaccinations and are deemed truly safe, we will begin to ease restrictions, but we arent there just yet.

On Feb. 12, Roth extended the state of emergency through April 12, which maintains all COVID-19 policies and procedures.

Hawaii County officials are currently investigating the situation. Anyone who has encountered similar activity is asked to call police at 808-935-3311.

Continue reading here:

Imposters posing as county officials reported to be spreading false COVID-19 info in Puna - KHON2

Houston Health Department to resume COVID-19 vaccinations following winter storm – City of Houston

Posted on by

Houston Health Department to resume COVID-19 vaccinations following winter storm

February 18, 2021

UPDATE (Feb. 18) - Houston Health Department-affiliated United Memorial Medical Center COVID-19 testing sites resume normal operations on Friday, February 19. Visit HoustonEmergency.org/covid19 for details.

HOUSTON- The Houston Health Department will resume COVID-19 vaccinations this weekend with 4,784 second dose appointments on Saturday and Sunday, February 20-21.

People who received their first dose from the department during the week of January 18-23 will be contacted Friday and Saturday to schedule appointments. People who do not hear from the department by Saturday afternoon should contact the COVID-19 call center at 832-393-4220.

The department will schedule additional second and first dose appointments next week.

Area Agency on Aging WaitlistThe Houston Health Departments COVID-19 vaccine waitlist remains open for people age 65 and older, people age 60 and older with chronic health conditions, and people with disabilities.

Those who qualify may call the departments Area Agency on Aging at 832-393-4301 to leave a voicemail with their name and phone number. Calls will be returned for screening and scheduling as supply is available. People only need to leave one message.

Testing SitesHouston Health Department-affiliated COVID-19 testing sites will remain closed Friday, February 19. An announcement about reopening will be provided Friday.

View post:

Houston Health Department to resume COVID-19 vaccinations following winter storm - City of Houston

Rural counties concerned over lack of COVID-19 vaccine supply for their residents – WGRZ.com

Posted on by

Some rural counties in Western New York have some of the lowest population percentages in terms of first dose vaccinations. Allegany County is last in the state.

BUFFALO, N.Y. Amid so many challenges with the vaccine rollout, a couple local counties are among the lowest in the state with getting residents vaccinated.

Some health officials believe where they're located has something to do with getting significantly fewer doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

According to New York State's Vaccine Tracker, Allegany County, has the lowest population percentage with at least one vaccine dose at 7.4 percent of the county's population.

"I don't think there's anything particularly different we're doing or not doing, we're involved in the same hub calls the western region is involved in," said Tyler Shaw, public health director in Allegany County, "As of right now, we have no additional first doses to go out the door."

Also low in that category: Orleans County at 7.9 percent. For some perspective, Erie County leads all WNY counties with nearly 13 percent of the population with at least one shot of vaccine.

"We understand the population divide and making sure allocations are based appropriately based on population, but ultimately we need increases in our local communities and not just Genesee and Orleans, but all the rural counties," said Paul Pettit, the public health director for Genesee and Orleans counties.

Pettit says vaccine allocation in both counties has been either cut or remained flat in recent weeks. This at a time, when the federal government and the state have been promising modest increases in supply.

"The challenges continue, we continue to hear about increased allocations from the state, we've been hearing that for weeks coming from the feds to the state, but that has not translated into increased local allocations for specifically rural counties," Pettit said.

Meantime, in Erie County, the county health department expects to see a modest increase from last week to this week.

"I guess the biggest thing, we just want to know is and we'd like to see is that that vaccine starting to come into the rural areas a little more readily and a little more parity with where that vaccine is going," Pettit said.

2 On Your Side asked the state health department and the governor's office about vaccine allocation to rural counties.

A spokesperson for the health department says this is all due to recent winter storms slowing down vaccine delivery.

Here's the full statement:

Nola Goodrich-Kresse, public information officer in Orleans County wrote in an email:"Based on the most recent data, Orleans County has received the third lowest allocation of vaccine in the Finger Lakes Region since it was initially distributed to date. There are also fewer healthcare providers in the county resulting in less eligible in the 1A prioritization groups early on. According to the 2020 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps, Orleans has a ratio of 13,660 patients to 1 provider. We have seen by the allocations to date that rural counties continue to receive less vaccine proportionally than larger urban counties. We're hopeful that as initial vaccination data is released, it will continue to show these disparities and lead towards increased allocations reaching our residents. Access to health care and transportation issues are very prevalent in the rural areas which limits the ability of our residents to reach current state run mass vaccination sites. Today, Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming Counties formally requested from the Governor a state run mass vaccination site at GCC to increase closer access and increased allocations of vaccine to our residents."

Assemblymember Steve Hawley writes in a statement:"The vaccination distribution to rural parts of the state has been concerning thus far, to say the least. While it's bad enough vaccine allocations have remained flat in recent weeks throughout rural areas of the state, here in Orleans County distribution has slowed since the amount of doses the county received was cut from 400 to 200 for the week of February 8th. We have reached out to the state Health Department regarding this shortage and, while they said they would look into it, we have not heard back. This shortage must be addressed immediately to stop the spread of COVID-19 through rural upstate New York and to save lives. Because we are all New Yorkers, no matter where we live."

State Senator Ed Rath issued a statement:"The Federal government has informed New York that nearly all COVID-19 vaccine doses allocated for Week 10 which were scheduled to be delivered between February 12th and February 21st are delayed due to the winter storms continuing to impact much of the country. Every dose that should have shipped on Monday was held back, and only a limited number of Pfizer vaccines left shipping facilities on Tuesday and Wednesday. This delay will undoubtedly pose a logistical challenge for New York but as we have shown over the last 350-plus days, we are New York Tough, and we are up to the challenge. The Department of Health is working closely with all providers, including local health departments, hospitals, pharmacies, and FQHCs to minimize the impact on their operations and reduce the number of appointments that must be rescheduled. The vaccine is the weapon that will win the war against COVID, and we will continue to work with our federal partners to expedite the delayed shipments and will keep New Yorkers updated over the coming days."

See the article here:

Rural counties concerned over lack of COVID-19 vaccine supply for their residents - WGRZ.com

NY Sues Amazon, Saying It Inadequately Protected Workers From Covid-19 – The New York Times

Posted on by

New Yorks attorney general, Letitia James, sued Amazon on Tuesday evening, arguing that the company provided inadequate safety protection for workers in New York City during the pandemic and retaliated against employees who raised concerns over the conditions.

The case focuses on two Amazon facilities: a large warehouse on Staten Island and a delivery depot in Queens. Ms. James argues that Amazon failed to properly clean its buildings, conducted inadequate contact tracing for known Covid-19 cases, and took swift retaliatory action to silence complaints from workers.

Amazons extreme profits and exponential growth rate came at the expense of the lives, health and safety of its frontline workers, Ms. James argued in the complaint, filed in New York Supreme Court.

Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said the company cared deeply about the health and safety of its workers.

We dont believe the attorney generals filing presents an accurate picture of Amazons industry-leading response to the pandemic, Ms. Nantel said.

Last week, Amazon preemptively sued Ms. James in federal court in an attempt to stop her from bringing the charges. The company argued that workplace safety was a matter of federal, not state, law.

Feb. 19, 2021, 7:57 p.m. ET

In its 64-page complaint last week, Amazon said its safety measures far exceed what is required under the law. It cited a surprise inspection by the New York City Sheriffs Office that found Amazon appeared to go above and beyond the current compliance requirements. The company also detailed other safety measures it had taken, including temperature checks and offering free Covid-19 testing on site.

New York, in its suit, said Amazon received written notification of at least 250 employees at the Staten Island warehouse who had Covid-19. In more than 90 of those cases, the infected employee had been at work in the previous week, yet Amazon did not close portions of the building to provide proper ventilation as the state required, the filing said.

Ms. James said that until at least late June, Amazon did not interview infected workers to determine their close contacts and instead relied on reviewing surveillance footage, which could take three days and did not cover the entire warehouse. The lack of interviews created a very time-consuming process which did not identify close contacts in a timely fashion, the complaint said.

She also argued that Amazon retaliated against Christian Smalls, a worker the company fired in the spring. Mr. Smalls had been raising safety concerns with managers and led a public protest in the parking lot of the Staten Island facility.

Amazon has said Mr. Smalls was fired for going to the work site for the protest even though he was on paid quarantine leave after he had been exposed to a colleague who had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Ms. Jamess filing said two Amazon human resources employees discussed Mr. Smallss situation in writing. The employees said they thought it was unfair to fire him because he did not enter the building and because Amazon had not told him that the companys quarantine policy prohibited him from being outside the facility.

Ms. James said that by firing Mr. Smalls and reprimanding another protest leader, Amazon sent a chilling message to others.

Amazon employees reasonably fear that if they make legitimate health and safety complaints about Amazons Covid-19 response, Amazon will retaliate against them as well, she argued.

The state said Amazon should change its policies, conduct training and undergo safety monitoring, and that it should pay lost wages and other damages to Mr. Smalls and offer him his job back.

See the article here:

NY Sues Amazon, Saying It Inadequately Protected Workers From Covid-19 - The New York Times

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

Posted on by

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/

Original post:

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

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

Posted on by

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."

See the original post here:

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

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

Posted on by

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.

See the original post:

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

Cloud computing ‘sticker shock’ is on the rise, and containing it may be a new career path – ZDNet

Posted on by

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

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

Posted on by

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.

Read the original here:

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

Featured: CloudTech’s list of innovative cloud companies to watch in 2021 – Cloud Tech

Posted on by

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

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their experiences and use-cases? Attend theCyber Security & Cloud Expo World Serieswith upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.

Read more:

Featured: CloudTech's list of innovative cloud companies to watch in 2021 - Cloud Tech

Easily Learn the Essentials of Cloud Computing With This Course – MakeUseOf

Posted on by

Solve latency issues & improve overall tech processes with cloud computing, microservices, and machine learning.

Cloud computing is a model through which users can access applications from any place through their linked devices. The apps exist in specific data centers where the system resources get dynamically provisioned and distributed to achieve systems of scale.

Cloud computing will be at the forefront of all technologies to solve business challenges, improve e-governance, provide apps to solve customer problems, and more. We have a deal for you on understanding the basics of cloud computing and become a cloud architect.

The nine-course bundle covers the evolution of cloud technology, discuss different cloud service models, and learn about cloud deployment models. Lets explore the bundle:

The clouds main appeal is to reduce the time to market your apps that needs to scale dynamically. Developers can take advantage of cloud services to enhance application portability, allow efficient DevOps-style workflow, and more.

So get yourself enrolled in the cloud computing architect course and start learning. The deal is available for only $30.

Comprehensive coding boot camps provide an entry into the coding space. Find out what they are, what you'll learn, and if it's the right fit for your programming journey!

With his M.Optom Degree in Eye Care Speciality, Rahul worked as a lecturer for many years in the college. Writing and teaching others is always his passion. He now writes about technology and make it digestible for readers who don't understand it well.

Join our newsletter for tech tips, reviews, free ebooks, and exclusive deals!

Please confirm your email address in the email we just sent you.

Follow this link:

Easily Learn the Essentials of Cloud Computing With This Course - MakeUseOf

Volkswagen Group And Microsoft Speed Automated Driving Development With Cloud Computing – HotCars

Posted on by

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

NEXT: Volkswagen Strikes Agreement With Electrify America For Three-Year Unlimited ID.4 Charging

Here's Where Aaron Kaufman From Gas Monkey Garage Is Today

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.

Follow this link:

Volkswagen Group And Microsoft Speed Automated Driving Development With Cloud Computing - HotCars

The Future Landscape of Workplaces Will Change forever – Web Hosting | Cloud Computing | Datacenter | Domain News – Daily Host News

Posted on by

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.

The post The Future Landscape of Workplaces Will Change forever appeared first on NASSCOM Community |The Official Community of Indian IT Industry.

Continue reading here:

The Future Landscape of Workplaces Will Change forever - Web Hosting | Cloud Computing | Datacenter | Domain News - Daily Host News

Granulate Wins Cloud Development Innovation of the Year at 2020-21 Cloud Awards – PRNewswire

Posted on by

TEL AVIV, Israel, Feb. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Granulate, a leading provider of autonomous real-time computing workload optimization and cost reduction solutions, has been named the 2020 winner of the Cloud Development Innovation category in the Cloud Awards. After a lengthy review process, the announcement occurred at the InternationalCloud Computing Awards program, The Cloud Awards.

Granulate provides real-time computing performance optimization with its AI-driven solution that tailors computing workload prioritization for the unique needs of any company in any industry. With Granulate's solution, companies see rapid and drastic performance improvement, including up to a 5x increase in throughput, 40% faster response times, and a reduction in cloud computing costs of up to 60%. Designed to function in any computing infrastructure or environment, implementing Granulate is simple and fast, requiring zero code changes or R&D involvement, with results within days, if not hours.

"We are honored to be recognized as the Cloud Innovation of the year in the Cloud Computing Awards," said Asaf Ezra, CEO and co-founder of Granulate. "Our optimization solution enables companies of any size to significantly reduce computing costs while improving performance, not only in the cloud, but on-prem as well, with minimal effort. We are excited to receive this honor, and will continue to develop our solutions to further improve computing efficiency for our customers. Optimizing computing power means optimizing business."

The Cloud Awards program celebrates the brightest and the best in Cloud Computing. Open to organizations across the globe, the Cloud Awards is the first and largest recognition platform of its kind.

"Performance and resource usage is often overlooked when deploying to the cloud, as development and product teams focus on the end deliverables. The judges were particularly impressed by the solution offered by Granulate which offers customers huge savings, both in cost and in the environmental impact that can be achieved with next to no effort," said Cloud Award Judge Richard Geary. "Cloud technologies make a good platform for turning around urgent applications rapidly and at scale. This was clearly evidenced in the range of innovative technological solutions that Granulate has offered during the Pandemic."

"Every year, we find ourselves reporting the winners of the Cloud Awards, in simple awe at the scalability and agility of cloud-based solutions. Previous winners have risen superbly to the evolving challenges organizations must face in our increasingly unrecognizable modern world," said Head of Operations for the Cloud Awards, James Williams.

Hundreds of organizations entered the Cloud Awards, with entries coming from across the globe, covering the Americas, Australia, Europe and the Middle East. You can view the full shortlist here: https://www.cloud-awards.com/2020-shortlist/.

About Granulate

Granulateis a real-time, autonomous computing optimization company that delivers reduced compute costs, faster response time, and better throughput, without any code changes required. Granulate's patent-pending next-generation solution provides AI-driven infrastructure and workload optimization for robust compute performance and cost improvements in any computing environment, empowering businesses of any size from any industry by bolstering their computing power while slashing computing costs. Companies that have implemented Granulate have reduced compute expenses by up to 60%, benefitting from a 40% response time reduction and 5X increase in throughput.

Granulate Media ContactRaanan Loew[emailprotected] US: +1-347-897-9276

About the Cloud Awards

TheCloud Awardsis an international program which recognizes and honors industry leaders, innovators, and organizational transformation in cloud computing. The awards are open to large, small, established, and start-up organizations from across the entire globe, with an aim to find and celebrate the pioneers who will shape the future of the Cloud as we move into 2021 and beyond. The Cloud Awards currently offers two awards programs, the Cloud Computing Awards, and the Software-as-a-Service Awards. For more information about the Cloud Awards, please visithttps://www.cloud-awards.com.

Cloud Awards ContactJames Williams Operations http://www.cloud-awards.com[emailprotected]

SOURCE Granulate

https://granulate.io

Read more from the original source:

Granulate Wins Cloud Development Innovation of the Year at 2020-21 Cloud Awards - PRNewswire

Tata Communications join hands with Google Cloud for cloud computing services – Telegraph India

Posted on by

Tata Communications on Tuesday joined hands with Google Cloud to drive cloud adoption among Indian businesses. The announcement of the partnership led to the shares of Tata Communications climbing close to 6 per cent on the BSE to Rs 1,050.90. Tata Communications said the deal had expanded its managed public cloud services portfolio to include the capabilities of Google Cloud.

The partnership is expected to enable organisations to deploy and access Google Cloud services through Tata Communications IZO Managed Cloud platform. Companies will get access to end-to-end services, including cloud architecture planning and workload migration.

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, technology firms have been witnessing a rise in demand for services such as cloud computing. A cloud is where various services can be accessed from the Internet through a provider.

Tata Communications said as a Google Cloud India partner, it will support organisations with services across infrastructure modernisation, data centre transformation, application modernisation and smart analytics.

According to the company, with the current global scenario, there is wider recognition for business resilience and agility that cloud enables and most businesses are now beginning to explore a cloud-first model.

The current demands on enterprises to manage and optimise their cloud solutions has never been more important, especially in the wake of Covid-19 and our increasing reliance on cloud infrastructure, Rajesh Awasthi, global head of cloud and managed hosting services at Tata Communications said.

As organisations migrate to Google Cloud, they need a partner that will support them across their entire IT ecosystem and deliver a unified cloud management platform that offers greater transparency, control and security of their data and applications, Awasthi said.

Tata Communications, erstwhile VSNL was in the news last month when the Government said that it will sell its entire 26.12 per cent stake in the company through offer for sale and strategic sale route in the current fiscal.

In a notice, the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) had said that a part of the shareholding will be offered through offer for sale (OFS) and the balance, including any leftover portion in the OFS, will be offered to strategic partner Panatone Finvest Ltd. The transaction is to be completed by March 20, 2021, the DIPAM had said.

More here:

Tata Communications join hands with Google Cloud for cloud computing services - Telegraph India